I've got the Golden Ticket!!!! (part one)

Note: you may fear that I am going to hell after you read this.

I am a Christian. As a Christian, I attempt follow the teachings of Christ with my mind, body, emotions, relationships and spirit. I believe that to live as Christ did is the best possible way to live. I believe that as a follower of Christ I am called to live my life as an agent of healing, love, renewal and resistance to oppression. As a follower of Christ I am responsible to resist persons (including forces within myself) and/or systems that oppress, dehumanize or add to the brokenness of our world. As a Christian I believe that just as we are called to cherish and uphold the unique humanity of all, we are also called to love, cherish and uphold the rest of creation through stewardship and gratitude by walking lightly on this earth and nature. As a follower of Christ, I believe that cycles of violence, hatred, addiction, revenge, and self-centeredness should end with every decision we make. And most importantly, I believe that to follow Christ is to be dedicated to giving flesh to His truths in THIS life, in THIS world, for THIS time, by living them, now.

Growing up in the version of Christianity that I was taught, being a Christian is less about walking in the footsteps of Christ, and more about being "saved" and getting others "saved." To be "saved", one must hear the gospel ("all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God", "For God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believe in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life"), confess that they are sinners in need of a Savior, and "invite Christ to come into your heart as your personal Lord and Savior and accept the forgiveness of his blood shed sacrifice" by praying the sinner's prayer. (wow, it's been years since I have witnessed an altar call, but I hear the words in my head like they were spoken yesterday) Now, after you have said the prayer, you must trust that your name has been written by Christ's blood in the Lamb's Book of life (which is your free pass into Heaven). This whole process is also called being "born again" - hence the statement, "I'm a born-again Christian" (which is short hand for "I'm a real Christian", or as my mom would say, "really good and saved"). The term "born again" is a sum up for the theological notion that through our physical birth, we were born into original sin, and when we say the sinners prayers and believe that we are saved (by faith, not by the earning of salvation through good works), we are then baptized by Christ's blood (died to the sin of the flesh, and arose with Christ's defeat of death) and born anew.

That right there pretty much sums up what evangelical Christians believe, and what I was taught to be the take-home message about Jesus Christ. We are all broken and in need of saving from original sin, and unless we accept God's forgiveness (reconciliation) through Christ's death and resurrection (achieved by praying the sinner's prayer), we will be eternally separated (damned) from God's love for all eternity (Hell). Hence, Heaven's Gates & Hell's Flames, Toy maker's Dream, The Bride, altar calls, youth rallies, and so on.

Now, I do believe that there is something terribly broken about us humans that is in need of healing, and so I do not think there is anything innately wrong with or destructive with the "born-again" message, I do however know from personal experience, that this message often (that being generous) produces a culture and mentality that is utterly terrifying, sad and destructive in many key respects. Let me explain.

Disclaimer: I recognize that the following is based purely on my own observations and experiences and conversations, and that the reality about evangelical Christianity is much broader and more complex than what is represented by the evangelical community that I grew up in.

As a child, and especially in the years after our house fire, I struggled with depression and feelings of despair. Feelings of overwhelming fear, loneliness and self-loathing was especially prevalent. Amidst these internal struggles, two terrifying thoughts in particular stand out in my memory as having been dominant in my mind - I was constantly terrified of the rapture (had a packed, red suitcase until our fire), and the question: "what if I am not really saved?". The answer to both of these fears was of course, pray for God's assurance and peace.
As I grew, and especially when I went to college, I slowly began to understand why these thoughts were so terrifying to me, and more importantly, why I was so fixated on them in the first place. Both of these fearful thoughts, that literally kept me awake at night as a child and into my adulthood, were born of the evangelical obsession with knowing how and determining who is "in" (saved/born again) or "out"(the damned). As my mom always said, "really good and saved."

I remember asking my Sunday School teacher as a kid at Believer's Chapel in Cicero North Syracuse, "How can all the people from the Old Testament be in Heaven if they died before Jesus was born? They can't be in Heaven if they never accepted Jesus into their hearts." I was of course given an answer about the old covenant that Christ would eventually complete, and how the truth of God is written on our hearts so even people who have never heard the gospel can still go to Heaven, yada yada, yada. I distinctly remember not being satisfied with this answer because not only was it not theologically consistent with what I was taught about how salvation worked, but mostly because it was gray and wishy-washy, and I knew otherwise. You were either saved, or you weren't. Your name was either written in the Lamb's Book of Life or it wasn't. It was also very clear that this "truth written on their heart" business for people who had never heard the gospel (because God can't send people to Hell for ignorance of the free pass into Heaven - that would make him unjust), always had the tone of "we can only hope, for only God knows their hearts, but in all likelihood, they are probably going to Hell." I bring this memory up, because I recall that from a very, very early age, I knew that being a Christian was about being saved, and being saved was about getting into Heaven.

Is there a right answer?

For eight hours a day, five days a week, I talk to people wrestling with and attempting to cope with the realities presented to them by Alzheimer's disease.

Alzheimer's disease is a shitty, shitty disease. For the person diagnosed, their world becomes increasingly confusing, chaotic, terrifying, and frustrating. Alzheimer's deteriorates a person's ability to perceive, process, maintain and recall information about the world around them and the activities of daily living becomes increasingly difficult to complete. Alzheimer's disease often causes severe depression, paranoia and hallucinations. In the later stages of the disease where short-term memory is all but gone, almost nothing and no one is familiar or feels safe, so a constant state of anxiety and restlessness is the norm.

