Category Archives: Notable Quotes

Mother’s Day: Honoring Our Complicated Families

Who is like the Lord our God, the one who sits enthroned on high?…He settles the childless woman in her home as a happy mother of children. (Psalm 113:5, 9)

Mother’s Day has always been a difficult holiday for me. Unlike Christmas or Thanksgiving, there’s no larger goal to take the focus off one’s personal life and the ways it conforms or fails to conform to a Hallmark card.

Because of her trauma issues, my biological mother never felt sufficiently loved or special. On Mother’s Day, she was especially disappointed and confused by the contrast between how she was supposed to feel and how she actually felt. No matter what we did, it wasn’t enough. Now that she and my other mom are apart, her ex-partner has had space to grow into the mother I need, no longer forced into the shadows. But it’s been a long time coming.

Many infertile and waiting adoptive moms can relate to the loneliness of those years when Mother’s Day came around again and we still didn’t have our child. We belonged to an unseen minority who couldn’t help but recognize the complexity of this thing we call “motherhood”, so oversimplified by the sentimental mainstream. Birthmothers, too, may wonder what this day should mean to them. There are no words for loss in the language of this holiday, just pink flowers and brunch and cards that say “you’re the bestest”.

Last year, on my first Mother’s Day as a mom, I was depressed, and ashamed of it. I loved my one-month-old son. I was so proud to sit in the “parents with small children” pew in church for the first time ever. But the pain of our adoption journey hadn’t healed. I felt pressured by the rhetoric of motherhood to pretend that everything was hearts-and-flowers, that this moment made all the past betrayals worthwhile.

It didn’t help that it coincided with the date when our birthmother’s consent became irrevocable. Now it’s REAL. Help me, mommy! I called her up to give her good wishes and support. Her confidence in me, her comfort with her decision, made me believe I really deserved to celebrate, at last.

Just as I push back against aggressive projections of masculinity onto my 13-month-old (I swear, he comes by that cowboy swagger naturally), I continue to deconstruct the false choices inherent in popular ideas of motherhood. Adulthood and sacrifice versus immaturity and freedom. Being ridiculed for hypervigilance yet blamed for anything that goes wrong with one’s child. Mothering, as opposed to generic “parenting”, is by definition a female activity. And we all know what fun it is to be female in our society. Maybe that’s one reason I was so afraid of it.

Therefore, mothering, for me, is also an invitation to lean into the political responsibility that goes along with adulthood. This passage from the “Motherhood and Daughterhood” chapter of Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born spoke to me during those early days of transformation into Shane’s Mom:

The “unchilded” woman, if such a term makes any sense, is still affected by centuries-long attitudes–on the part of both women and men–towards the birthing, child-rearing function of women. Any woman who believes that the institution of motherhood has nothing to do with her is closing her eyes to crucial aspects of her situation.

Many of the great mothers have not been biological. The novel Jane Eyre…can be read as a woman-pilgrim’s progres along a path of classic female temptation, in which the motherless Jane time after time finds women who protect, solace, teach, challenge, and nurture her in self-respect. For centuries, daughters have beem strengthened and energized by nonbiological mothers, who have combined a care for the practical values of survival with an incitement toward further horizons, a compassion for vulnerability with an insistence on our buried strengths. It is precisely this that has allowed us to survive…

We are, none of us, “either” mothers or daughters; to our amazement, confusion, and greater complexity, we are both. Women, mothers or not, who feel committed to other women, are increasingly giving each other a quality of caring filled with the diffuse kinds of identification that exist between actual mothers and daughters. Into the mere notion of “mothering” we may carry, as daughters, negative echoes of our own mothers’ martyrdom, the burden of their valiant, necessarily limited efforts on our behalf, the confusion of their double messages. But it is a timidity of the imagination which urges that we can be “daughters”–therefore free spirits–rather than “mothers”–defined as eternal givers. Mothering and nonmothering have been such charged concepts for us, precisely because whichever we did has been turned against us.

To accept and integrate and strengthen both the mother and the daughter in ourselves is no easy matter, because patriarchal attitudes have encouraged us to split, to polarize, these images, and to project all unwanted guilt, anger, shame, power, freedom, onto the “other” woman. But any radical vision of sisterhood demands that we reintegrate them. (pgs. 252-53)

 

My little pea pod and me in April 2012.