The reality for someone caring for a person with Alzheimer's disease is equally as horrible. Most often a spouse or an adult child, the caregiver is in a constant state of loss, grieving, guilt, and anger. For most, resentment is also not far behind. Given that Alzheimer's is a progressively, degenerative disease, the caregiver must be continuously adjusting and transitioning. Just when they feel they have learned the person with dementia's (PWD) limitations and needs, the disease progresses, and the needs increase. While the responsibilities of the caregiver are ever increasing, more and more of the person they love is slipping away. They have to learn an entirely new language with which to communicate, for the PWD's ability to follow reason and understand causality deteriorates with their brain. As bathing, dressing, eating, and other activities of daily life become more terrifying and difficult for the PWD, the caregiver's battle to help the PWD complete these tasks also increases in difficulty. Because PWD are prone to paranoia, a caregiver must often provide care for someone they love, that is accusing them of stealing, infidelity and betrayal. Not able to be left alone, caregivers must often give up their habits and activities of self investment (jobs, friends, hobbies, dates)in order to keep their loved one safe. As a result, caregivers are often left feeling isolated, lonely and stressed. In the face of their loved ones with Alzheimer's hating, yelling and often trying to hurt them, caregivers have to shut off the pain and tell themselves that this person they love has a disease that is destroying their brain and that these horrible behaviors are not to be taken personally - the person with this disease does not know what they're doing.
As I said before, Alzheimer's disease is a shitty, shitty disease.

Everyday I talk to caregivers, and everyday it is my job to give them answers and guidance. It is my job to tell them that this person they love and resent at the same time, cannot be held in judgment because they don't know what they are doing and the pain they are inflicting is not of their will. And more often than not, I assure that caregiver that I believe them when they tell me that the person they are caring for was once an amazing, intelligent, funny, caring, talented individual, who had a life, history and identity. It seems that in an effort to remind themselves, so many of the caregivers I talk to tell me who the person with Alzheimer's disease used to be before they began to slip away.

Yesterday I spoke to a man, caring for his wife with Alzheimer's disease. This man told me how his wife had been a concert pianist before she was diagnosed. I could hear in his voice that when he told me these things, he was declaring to the world that even though she no longer seems to be the woman he has loved for past six decades, he remembers who she is. Although he is struggling to see it in his moments of despair, it is clear that he still remembers and sees the person he is caring for, even when it is hard. The moment he told me about his wife being a concert pianist, I felt for the very first time, my heart's attempt to shut that fact out. His stating her past as a concert pianist, forced me to feel the loss this disease has caused. I couldn't help but picture a woman - a woman with passions, desires, creativity, drive, love, a past and most importantly, I pictured the unique individual this man was losing and grieving and missing. Until she was a concert pianist to me, she had been a person with dementia - a person with a disease that has caused her to need her husband to care for her, and the man I was talking to was a man that needed help meeting her needs. As a concert pianist, I wasn't just providing a man with assistance, I was feeling the crushing pain of loss that he was feeling.

When I think about it, it makes sense that my heart would want to kick away facts that impose a persons humanity onto my consciousness. We humans make sense and we have natural instincts of self preservation. If my heart feels the pain that every person I talk to feels, I will become weary, and simply not be able to do my job. A steady flow of pain can be felt for only so long before the spirit is broken under it's weight - which is why caregivers are often calling me in the first place. If on a regular basis, I allowed myself to feel the level pain I felt when he told me that his wife had been a pianist, I would never be able to give the support caregivers that call are looking for. To keep from feeling that pain however, I have to allow my heart to take on a defensive stance and shut out some of the pain I hear in the the caregivers' voices. But I am afraid of this posture of the heart.

We humans are either flexing our hearts to be more sensitive to the pain of others, or we are flexing our hearts' ability to shut that pain out - and of course, when we turn our hearts off to pain, we are also shutting out our ability to take love and joy in. We don't get to have it both ways. We choose. Either we are open to pain and joy, or we are closed to it - there is no option of guarding your heart from pain while allowing joy in.
Long ago I decided that if the cost of joy, intimacy and love was my heart's exposure to pain, then feeling the pain of my own heart and others' would be worth it. Although pain can be so overwhelming, the heart's alternative choice is far worse. A person can choose to guard their heart, be shut down and ultimately too cold to feel the pain of this life. Yes, by allowing your heart to be cold you can miss out on rejection, betrayal, malice and loss, but you miss out on them because you were never exposed to others, joy and the something to loose in the first place. Given my desire to keep myself feeling and exposed, while at the same time recognizing that a certain level of numbness is needed to continue my job where I am hopefully helping people, I am afraid that I will not be able to find the balance between these two conflicting impulses. I also wonder if a balance is even possible? Is it possible to flex muscles in my spirit that fosters both numbness and sensitivity at the same time? I don't know. I do know however, that it scared me to see a colder version of my heart, and to realize just how easy it was to shut out someone else' pain.

When I got home from work, I felt achy and a little lost, so on got in bed with Chris and snuggled - our favorite pastime. While lying against him, the true struggle of my heart became known to me: this life is scary and the pain of this world is oppressive and overwhelming - because of this reality, I am afraid that if I allow my spirit to be exposed to this pain, it will overcome me. My struggle is one of faith. Do I trust that if I continue to expose my heart to pain, God will sustain me and keep my spirit from being crushed? As a follower of Christ, I am called to hear the pain that breaks the heart of God, so that I may be used as a tool of healing and renewal (CRC lingo anyone?). God's promise is that even though hearing the pain of others will cause me pain, it will not break me, for He will renew my spirit. And so I am walking in the faith that my spirit will be upheld - but I don't feel like the Christian soldiers we sang about in Sunday school; fearless and strong. I often feel quite the opposite - I'm scared shitless, and my heart is often tired. But even when I am scared and tired, I know in my core that I will be sustained and that I will not be overcome by the pain of this life. It's just hard for me to remember that when I am overwhelmed from talking to a man utterly broken by the loss of his beloved concert pianist.

But nothing has changed!

How is it, that we humans can oscillate so quickly between feeling completely at ease and content with our existence, to feeling so utterly alone and restless that our spirits cry out in all sorts of manifestations? Equally perplexing is the fact that more often than not, we move back and forth between contentment and restlessness in the midst of nothing actually changing in "real life."

Since I can remember, there have been few Sundays in my life where I have not struggled with mild depression. Fucking Sundays. All is jolly well with the world on Saturday and Monday, but then that Sad Bastard of a day, Sunday, just sits there, waiting to drag me down. If something horrible happened every Sunday that warranted sadness and anxiety, I am sure I would have come to accept it by now; letting Sundays just wash over me without a fight. But the shit about Sunday Night Depression (as I have come to call it), is the fact that there is NOTHING DIFFERENT, save one night's sleep, between my life on joyous Saturdays and sad Sundays!

So there you have it. Fuck Sundays. I hate them. I have hated them my entire life.

PS - thanks for calling me on Sundays, mom. I wish I were a funner person to talk to on those days. But I know you know about my relationship with Sundays, and calling is your way of loving me. Thank you.

You're better than that!

http://kateharding.net/2009/10/14/have-you-tried-not-being-so-sexy/

The above is a link to a fantastic article that makes stellar points all around. The last paragraph however, stood out to me in particular because it summed up one of my biggest frustrations with sexism (aside from it's destructive input on all facets of a woman's being) that often seems to be left out of the discussion: sexism's destruction and underestimation of men.

Here is what was written:

"...If the well-being of women isn’t enough for you, consider this: patriarchy thinks you’re fucking stupid. It thinks you’re a penis without a brain that’s worthwhile and powerful only because women are vaginas without brains and that’s somehow worse. It thinks you’re untrustworthy, that you can’t be left alone with a woman, that you can’t be left alone with a child. Feminists didn’t make that shit up — they’re just noting it and passing it on. You can decide what you want to do about it — but don’t think you can pick and choose which of patriarchy’s mandates apply to you. This is a package deal, my friend. If women’s worth is only in fuckability, then men are just dumb fuckers. We think better of men. Do you?"

To be a "real man" in our society, a man is essentially expected to be a broken human being. "Real men" aren't affected by loss or trauma, they are not supposed to have access to any portion of their emotional being outside of anger and...anger, they are expected to shrug off disappointment with a "whatever, I don't care", to be loyal or honest is to be pussy whipped, they don't reflect, they look out for "number one" first, they don't risk vulnerability to believe in or hope for something, and empathy is written off as illogical and foolish. If you are a guy that breaks these rules, what are you? Oh that's right, you're a fag, aren't you?

I had never really thought about the destructive forces that sexism places on men, until a couple of years ago when I was listening to a news report about PTSD and the lack of psychiatric care for war veterans coming back from active duty. The interviewer spoke to several soldiers about how they had been coping with the trauma of seeing the battlefield since they have been back. Many of the soldiers noted that they had not been coping very well at all. One man reported that his wife left him after waking up to him choking her several time in the night while he slept. When the interviewer asked a commanding officer what he thought about the lack of psychiatric care for soldiers coming home from active duty, the officer shrugged and said, "Well, it's war. Those men are just gonna have to suck it up and be a man."

I get it. The humans that are best at killing their natural desire and inclination to think critically, reflect, empathize, and feel are going to makes the best soldiers - human weapons. I also realize that until we can all sing Love One Another together while holding hands, war is going to have to stick. I also understand why this concept of "being a man" matches the qualities of a good soldier from a sociological standpoint. But knowing all this doesn't stop the fact that message of "manning up" is broken and wrong, and it breaks my heart. There is something terribly wrong with any ideology that preaches and glorifies a broken person - A person that is divorced from the key facets of our being that make us unique and human.

So because of sociological evolution, and a solid patriarchal system that fine tunes and enforces it, men - all men, not just soldiers - are programmed to believe that to be a real man - a real man that a woman would want to fuck, and another man would respect you for (cuz those are the things you should desire if you are a man) - you don't get to be a whole human: physical, emotional, spiritual, sexual, mental, relational...

Only women get to be whole humans in this society - but they are disrespected for it. Although it is expected and acceptable for a women for feel loss and grieve (hysterical woman, anyone?), she is not to be trusted as rational and is subsequently weak. If a man grieves, it's because he is a fag or too womanly, not because he is human.

In the end, we all lose under the sexist paradigm. Turns out, we don't have to be limited by the bullshit understandings of what it is to be a man or a woman. We're humans, and that's better.

Somethng I was thinking about a couple of years ago

Alana Kalinowski
5 May 2007


We all inherit little “prizes” from our parents; some are good and some can be a little frightening. As scientists will tell you, we are simultaneously a product of nature and nurture. On the nature front, it just so happens that I got a raw deal—my feet are a microcosm of my misfortune. From my mother, I inherited huge and ever so attractive flat feet. To add insult to injury, my dad bestowed upon me the skin of a lizard, not to mention toenails that enjoy growing into flesh. It sounds beautiful, right? I can’t wait to buy expensive sandals to show them off.
On the nurture front, I also received several interesting favors in my goodie-bag: thanks to my mom, although I am living in a big city, I have the desperate urge to weed a garden and shove my hands in dirt. In the tradition of my mother, who called all six of her children (three boys and three girls) either “Sho Sho” or “Shandra,” I find myself calling all of my female co-workers, “Woman.” (No need to preserve individual identity.) From my Dr. Doolittle dad, I received an obsession with animals and their physical particulars. Observing a seagull’s legs can make me happier than few other sights in life. We have all inherited quirks and qualities—so what do we do with our parental prizes?
My tendency to make up words and my hideous feet are both obvious products of my parents’ influence; there are however, qualities in each of us that are not as directly inherited, but rather, a reactionary bi-product of our parents’ influence. These are often thought patterns, habits, emotional reactions, and methods of relating to ourselves and others that we often neglect to consider. We do not notice them unless we go hunting for them, and yet I would dare to say that they are often the most powerful forces in our person. Although many of my inherited qualities are quite positive and make up a large part of why I value myself, there are many that have wreaked havoc in my relationships. As any good therapist would know, rooting out generational forces can be hard work, even when you know what must be done to kill them. In layman’s terms—how do we deal with what makes us all uniquely crazy?
Although I am still quite young, I find that the older I get, the more I like humans. The truth that is we are all a little crazy. The best part is the fact that most of us try really hard to hide the crazy, but it always comes out. Crazy is often like Derek Zoolander in the coal mines: SURPRISE! I think that part of what makes us unique individuals is our own special breed of crazy.
Our issues and baggage are the fingerprints of our person. As it turns out, a large portion of my crazy is due to the fact that I was born a very emotional and sensitive person, but was raised in an environment where to be such was intensely scorned. Since the days of my glorious mullet and sideburns, I have done everything in my power to disregard any and all emotions and distance myself as far away as possible from anything that is identifiably emotional. Fortunately, I failed in many ways, so I am not a deadened shell consisting only of thoughts. Although he died before I turned seven, I attribute, at least indirectly, this fairly unhealthy urge to my grandpa Hoffmann. Thanks, Grandpa, for the dash of crazy you so generously left for me.