A Faith That Makes Space for Mourning

Just this morning in church I was thinking about the Middle Ages, how their artwork was full of death, real death with grinning skulls and rotting flesh, and how this is considered the era in Western history when Christian belief was most alive and all-pervasive. How many of us who walked through the door this morning literally believe the words on the banner over our heads: “Christ is Risen”? Do I believe it? And by “literally” I mean “in a way that robs death of its power”. For me that also means “historically true”. For you it may not. But either way, that’s the job that “Christ is Risen” has to do.

I’m reading this absorbing, brilliant, painful novel called Swimming, by Nicola Keegan, which I found through this excerpt in Narrative Magazine. It’s about an Olympic gold medalist swimmer whose competitive drive is fundamentally an escape from her oppressive consciousness of death, triggered by family losses in her childhood and her mother’s subsequent spiral into housebound depression. Replace swimming with academic achievement and you have my life story. As I near the book’s end, I keep wondering why the heroine is proceeding down the very modern track of turning to therapy rather than religion when talent fails her and she has to face her long-buried feelings. Unlike my largely secular childhood, this fictional girl was immersed in Midwestern Catholic-school culture and has great respect and affection for the nuns who mentored her. Yet that framework proves powerless to help her or her family surmount their despair when confronted with mortality. Why?

Maybe it’s because modern Christianity doesn’t depict death enough. The church doesn’t spend enough time on the shadow side, allowing sorrow and pain to have their say, not prematurely silenced by happy endings. (If I ran the world, I’d have a second Lent halfway through Pentecost. Do we really need 29 weeks of ordinary time, people?) Those who are still angry and grieving may feel that the only way to validate their feelings is to reject the faith.

Later today I found some of these sentiments echoed in Robert Gross’s paranormal gay romance story “Dark Lapis“, published in the online journal Wilde Oats. Reiter’s Block readers may recall his poem “Poor Souls” reprinted here last month. The plague that passes through his fictional Renaissance city is reminiscent of the AIDS crisis of the 1980s-1990s, and the younger generation’s tendency to dismiss it as old history even though new infection rates remain high. It also reminded me of post-9/11 New York City and the shallow slogans (“Fight back! Go shopping!”) that were supposed to return a stricken populace to business as usual.

From “Dark Lapis”:

…The city was returning to its weddings and babies, lawsuits and public executions, and the anomalies were generally spoken of with a sigh, a shake of the head, a pious reference to the long-term costs of the pestilence, and an abrupt change of topic. But Magnus was drawn to anomalies. Though he would not admit it to anyone, he distrusted the return of the city to normalcy just as much as he was horrified by the return of spring. He preferred the fog, the darkness, the lapis lazuli ring on his finger. The incised griffin turned inward toward his palm, caressed with a thumb.

The cruel fact was Magnus missed the pestilence. He could scarcely contemplate the immensity of this truth to himself, nor could he communicate it to others. To think of it was like holding a hot poker to your flesh, but there it was-the truth-and it rarely left him. Not that he was anything like the mad monks who raved on the street corners at the height of the pestilence, relishing how the Scourge of God had smitten the sinners. Not that he wished another human soul a moment’s suffering. But he was not yet willing to put it out of his mind as the others seemed to have done, and he walked at night searching for proof that it had not yet lapsed completely into forgetfulness.

The city had marshaled its efforts behind recovery; religion had become reasonable, gentle, and omnipresent. Services were watercolor washes of music and flowers, and the ministers wore white as if they were officiating at weddings. The goal, their flock had been admonished, had been to persevere and in time forget the bad memories and continue with only the good. As if, Magnus thought, the horror were the flesh, the final memory the skeleton, and time were decomposition. He found this offensive. How could he ever forget the worst that had happened? The boils. The vomiting. Fever and ravings. The remedies as violent as the pestilence, which never worked for long if at all. Later he found it loathsome. What good was memory that was so skittish and indulgent, so afraid of pain that it locked the door and boarded it over?