As the oldest of four, my mother’s father, Dick Hoffmann, did not have the luxury of “validating his feelings.” Continuing in the language of the psychobabble we all know and love: Abandoned by his father during the height of the Great Depression, grandpa accepted his designated role as family caretaker without protest or attention to personal desires and needs. Having never developed the muscles needed to express himself, grandpa escaped all sadness and despair through the help of alcohol. The frustration, anger or any other emotion that was not completely drowned out by booze, came out in destructive mutations that were directed at my mom and her eight siblings. Although my mom can go on and on about how grateful she is to her dad for teaching her the love of nature, planting and watching things grow, she is an obvious adult child of an alcoholic.
In the ideal environment of love and safety, children are free to have feelings, to express them in various ways, and ultimately discover healthy points of connection between thoughts and emotions. As a child, my mom was not given such an environment. Living with the instability of her alcoholic father and severely depressed mother, my mom spent her childhood scared and on the defensive. For reasons obviously different than grandpa, my mom also never flexed the mental muscles needed to process her emotions and has therefore lived a life captive to them. With hardly any ability to assign relative weight to one emotion over another, my mom was naturally attracted to my dad, a man fluent in the “language of emotions” and highly mentally disciplined. As one might expect, this offset of power and ability between my parents proved to be fertile breeding ground for an unhealthy understanding of emotions for my siblings and myself.
For reasons far more complex than portrayed here, emotions were seen in my family to be the root of all evil. Emotions not under the reign of logical thought were forces that led to all things chaotic, destructive, unpredictable, and above all, like mom. Aside from the fact that this understanding placed emotions, and my mom, in an unjust, and not to mention, wrong light, it was the foundation on which my life of a conflicted identity was formed. The reality is that we are physical, mental, emotional and spiritual beings. Each version of who we are informs the other. We all know what develops when any one is emphasized above the others: the tool that kisses his muscles, that pompous windbag that debates everything you say, that guy that gets pissed off by the smallest of accidents, or that annoying person so obsessed with the spirit world that their kids are neglected and hungry. We have all met them—and probably wanted to hit them; yet somewhere in our mind we know that something is not right. Something is missing and there is a need for balance. For the majority of my life, I found it hard not to neglect the portion of my being that I believed to be the cause of all that hurt me.
I am a woman. There, I said it. Sadly, that took me years. Thanks to the historically-rooted stereotypes held by society, factoring being female into my identity was something I could not do until my senior year of college. Built like an Amazon woman, it is hard to forget that I am indeed a woman. Until recently however, this forgetting had always been the sought-after goal. Although I always promoted my female gender physically, I made a point of proving to everyone—especially boys/men—that I was not the stereotypical girl. Believing the mass lie regarding the intimate bond between women and the emotions that produce evil qualities such as pettiness and manipulation, I threw the baby out with the bathwater and rejected being female as a preemptive war against emotions. As you might have already guessed, this did wonders for my dating life. Ah, and there is it folks, just one manifestation of the crazy. But the best part is, unhealthy behavior never stops just there; it loves to see how many ways it can make itself known throughout all areas of your life.
For all those that have attempted to kill wild bamboo in upstate NY, you know very well the frustration of thinking you have killed something by rooting it out only to have those damn buds shoot up out of the ground a week later. Killing habits given to you by your parents is even more frustrating. I have been working on unlearning much of what I “know” about emotions for the past six years. It turns out I have quite a way to go. My current goal is to reclaim the validity of thoughts that have been influenced by emotions. Contrary to what I knew as a child, a thought can be true and valid even if you are in a state of hysteria while thinking it. I am not there yet. I still have tendencies to discredit highly emotional or sensitive people. I still have incredible guilt if I feel something that I cannot logically justify feeling. And above all, I still have remnants of contempt for an entire facet of my person. When I am overwhelmed by how much “work” I have to do, I rejoice in the many beautiful qualities I have inherited. I will never get rid of the crazy all together, but I have faith that by identifying and understanding my bag of issues, I can do some serious damage to their root systems.

I want to have sex with you!

I was recently reading a posting from the blog, The American Virgin, where I read this excerpt from the book, The Lolita Effect: The media sexualization of young girls and what you can do about it:


"Girls have had to walk that line for quite a while now, where the emphasis is on being sexually desirable but immediately being condemned if they actually act on their desire.

Girls are expected not to have desires of their own. This has been a problem for girls and women all along: They have not been allowed to express their own interest in sex or express their own desires or seek their own pleasure for quite a long time. … It's a terrible mixed message, and it's almost impossible to achieve it -- to walk around projecting desirability but to never be able to act on it, never be allowed to engage in it.

One of the other problems is that because of this idea, girls aren't given good information about actual sexual activity. They are not given information to make them understand the risks and responsibilities, how to be in control, protect themselves against STDs, unintended pregnancies -- that's missing from the way they understand sex."


I was so happy to come across this little nugget of articulated truth. The points expressed are very personal to me, and over the past few weeks I have been thinking about and wrestling with many of the points brought up in this excerpt to a much greater extent than I normally do.

Like the majority of American (I am going to qualify here and say Christian girls, but I don't want to say that to the exclusion of anyone else) girls, I was taught the shit smear that is this website:

http://www.cblpi.org/senseandsexuality/

As a result, I have had to wade through and struggle, tooth and nail to get to a place where my sexuality is my own.

Oh no! What scary feminist beast has possessed Alana!?

Disclaimer:
Speaking from the context in which I was raised, a woman stating that she has "claimed her sexuality," is just a politically correct way of saying "I am a skank, looking for a dressed up excuse to be promiscuous." Please note, when I say that I advocate for woman to own her sexuality, I am not advocating for her to becoming the next Whore of Babylon. Let me explain.