Those days had been a light so unspeakably brilliant you could neither open your eyes to it nor close your eyes tightly enough to keep it out. Even with your eyes shut you were blinded by it. It was so intense that only in retrospect could you take in its excruciating vibrancy. The change, the loss, the revelation; the multiple obliterations of them, of everything. The vividness of one minute corner of existence until it threatened to set you and the whole universe ablaze or tear you open like a knife ripping through canvas. And now nothing had that. Not even the spring blossoms could match it.
…

Counties Hoard Prison Rehab Funding, Few Inmates Helped

Two years ago the US Supreme Court ordered California to reduce its prison overcrowding, which had reached the point of unconstitutional “cruel and unusual punishment”. The state then released numerous low-level offenders and granted funding to county officials to run rehab programs for the probationers. The only problem, according to this article in the Sacramento News & Review, is that the counties actually hoard the state dollars instead of directing it toward non-state-sponsored rehab programs with a proven track record. Probationers wind up in a revolving door of re-arrests for petty offenses, because the high recidivism rate helps the county argue that it needs more state funding for probation officers and jails. From the article:

Tim Gene Sanders is about to get busted for possessing a saltshaker.

It’s February 2011, and Sanders is on his way home from a community center in Citrus Heights. He hangs a left on Auburn Boulevard when a patrol cruiser pulls him up short for making an unsafe lane change. The hangdog ex-con with the rebel-cool hair knows the drill. He’s on probation, so the cops get to toss his vehicle. Inside, they find a saltshaker and an empty sandwich bag. Sanders was snacking on hard-boiled eggs, but Citrus Heights’ finest assume the white granules at the bottom of the shaker are meth.

By the time the charges are dropped, the damage is done. Sanders spends 19 days in county jail and loses his car to a prohibitive impound fee. His house goes next.

“That’s the system,” Sanders says. “That’s how the system works.”

He would know. He got out of Sacramento County Main Jail only days ago for taking Tylenol with codeine No. 3. The pain meds—prescribed by a doctor after Sanders got out of the clink and hoofed it 10 miles on arthritic hips to his car—made it appear there was heroin in his system. Before that, Sanders went to jail for seeing the doctor instead of his parole officer.

Read the full story here.

Some Readings for Holy Week


Reiter’s Block fans, I apologize for the shortage of original material lately. I have been keeping my vow to give up worrying about my writing for Lent, and accordingly have been working hard on a scandalous and completely unpublishable experiment in personal prose. I hope you have been enjoying the poetry reprints from writers I admire.

For Christians following the Western calendar, we are now in Holy Week, the week leading up to Easter, when we commemorate and meditate upon the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. Here are some timely links that I found helpful to my Lenten reflections.

At the Jesus in Love website for queer spirituality and the arts, Kittredge Cherry is showcasing a Stations of the Cross paintings series by Mary Button. These arresting images find parallels between the stages of Christ’s journey to Calvary and pivotal moments in LGBT history. For instance, Button pairs the nailing to the cross with a gay person forced into electroshock therapy to “cure” homosexuality.

Last week, a number
of Christian and former-Christian feminist bloggers participated in
Spiritual Abuse Awareness Week. Progressive evangelical writer
Rachel Held Evans has posted a good overview of the series. I particularly liked this quote from her interview with Boz Tchividjian of G.R.A.C.E., an organization that educates churches about how to combat sexual abuse: “In the nearly two decades I’ve worked as or with prosecutors, I never get asked about false allegations of burglary, robbery, arson or a host of other offenses. However, nearly every time I speak to lay persons about child abuse the question of false allegations is among the first things lay persons ask.” Yes indeed…why do abuse victims have the additional burden of convincing people that the crime really happens? Our uncritical acceptance of rape myths is a good place to start our repentant soul-searching.

Christian feminist blogger Sarah Over the Moon, inspired by James Cone’s liberation theology, rejects the abusive image of God in traditional “penal substitution” atonement, in favor of a vision of Jesus who stands with the oppressed, even unto death:

The cross cannot just mean that we are “saved from sin,” and “going to heaven.” Our speaking about the cross cannot just sound like those cliched platitudes that Christians often tell those who are hurting. The cross that Jesus reclaimed from the Roman Empire has fallen back into the hands of oppressors, becoming a tool of white supremacy, of patriarchy, of heterosexism and transphobia, of the military and prison industrial complex, of those who wage warfare on the poor.

But I want to reclaim it, like Christ did.

If we are to find liberation in the crucifixion, then the cross must stand as a middle finger to oppressive power structures.

The cross of Jesus reveals the ugly truth behind oppressive power, and then the cross mocks that power through the resurrection.

The cross of Jesus calls those of us who are oppressors (most of us–myself included–are oppressed in some contexts and oppressors in others) to humility, repentance, and a new way of living.

The cross of Jesus tells the oppressed–in a world that tries to convince us that we are not even human–that we are not only made in God’s image, but that God came to earth to be made in ours.

The cross of Jesus tells the oppressed that we can take up our crosses and our protest signs and join together, armed with the power of love, to defeat the powers that rape, abuse, and murder us.

The cross of Jesus tells us that they can kill our bodies, but that doesn’t mean they win.

Amen! 

The Heartbeat of an Inclusive God

Integrity USA, the group that works for LGBT inclusion within the Episcopal Church, recently announced the winner of their St. Aelred’s Day sermon contest. Rev. Heather O’Brien from the Diocese of Fort Worth, Texas, was honored for her sermon “The Heartbeat of God”. She preached about how her relatives’ homophobic attitudes prompted her, a straight ally, to search for a better way to imagine the God of love. Read her sermon in PDF format on their website. Here’s an excerpt:

It wasn’t until I got to seminary that I found people who knew the God I had been looking for. The God whose most core trait was love, not judgment.

Today we celebrate the feast of St. Aelred. Aelred was a monk who eventually ended up leading the monastery of Rieveulx. One of his most famous works is called Spiritual Friendship. In that work, he writes that God is not our Judge but our Lover. Judgment can only inspire change through fear. But love transforms us; changes our hearts. Aelred saw Christ as a companion for our soul, longing for union, rather than a ransom to be paid.

Aelred wrote at length about the ideal relationship of love between Jesus and his beloved disciple John. As one author describes it, Aelred portrays John as striving to hear the heartbeat of God in Jesus and Jesus showing the secrets of his heart to John.

Imagine, in the chaos surrounding thirteen men eating dinner, John quiets, leans over and presses his head to Jesus’ breast. Jesus accepts the show of love and affection as John closes his eyes and allows his heartbeat to begin to echo the one beating against his ear, beating in his soul since before he was born.

God’s grace and love are not forces that must twist and change us into something new and stamp out our true nature in order to re-form us. Rather God’s grace and love are a reminder of a memory so old and so basic that it was a part of us before anything else was. Our hearts have forgotten in a world grown loud – like trying to remember lyrics to a favorite song when the radio is blasting music so loud you can’t think.

God sent Jesus not to sit in judgment over creation but rather as a showing of God’s love for creation. Through his life and death Jesus’ lifeblood beat out the rhythm of God’s heart beat for all to hear and remember themselves. Though we are often weighed down and may feel like we have cotton in our ears. The beat remains a clarion call to all who would remember, to all who would dance.
…

Our Secret Epidemic

Quick quiz: What life-altering condition impacts more Americans annually than AIDS, cancer, homophobia, the mortgage crisis, and gun violence, combined?

The answer is child sexual abuse, according to this must-read article by Mia Fontaine in The Atlantic, “America Has an Incest Problem“. If that wasn’t your guess, that’s no surprise. Politicians rarely mention it and the media mostly covers cases where the perpetrator is not a family member, because true investigation would implicate a significant percentage of the population. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

…One in three-to-four girls, and one in five-to-seven boys are sexually abused before they turn 18, an overwhelming incidence of which happens within the family. These statistics are well known among industry professionals, who are often quick to add, “and this is a notoriously underreported crime.”…

…Given the prevalence of incest, and that the family is the basic unit upon which society rests, imagine what would happen if every kid currently being abused—and every adult who was abused but stayed silent—came out of the woodwork, insisted on justice, and saw that justice meted out. The very fabric of society would be torn. Everyone would be affected, personally and professionally, as family members, friends, colleagues, and public officials suddenly found themselves on trial, removed from their homes, in jail, on probation, or unable to live and work in proximity to children; society would be fundamentally changed, certainly halted for a time, on federal, state, local, and family levels. Consciously and unconsciously, collectively and individually, accepting and dealing with the full depth and scope of incest is not something society is prepared to do.

In fact society has already unraveled; the general public just hasn’t realized it yet. Ninety-five percent of teen prostitutes and at least one-third of female prisoners were abused as kids. Sexually abused youth are twice as likely to be arrested for a violent offense as adults, are at twice the risk for lifelong mental health issues, and are twice as likely to attempt or commit teen suicide. The list goes on. Incest is the single biggest commonality between drug and alcohol addiction, mental illness, teenage and adult prostitution, criminal activity, and eating disorders. Abused youths don’t go quietly into the night. They grow up—and 18 isn’t a restart button.