When I say that I have fought to come to a place where "my sexuality is my own," I am saying that I feel connected, comfortable, and exhilarated by my sexual being; that my sexuality is a part of and a product of my person. Like my emotions, thoughts, spirit and other facets of my being, my sexuality is a reflection of me, obviously influenced by outside forces, but ultimately something deliberately shaped by me. This may seem like I am beating to death a horse of an obvious color, but I was not, and I would venture to say that the majority of women in America are not raised in nor do they live in as adults, environments that encourage or facilitate female sexuality that is put forward, but rather a sexuality that is in response to an outside force - namely a male's sexuality and forces like the ones described in the above excerpt. We'll come back to this last bit in just a moment, but first, let's take a look at what I and most other Christian girls were taught to think about their sexuality.

In my household and more importantly, in the context of daily Focus on the Family programming, my sexuality was, like the scenario described in the above excerpt, a schizophrenic dance on a blurry line of contradiction. When it came to sex, my parents' voices were pretty much aligned with Dobson's Evangelical Christian views of sex; both with their views of sex in general and sex and women in particular. The schism between my parents and Dobson came in the world view department. The voice of Dobson and the church taught me that there is Truth and it looks like x, y, and z; and if does not look like that, then it isn't true (including Godly sexuality).
If you were to ask them, my parents would probably tell you they agree what point x, y, and z argued by Dobson, but what they said to me and what they lived, often said two different things. I was taught by my parents' actions (not speaking for my siblings in any of this) that life and truth are complex, so think, question and understand why and what you think and believe, because no one has the exclusive handle on truth. My parents did everything they could to give me the tools I needed to develop my own set of critical thinking skills, thoughts and sense of self and identity (Thank you, parents!). Subsequently, my parents also encouraged me to think about and to choose who I wanted to be. Although I was not usually asked what I thought on a matter, I was often asked what I wanted and encouraged to go for that. When I told my parents that I wanted to leave NY and go away for college, they said that's great, go do that. When I told them that I wanted to study history, they said that's great, go do that. When I told them I bought a ticket to CA, they said that's great, go with our blessing. In almost all that I have chosen to do and become since I was a kid (excluding the obvious stupid shit that kids want to do), I have felt the empowering support of my parents saying, you can do this, and we trust that you are capable of choosing wisely. All in all, I can easily say that in regards to my mental, spiritual, physical, and for the most part, my emotional well being, I could not have asked for better parents. Unfortunately, the sexuality ball was dropped pretty hard. Not only was I never asked about or encouraged to think about what I wanted sexually, but it was clear that that line of thinking was to be discouraged. I don't really blame my parents for that one too much. I mostly blame the context of the certain breed of Christianity I was raised in (not the Christian faith). And it is from that context that I had to start from in the red to get to a healthy sexuality.

On one hand, I was told that sex in the context of marriage was beautiful, Godly and meant to be enjoyed and celebrated as a blessing by both man and woman - not just a means of procreation or a system of social stability built on the family unit. Both my mom and my dad were for the most part comfortable with talking about or at least acknowledging the existence of sex and sexuality in the context of marriage. On the other hand, any kind of sexuality outside that one good context was either evil or it should just be ignored as though it did not exist at all. This take on sex presents a few problems: Problem #1: kids usually go through puberty and become sexual beings before they get married. Marriage is not the on and off switch for sexuality.
Problem #2: Couples are usually in some sort of dating relationship before they get married (where sex is OK!). If marriage is the only acceptable context for sex and sexual self-expression, is it possible and healthy for a couple to go from a completely non-sexual relationship one day, to a sexual one the day after the wedding? (Side note, how pathetic and traumatizing is the argument that you have your whole life together to get in sync sexually? I fucking hate that argument because it ignores the reality that going from 0 mph to 60 mph with anything in life is really fucking traumatic)

These two questions raise a plethora (Three Amigos) of subsequent problems, and raises even more questions that don't seem to have any (healthy or realistic) answers if you stay in this framework. Questions such as: What do you do with sexual drive and urges if you are not married? What do you do with sexual urges and turn-ons if you are married and your spouse wants nothing to do with them, or sex for that matter? What do spouses do if they are not sexually compatible? How can you learn to be comfortable with your sexual desires if you are not married and there are no acceptable outlets for your sexuality outside marriage? As a woman, what is "Godly sexuality" and why is it talked about differently than male sexuality? If it is in the context of marriage, is all sexual activity Godly, and if not, why so?

Now, neither my parents nor James Dobson ever overtly declared that a person is to be essentially asexual until they are married, but alternative realities where that wasn't the case didn't seem to fly either. What ended up happening was (especially from my mom) marriage was talked about to me in terms of glorious bliss, and all forms of sexuality or sexual acts before (with the assumption being, I will of course want to get married - to a man) or outside of marriage was talked about in terms of being bad, destructive or ideally non-existent. So what the fuck are you supposed to do if you are a 13 year old, not married (thank you child marriage laws), horny, sexually charged, girl? I ask you, what?!?! Answer: turn into a sexually retarded adult, develop mutated, guilt ridden sexual outlets, or find yourself where I was - utterly conflicted, and in contradiction with myself and because of that, vulnerable.

As is taught in that piece of shit website I mentioned before (http://www.cblpi.org/senseandsexuality/), I was told that as a female, I am a delicate flower, meant to remain a pure sexual slate for my husband and if I am not able to offer myself to him as a gift, I would miss out on true intimacy and sexual fulfillment. Oh, and if I was not a virgin, he would never be able to love me the way he could had I been a virgin. I was also told that if I did explore my sexuality outside the sanctity of marriage, I would always feel guilty, dirty and I would never know the sweet, innocence of exploring sexuality together with my husband (nothing wrong with only wanting sex with only your spouse - my problem is that the message claims that anything other than that is not good, and those sluts are only fooling themselves.) - Oh, and I would get pregnant or cervical cancer and die (which is why contraceptives and HPV vaccines are evil).