How can the United States possibly realize its full potential when close to a third of the population has experienced psychic and/or physical trauma during the years they’re developing neurologically and emotionally—forming their very identity, beliefs, and social patterns? Incest is a national nightmare, yet it doesn’t have people outraged, horrified, and mobilized as they were following Katrina, Columbine, or 9/11…

For Massachusetts residents seeking healing from sexual violence, I recommend the Survivor Theatre Project, a free workshop combining performance art, therapy, and activism. The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) website includes a list of other support groups in each state.

Conway Imagines Freedom After Prop 36 Sentencing Reform


My prison pen pal “Conway’s” most recent letter to me was written just before Election Day, as he waited to see whether California voters would pass Proposition 36. This ballot measure, which was successful at the polls, would finally exempt nonviolent offenders from the state’s harsh “three-strikes” sentencing. Prisoners like Conway, who were sentenced under the old law, can apply for early release. Let’s hope that the dream he expressed in this letter will soon become a reality:

My vision:

The gooners come to the door; hand me a clear plastic trash bag. Tell me to put whatever I intend to take with me. I choose, just my letters, my writings and Dag… [his copy of Dag Hammarskjold’s “Markings”]

The last gate cracks. I step out onto the pavement, and start putting one foot in front of the other, as the last images of barbed wire and gun towers slowly fade away on the horizon at my back.

I no longer require someone to tell me where to be. What to see.

I have the power to be free
to be me  to be absolutely.

Another vision: I walk out to the parking lot. Find a ’59 Panhead idling with a Circle-A on the gas tank.

The person standing next to the scooter says, “This is your last shot, take this bike and get out of Hell as fast as you can.”

I don’t hesitate. I jump on, pull the clutch, drop it in gear and turn the throttle full, pop the clutch as the back tire kicks rocks on the tower like a dog pissing on a fire hydrant.

10 Thousand sounds scream from the fishtail pipes as I hit the highway passing cars and trucks like they’re parked.

A song begins to form in my mind as I blast down a road that starts to push buttons in my mind.

It becomes familiar.

The motor sputters, I reach down and twist the petcock to reserve. The motor smooths out and I hear Lita Ford, singing “Let’s get back to the cave”.

I pull off the freeway and refuel. Grab a Mars bar and a Mountain Dew.

I pull back onto the highway. Pantera begins to play “Cemetery Gates” in my head. Slowly my speed begins to crawl back up to the velocity that brings tears to my eyes.

The rim of the Valley comes into view. I see a blanket of jewels glittering below me as the lights of Los Angeles invite me back home.

This time, things will shine.

“In a dream I walked with God through the deep places of creation; past walls that receded and gates that opened, through hall after hall of silence, darkness and refreshment — the dwelling place of souls acquainted with light and warmth — until, around me, was an infinity into which we all flowed together and lived anew, like the rings made by raindrops falling upon wide expanses of calm dark waters.” — Dag Hammarskjold

Rachel Power Reflects on Art and/or Motherhood

Bless me, readers, for I have sinned. It has been three weeks since my last blog post. I’ve been busy lying on the floor and squealing and kicking the coffee table. (I like to share Shane’s interests.) This excerpt from Australian writer Rachel Power’s anthology The Divided Heart: Art and Motherhood eloquently expresses the conflict that women seem to feel most acutely: What should I do with my scarce time? How do I balance the interiority of creative work with the outer-directed availability of a mother for her child? In the introduction, Power writes:

…While on the surface motherhood triggered in me a frantic need to grasp onto any minute that could be called mine, I was also opening out into a newfound sense of infinity. It was strangely liberating to have my children’s needs overtake my own. My ego shrank back to its near-invisible place in the cosmos and with that came an unexpected relief, a sense that I could die knowing I had done all I needed to do.

In a matter of months, what had been the centre of my world — namely, my passion for art — became so flimsy and irrelevant it seemed close to total collapse. I didn’t know if I had what it took to demand all that I had to demand of myself, and of everyone around me, in order to write. I had to rail against my own instinct to admit defeat.

Sometimes a thrilling sense of lightness washed through me: finally I was being given permission to retreat into a ‘normal’ life, free from the burden of the artistic imperative, of that constant desire to record everything almost before it’s happened. Together my babies and I floated around the house, equally delighted by their small discoveries, me vicariously reliving my own babyhood and feeling humbled by the insight that someone had cared for me with this same constancy and devotion.