Before moving on, there are two points that I have to clarify here:


One: I am in no way down talking intimacy here. Intimacy is awesome, but the problem with the version of intimacy that I was taught was that it is supposed to be a pure, emotional and spiritual experience (which is great) to the near exclusion of physical, shared pleasure. Intimacy can include it all here, fellas - one element does not have to be to the exclusion of another. Ideally, sex is simultaneously physically and metaphysically fulfilling. (Sex and intimacy is great, but let's not get too carnal here! Don’t forget to leave room for the Hold Spirit!)


Two: I believe that before you can present yourself as someone able to be in a committed, healthy, long-term, romantic relationship, you have to first be a whole person. I am not saying you have to have reached Nirvana here, I am just saying you should be a person that is for the most part, a fairly balanced human being. By balanced I mean that you have invested (somewhat equally) in yourself mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, relationally and yes, sexually. You know yourself enough to be able to allow someone else to know you. Essentially, you are comfortable with yourself enough that you don't have to be in a relationship, but you can choose to be in one. If you are not emotionally stable on your own, you are not going to have an emotionally stable relationship...and so on - you get the idea. My point being, I don't see how you are able to explore sexuality as a couple if you do not first know who you are as a sexual individual. This is what always bothered my about the Dobsons of the world that kept telling me that bringing sexual understanding and experience to a relationship was inherently detrimental - that I would have junk "crowding my marital bed". I bring my communication and relating experience to a relationship, and it almost always makes things better, why would sexual communication be different (that's what sex is, right?)? And I am not even saying here that you need sexual experience with another person (although that is not to be excluded either), I am just saying you need to first know yourself sexually on your own, before you are even in a position to explore what your sexuality can look like with a partner. This brings me back to my initial question - how can you know yourself sexually, if it is not even acknowledge that you are a sexual being? (And yes, you are a sexual being outside of marriage - even outside the context of someone else)
(P.S. on a technical and realistic level, it's kind of ridiculous to expect a partner to know what you need to get off if you don't even know yourself. And why is it that Christian communities are so squeamish about (Christian) girls masturbating, when even Dobson allows for a reality were boys do? Oh right, because women aren't sexually charged on their own accord, they are only sexual beings in the light a male's sexuality. We're pure flowers and it's those boys that are dirty!)

Good question. My inability to answer this question was the foundation of some very shitty, sexual years.

The problem with being a delicate flower and clean sexual slate was that fact that I couldn't want things sexually. I was supposed to only want things with my husband and I had not met him yet, so my sexual desires and fantasies were just called lust, and that had to be wiped away by the blood of Jesus. Well, I could and I did have sexual wants as a kid/adult, no matter how much I prayed. Since there was no room to ask myself "what turns me on?" or "what do I want sexually?" in a guilt-free, healthy way that allows for examination and critique, I found myself taking cues from men who did know what they wanted (Boys get to own their sexuality from a young age, to the point where they are expected to and encouraged to know what they (should) want from puberty, on. They also have pop culture, which acts as one big cue card for them, even if it is at times to their disadvantage). As it turns out, a man you have some form of sexual interaction with (kissing, hand-holding, intercourse...), has no way of knowing what you actually want unless it is communicated - all he can know, is what he wants. It also turns out that what you want and what he wants, may not be the same things. In a good sexual relationship, both parties make it their responsibility to find out what their partner wants. Questions like "what do you want?" and "I like this, is this something you like?" are good places to start. The problem is, I never felt comfortable honestly asking myself what I wanted because to do that, I would have had to look at my sexuality – the existence of which, was not really acceptable. Having never asked myself, "Alana, what do I want sexually, and what am I ready for and comfortable with?", I was also not equipped with the knowledge of what I did not want. Subsequently, I was severely stunted in regards to speaking up for myself and communicating confidently and effectively what I wanted sexually and what I did not want. As a result of my lack of sexual self-awareness, I blindly walked into a situation where the first dick I ever had in my mouth was forced there. It is true that this guy was an abusive asshole and it was not my fault that he assaulted me, but I am also aware that if I had been equipped with even a minor set of skills for sexual situations, I would not have been in that situation in the first place.


Let's back up for second.


In High School I was able get around acknowledging, developing and owning my sexuality's existence by playing the "pure card." Note, the pure card is fucked up for everyone involved. I was applauded for not "doing" anything sexually, and at the same time, I was in no way criticized for overplaying my sexuality under the guise of being innocently naive and unaware of my affects on men. In acting this way, I perpetuated a shitty, shitty reality. A reality where women are oblivious to sex and males' sexual attraction, because "oh no! I am so pure, I don't even think about sex because I am not married!" and "You boys! You're so dirty! I wasn't sucking that Popsicle in a way to make you think about getting your dick sucked! How dare you!" This bullshit, where women are passive, with no desires of their own, and men are not demanded to ask what a woman wants and is comfortable with, because they are led by society and women like the me of high school to believe that we don't have wants of our own in the first place. Subsequently, I never developed a sexual voice to plainly communicate what I wanted from an interaction with a man, nor did I learn the difference between a man that wants to find out what you want sexually and a man that doesn't give a shit. I also developed some pretty selfish tendencies to be a cock tease. I found a lot of sexual pleasure (enough to get me through not acting on desires) and (unhealthy) power in flaunting my "non-existent" sexuality all over a guy until I knew he wanted to fuck me, and then I threw down the "pure card" and reminded him that nothing was going to happen ("you pig!"). (I do recognize that I am confirming a really unfortunate stereotype here, but it could have something to do with the fact that I was raised in an environment that encouraged the fulfillment of stereotypical gender roles and sexuality - "Women don't say what they mean or what they really want!" and "Women are teases, they're just asking for us men to keep going when she says 'stop'." Madonna/whore anyone? )



So I successfully remained "sexually pure" through high school, which is to say, I was totally inexperienced and naive when it came to acting on my sexuality, but by the time I left for college, I knew full well how to make I guy want me sexually. Awesome, let's encourage behavior that attracts high stakes interactions, but provide absolutely no critical thinking or coping skills that would help someone actually navigate themselves through those interactions (like education beyond abstinence only education, perhaps?). Congratulations on a great fucking plan.