As they got older, I became more and more aware that those days when I sank into my children’s routine without resistance — when I spent hours building sandcastles or reading the same book over and over again; when I let them cook with me no matter the mess, or turned off my ‘adult’ radio station in favour of Raffi and Patsy Biscoe — were our happiest. Not just their happiest, but also mine. But it was a state reliant on the denial of that niggling compulsion to always be turning my experiences into something else, something more.

A year after my first child was born, I wrote in my journal (the same ‘writing’ journal that has as its first line on its first page in red texta: ‘Whole house — clean!!’):

It is what is sustained in our life — through hard work — that creates fulfillment. It’s the stuff we don’t give up easily. The stuff we have to fight for. Day-to-day is easy; I can get caught up in all manner of small tasks. And these could make up a life. So why can’t I be happy with that? What is a life worth living but one lived attentively, with a passion for the small things? Some days those things are good. Baking a cake. Planting a herb garden. Making a picture for my son’s room. But they feel like small asides — distractions from the bigger picture, from the things I really want to achieve.

For the first time in my life, I envied women without strong ambitions outside of the home. Art was like a monkey on my back and I resented its skittish hold on me, the way it caused me to strain away from my babies, to live a split life, be a split self. I was burdened by the knowledge of what it would cost my family (financially, but more so emotionally) for me to keep writing — just as I became aware of how much it would cost me not to.

More than anything, I longed to plunge into the job of mothering in all its fullness, to wake up each morning needing nothing more than this daily existence: a life for life’s sake. It felt greedy, selfish, unworkable, to try maintaining an identity which seemed entirely at odds with the characteristics of a devoted — a ‘good’ — mother.

While motherhood was calling on me to find ever-greater resources of patience, empathy and composure, art felt like an opposing force — an uncompromising, masculine domain. By this logic, to be an artist would mean putting my babies at risk, starving them of their foremost source of attention and stimulus…

…To be an artist means a compulsive process of self-realisation, a struggle toward the ideal that lurks at the edges of our vision. In spite, or perhaps because of, my battle to find time for creative work after having a child, I began to value it like never before. More than that, I began to write like my life depended on it. Art was the only way I knew of coming to terms with the psychic shock of becoming a mother — a role that uncovered the angriest, weakest and most self-seeking, and in turn the most tender, gracious and devoted parts of myself.

I knew that if I buried that creative urge in myself, it would only re-emerge in some ugly and distorted form; that it would not, in fact, make me a better mother but one full of bitterness and frustration — a recipe for martyrdom. Or, perhaps worse, turn me into a monster whose own thwarted ambitions have been transferred on to her children. Sometimes I looked at my baby and experienced his gaze as a challenge, as if he more than anyone would recognise all my terrible failings. I did not want his mother to be a woman who gave up, who didn’t strive to become all she might have been.

Numerous feminist texts have examined the long struggle against educational and institutional barriers that, among other things, considered art an unsuitable occupation for a woman. Many of these books have counted marriage and motherhood among those institutions that serve to limit women’s sphere of influence to the private and domestic. It hardly needs repeating that, by and large, women are still given almost total responsibility for the rearing of children without the cultural recognition of the difficulty and importance of this role.

We seem no closer than 30 years ago to creating a system that genuinely enables women and men to share equally in raising their children. Yet, despite all it demands of women and the inequities that remain, motherhood cannot be reduced to a mere institution of control. Mothers and their children are bound together in ways that defy all simplistic definitions.

In a comment that has stayed with me, writer Helen Garner once talked of ‘the terrific struggle for women’ striving to fulfil destinies beyond being wives and mothers. ‘It’s terribly sad, it’s a very sad thing — a woman trying to be an artist and a mother at the same time. It’s a tremendous clash … ’ She trailed off, perhaps aware of having innocently stumbled into one of those quicksand zones, where the implications of what you are saying are so enormous and unwieldy that you risk being swallowed up. ‘Sad’ was the word she used. It’s a terribly sad thing for women trying to be an artist and mother at the same time.

It is a good word, because sadness is a problem of the heart. And as much as motherhood is a political issue, it can never be only that; the predicament of the artist–mother moves well beyond the boundaries of policy and the expectations of society.