In college, I played a lot of the Christian prancing dance, better known as the Jean Jive. For all of you out there that didn't have the chance to play, the Jean Jive is there for you when you still don't admit to being a sexual being so you are not going to actually think things through, but because you are a sexual being regardless of what you tell yourself (or try to pray away), you pair up with someone you are attracted to, and Jean Jive your way up to "The Line." The Line, you ask? Yes, The Line.


Now, The Line is a tricky matter. For most Christian kids, The Line is found in high school, but for those of us who were steadfast like me, The Line is then usually found in college. And it's often different depending on who you are talking to, but I would say that in general, Jean Jiving with someone up to The Line means that you kissed, made out (sometimes naked) and performed oral sex on your partner (although, I knew more girls that gave blow jobs but would not allow a guy to go do down on them - a fucked up after shock to being taught that you should not want physical pleasure and if you do, you're dirty - but a guy is of course not dirty for wanting his dick sucked. Of course!). This way, you could satiate sexual desires (enough), while staying "pure," because you still have your V-card, thus you are still a go on "saving" yourself for your husband.


Now, I need to clarify here and note that I am in no way dogging on remaining a virgin until you are married (I know plenty of people that I deeply respect on all levels that waited and have great sex lives), what I do have a problem with is this arbitrary purity line that is not even consistent with the "wait to explore and discover your sexuality with your husband" bit, but is the obvious, mutated, bi-product of the sexual denial necessary for most attempting to reach that goal. There is nothing wrong with wanting to make the sexual bond you have with your spouse special by denying yourself sexual experience with others, but I learned from very personal experience that there can be something very damaging and deeply wrong with forcing an entire facet of your being to remain stunted so that you can achieve that goal. And for the record I am also a firm believer that something is special because you make it special by giving it an exclusive weight, level of expectations, and personal investment, not because you have no other experience with something similar.

Moving on.

So college kept happening, and I kept acting on conflicting impulses that led me further and further away from my sexuality being a part of me - that me that I identified with, invested in and was proud of.

Instead of forming healthy relating skills, I became something of a Dr. Jeckle and Mr. Hyde in college by developing far too emotionally intimate friendships with men (who were often in other relationships) where proper boundaries were null and void (fell in love with one of them). In addition, I then had "make out and more friends" for whom I didn't even like or give a shit about. Looking back, I am so ashamed of the friendships I had with the several guys that were so, so inappropriate. And when people would raise and eyebrow and ask "what are you guys about?” I would balk and laugh at such a "ridiculous" questions. Of course there is nothing going on, we are just friends! "Just friends," didn't you know. With these men, I invested my "whole" self into them -my public self, my thoughts, my person, my support...you know, the kind of investment you should have for say, a boyfriend? Although this was really messed up, I did not see the need to be investing in men that I could also be investing in sexually, why would I? And a result, there grew to be a sharp disconnect that just kept getting bigger between my self-acknowledged person and my sexuality.
The guys that I met at bars, parties and the houses of men who called at 1am to just say, "hey what you are doing right now, wanna come over?" were the guys that I responded to and appreciated on a purely physical level. These men were assholes on many levels, but at the same time, I didn't care how they acted because I had no expectations for them to begin with. I already disrespected them because of their association with my sexuality (which is of course inherently evil because I am not married). This is also why I didn't have any trouble sprinting to The Line with them in the first place. No judgment from the judged. The fact that the men I "hooked up with" (hooked with up by Christian standards) were often assholes is precisely why I also found myself in situations where I was way out of me league, and vulnerable. Hence, the first dick in my mouth.

This little set up I had with my sexuality lasted much longer than it should have. Looking back, it is easy to see why I didn't claim the kind of sexuality I really wanted until just after college:

A) Although I no longer bought most of what I was taught about sexual morality by junior/senior year, I was not ready to begin the process of claiming my sexuality and acting upon it; because it was clear I had some other issues that had priority for getting worked out. P.S. - therapy helps!

B) It can be very convenient to have sexual outlets with out any hassle - (AKA, NSA). Also, as was consistent with high school, I took a lot of manipulative pleasure in the power I found in being a cock tease - I sprinted to The Line...but oh no, not for you! What! You thought we were going there? What kind of fucking prick are you?!

C) As I would come to discover later in a more overt light, I didn't exactly have vanilla impulses. I never had, and I had always known it, so claiming sexuality that was a reflection of me would be claiming a sexuality that was "darker" than most peoples' I knew, and I was just not ready to honestly look at and own the things I knew I wanted. Truth is, I was trying to figure my shit out and sex was just too big of an issue to deal with at that time in my life. Given the weight of sex in my upbringing, I knew that tackling my issues and perceptions and hang ups with all things sexual had to wait until I could get some distance. Despite Calvin's liberal leanings when it came to social issues, its sexual climate was quite consistent with the environment I was brought up in.

D) Piggy backing point C), but quite possibly the most important reason I didn't evolve out of a split state of being sooner, was the fact that I did not want to let go of the "ideal" I grew up believing to be the best. Even though I didn't really buy it in my gut, I wanted to. The notions of sexual "purity" sounded so nice for so many reasons (The same reasons you love Cinderella stories as a kid), but more importantly, it was a sticking point, a non-negotiable for the faith I knew I didn't want to discard. I wanted to be someone that fit into the sexuality box of a "Godly woman" so badly, but the fact was that wasn't me. It was never me. And I knew I didn't want it to be me - I just knew that I wanted to want it. While in my wonderful Calvin community, surrounded by amazing, strong, intelligent, Christian women that seemed to fit so nicely into "Godly sexuality", I wanted to be that too - and thought if I just "gave it to God" enough, I would stop these crazy sprints to The Line late at night, and meet some wonderful, vanilla, "man of God" and have intimate, spiritual, love-making sex once we got married. Fortunately, that didn't happen, and even more fortunately, I found out that I didn't have to choose between faith and loving intimacy and the kind of honest sexuality I knew I always wanted.*

*I understand that there are many good points of contention with that last sentence from a Christian standpoint, I am not however, going to dive into debates on moral relativism here, nor disputes over what it is to be a Christian.