As Susan Rubein Suleiman wrote, perhaps the greatest struggle for a woman artist who has or desires children is the struggle against herself. No amount of money, no amount of structural change, can entirely resolve the fundamental dilemma for the artist–mother: the seeming incompatibility of her two greatest passions. The effect is a divided heart; a split self; the fear that to succeed at one means to fail at the other.

Buy the anthology here.

Thoughts on Baptism: Turning to Jesus

Our son, Shane, will be baptized into the Episcopal Church next month, on All Saints’ Day. As preparation, our rector asked us to read Anne E. Kitch’s Taking the Plunge: Baptism and Parenting. I am enjoying this book’s accessible yet profound presentation of the values that I hope to pass on to our son. In the passage below, Kitch interprets the baptismal vow to accept Jesus as our savior. I couldn’t have written a better description of what I believe about Jesus, and how I’ve relied on his love at a deeper level since becoming a parent.

Not everyone feels the need for a personal God, or is able to believe that God would take on human form. But as for me, I keep turning to Jesus because I want to believe that the fundamental structure of the universe is relational, loving, and good. I’ll be audacious, ungrateful some would say, and insist that it’s not enough that the universe is mysterious, complex, and beautiful. For what is most important in human life? What do I most want to give my son, and hope that he will manifest in the world? Love, justice, and truth. Are these qualities anomalies in an impersonal universe, or do they matter outside our little tribe of monkeys? My hoped-for answer to that question is what keeps me in the church, despite my occasional sighing for the simplicity of a life without theological struggles.

Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your savior?

When we turn our backs on Satan, we turn toward Jesus Christ. After all, being a Christian means being a follower of Christ. Who do you turn to? In times of stress and trouble, who do you turn to? Relationships are what give us life. The parenting relationship is what brings you to this baptismal examination. So as a parent, who do you turn to when times are tough? Someone you know will help you no matter what. Someone who doesn’t judge you when you are at your worst. Someone who won’t make you pay for it later. Someone you can trust to see you at the bottom. Someone who has been to the bottom too and knows the way out.

But it’s not only in times of desperation that we turn to others. We also seek out relationships in times of joy. Who do you turn to in times of joy and celebration? Someone who will delight in your gifts. Someone who isn’t envious or competitive. Someone who knows you well enough to understand your joy. Someone who will rejoice with you. Someone who knows what it is to be joyful. Someone who will laugh with you, dance with you, sing with you with abandon.

The point of being a Christian, of believing in Christ, is trusting that Christ is the someone we can turn to. We can turn to Jesus Christ in times of trouble and in times of joy; Christ is the one who will be with us. Christ is the one who has endured human suffering and who can complete our joy. When Jesus sat with his friends around the dinner table, teaching them about God’s promises and love, he said to them, “I have said these things so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete” (John 15:11). Jesus wants us to be filled with joy.

To say, “Yes, I turn to Jesus Christ,” is to say, “Yes, I know that there lies my hope.” We call Jesus our savior. Simply put, a savior is one who saves. Jesus Christ saves us by knowing us better than anyone else. Just as the best of friends saves us in times of trouble by being the person we can turn to, so Christ saves us, in the worst of times and in the best of times. To accept Jesus Christ as our savior is to be willing to believe that Christ knows and loves us and is always standing by us. Whether we know it or not, whether we are willing to accept it or not, Christ holds out loving arms to enfold us in an embrace. To turn to Jesus Christ as our savior is to be willing to consider the possibility that through Christ’s death and resurrection, we are somehow already saved, that nothing the world dishes out can ultimately destroy us. In the here and now, Christ stands with us in the pain and in the joy. Christ is ready for us, waiting for us to turn and say, “Yes!”
(pgs.32-33)

 

Vote Yes on Three-Strikes Reform: A Prisoner Speaks Out

Californians this November will have the opportunity to Vote Yes on 36, a ballot measure that would reform the infamous three-strikes sentencing law. The law was sold to the public in the 1990s as a way to keep incorrigible sex offenders behind bars, but in actuality, any petty offense may be the third crime that triggers the life sentence, resulting in many individual miscarriages of justice as well as toxic prison overcrowding.

In the October/November newsletter of Families to Amend California’s Three Strikes (FACTS), prisoner Kenneth G. Keel offers a detailed overview of the law’s history and tragic consequences. Representing himself at trial, Keel was sentenced to 25-to-life for a petty theft from K-Mart. In prison, he has earned a GED and completed an accredited paralegal studies program, and currently provides free legal assistance and literacy tutoring to other inmates. An excerpt:

California’s “Three Strikes and You’re Out sentencing law” (3-Strikes) was passed by the Legislature (AB-971) and voters (Prop. 184) in 1994. The Yes on Prop 184 campaign, mostly funded by the prison guards union (CCPOA), exploited the high-profile abduction, sexual assault, and murder of 12-year-old Polly Klass (RIP) from Petaluma to advertise and market their initative. The Public’s outrage, hoping to eradicate child molesters, rapists and murderers led to an overwhelming majority (72) voting for Prop. 184.

Ironically, many people still do not realize that predators who pose the greatest danger to society get preferential treatment because they are not sentenced under 3-Strikes. For instance, this author’s non-violent petty theft with a prior was “doubled-counted” to transform the misdemeanor into a felony, and then used as the basis for a life sentence. On the other hand, when petty theft is committed after prior convictions for heinous crimes, including child molestation, kidnapping, rape, torture, mayhem, murder and terrorism, then the petty theft can only be charged as a misdemeanor, and cannot trigger any 3-Strikes enhancements. So, for example, if this author’s prior convictions had been for kidnapping, child molestation, and murder, instead of non-injury robberies, then he could not have been sentenced to 25-years-to-life for petty theft. Rather, only probation or a maximum 12-month county jail sentence would have been possible.

Also unknown to many voters, 3-Strikes is applied in an arbitrary and inconsistent manner among different counties and within counties. For example, when this author was sentenced, the District Attorney (DA) sought life sentences in most “Third Strike” cases. Two years later, a different DA was elected and L.A. County’s 3-Strikes policy was greatly changed. Thus, if this author would have been sentenced in 2000-2012, instead of 1998, he would not have received 25-years-to-life for his non-violent property crime.

At the same time, 3-Strikes has disproportionately targeted the poor and people of color.
More than 70 of the 3-Strikes prisoners serving life sentences are either African-American or Latino…

The unintended and costly consequences of 3-Strikes are enormous! These are a few examples: only the 2 prior convictions (strikes) need to be serious or violent; misdemeanor conduct (wobblers) can trigger a third-strike; plea agreements made 1-50 years before 3-strikes was enacted count as strikes; some juvenile offenses count as strikes; many out-of-state cases are strikes; all Three Strikers must serve 100% of their sentences and 80% of all consecutive enhancements; the warehousing of thousands of non-violent 3-strike inmates has, in part, been the cause of severe prison overcrowding in the California prison system; the U.S. Supreme Court has recently ruled that California’s overcrowded prisons contributed to one inmate death a week; the State Bureau of Audits has estimated that the additional years 3-Strikes prisoners are serving will cost California tax payers $19.2 billon dollars; and various criminologists have found that 3-Strikes does not protect public safety as advertised…

On November 6th California residents will have another opportunity to amend 3-Strikes.
Prop. 36, which is more conservative than Prop. 66 was, pledges to close the loophole and “restore the original intent of California’s Three Strikes law–imposing life sentences for dangerous criminals like rapists, murderers, and child molesters.” If approved by the voters, only about 3,000 out of 8,800 imnates now serving life sentences for non-serious, non-violent, and non-sexual offenses will be eligible to apply for re-sentence consideration. Re-sentencing is not available for felons serving life for a “non-serious, non-violent third strike, if the prior convictions were rape, murder, or child molestation.” On a case-by-case basis, a judge must determine that re-sentencing would not pose an unreasonable risk to public safety.
Prop. 36 is supported by a bipartisan group of law enforcement leaders, prosecutors, civil rights organizations, etc. It was drafted by attorneys at Stanford Law School and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, in consultation with law enforcement officers. In an interview, David W. Mills, a Stanford Law School professor and private investment manager, stated that his interest in 3:-Strikes is based upon his long-term interest in civil rights. Professor Mills said, that the “dramatic effect on poor people and African-Americans” makes 3-Strikes one of the leading civil rights issues of today. (Sacramento Bee, August 22,2012, Page All.)
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While only my California readers can vote on 36, anyone can donate to FACTS to support their courageous work in defense of the unfairly incarcerated. California’s example is also worth studying if your state has or is considering a three-strikes law. Massachusetts readers, please contact your representatives to oppose the three-strikes proposal that has been debated in the legislature this year.