When I moved to CA after college, I set out to create a sexually neutral environment, in which I could sit back and figure out what the fuck I thought and wanted. I didn't really talk to people who thought one way or another about sex - I didn't want the influence; I had had plenty of that my whole life. I just needed to be able to ask myself questions and not be afraid to answer honestly. Fortunately, I had already worked through the vast majority of my "issues" during college and I didn't have any friends when I first got to CA to distract me with fun reindeer games, so I had not much holding me back from getting down and dirty with my thoughts. So that's what I did, I thought a lot - and smoked a shit load of cigarettes on the curb outside my apartment.

Here's where I am now.

I love sex - a lot. Not of Samantha Jones proportions where sex dominates life. No, sex has an important but balanced role in my life these days. My sexuality has taken a comfortable seat next to the books I read, the truths I wrestle with, my relationships, my work, my joys, my pains, my faith and my spirit. My sexuality is a part of me - a part of the skin I am finally comfortable in (although that comfort is an evolving work in progress that adapts to a changing me). No longer do I attempt to walk that line between wanting to display my sexuality but not feeling able to act on it or the freedom to have wants. I don't have to. I know what I want and what I like. I also know how to communicate both wants and dislikes to the boyfriend and expect him to listen. For the record, the boyfriend is the shit, and it is because of him that I had such ease in taking some crucial steps of growth in figuring out what I wanted my sexuality to actually look like and play out. With him, and my recently owned sexuality, openness, communication, trust, intimacy and fun have been easy to find. No, we are not married, and technically I am "living in sin," but as it turns out, I will take that fact any day over feeling disjointed, frustrated, guilty, broken and scared when it comes to my sexuality for the sake of being "pure" (What does that mean again? Oh, right, it doesn't really mean anything if you are actually concerned with what teachings look like). I like healthy, it feels good. Good enough to be at peace with the "delusional lies we tell ourselves to justify sin" - or, if you are a bit more traditional, "open rebellion." (Again, this is not the place for manifestations of Christianity and faith). I am not saying there is anything wrong with anyone adhering to a Focus on the Family sexuality, especially if that version of sexuality is appropriate (I recognize the inherent moral relativism here, and the influence of the “wishy-washy, terror-of-tolerance propaganda” that I have clearly “fallen” for) for them, but as it turns out, trying to fit into that sexuality made me ooze out mutated, and I'm sure that I am not the only one.

What do we do?

Once you've boiled away all the bagillion things Christians of all sects have to say about homosexuality, you are left with a single question: is homosexuality a choice?

The reason it all comes to this questions is that if the answer is no, the theological wall of Truth crumbles, and Christians do not want to find themselves sifting through the pieces of their broken understanding - that's scary, and unfortunately, Christians on mass don't have a great track record (aside from, you know, Jesus) of wading through and wrestling with ideas that scare them.

If homosexuality is a choice, then Romans 1:26 is not something to be wrestled with, it is just something to accept and act upon. Christians can point to the infallibility of the word of God (when it comes to women and slaves it's OK to put on the reading lens of "cultural context" on the word of God) and Roman's 1:26, and close the subject as a done deal. Good, now we know, homosexuality is a sin to be cast away and rebuked, those who engage in homosexual acts are rejecting God's truth and indulging in depraved desires. They are willfully sinning even though it is written in no uncertain terms that what they are choosing to do is wrong and therefore can be held accountable to God judgment and wrath. So why is there so much debate amongst the Christian community? Should this not be a open and close case? It would be a simple matter of right and wrong, if it were not for those pesky gays that claim their sexual orientation to be biological, beyond their control, beyond their choice.

Shit. What then? What if homosexuality is not a choice? Non-Christians never seem to get why this question is so problematic for us Christians. Across the board, non-Christians ask us Christians with puzzled faces, "So what? So what if it's biological?" The confused looks we Christians are faced with is a product of these non-Christians not understanding the theological weight of that question and the consequences that follow if the answer to the question is "no, homosexuality is not a choice."

Here's the dilemma (in simplified Sunday school format): God created man and woman in His image; our human bodies, our biology is God's design - a gift, a blessing. With our bodies acting as agents of our soul, God gives us the opportunity to follow him as an act of free will and live as He created us to be: in communion with ourselves, others and God through the door that is Christ's sacrifice on our behalf. The Word of God ( the B-I-B-L-E, yes that's the book for me! I stand up-on the Word of God, the B-I-B-L-E! Bible!), in addition to the Law being written in our hearts (a product of being a part of God's creation that contains the touch of the divine), is the tool by which God has given us to follow his Law and His ultimate call for our lives. Words that, although they were physically written by man, were the inspired Words of God (Again, when it comes to women, slaves and other such obvious things, we can fix that by pointing out that the men writing the Bible were writing within a cultural context of their time, so we'll just rely on the Holy Spirit to helps of discern through that - phew!) that lives and applies throughout the ages. Based upon the Word of God, we are empowered to not only follow God's Law, but we are given the authority to hold others' accountable for their rejection of His Law (and where they do not know it, we are called to share the way of God with them - for how could they choose to do what is right if they had never been told the Truth?). Now the monkey wrench:

Because our bodies and physical world were designed and created by God, both our bodies and the world around us follow what we call, God's natural law, meaning the way we were designed has God's stamp of approval on us, and our design is in accordance to His natural law. This is why we can even state whether or not something is natural or unnatural. Unnatural is by definition, outside of God's intended design. This is also why Roman's 1:26 notes that homosexuality is a sin by nature, because it is unnatural - inherently outside God's design (sin is the term given for reality that is broken, or not what God had intended). As human beings with an eternal soul, God has set up the system of free will (because true love can only exist in the context of free will, and God is love and God shows us love, but it would not be love if we could not choose to accept it - because the nature of love is an interaction and there is no interaction if something just is), where he gives us the tools we need to follow His design (for that's what is good), and join in communion with Him, and if we choose not to follow His design, we will suffer the consequences of being in a state of brokenness and separation from his love (Hell). Our choice - the crux of the matter.
If God's design is right, and we are His design, how could it be that He would design something that is inherently unnatural, and therefore sinful? Yes, yes we all know that because of original sin, we are all born broken and need to choose to follow God (be saved, or born again) rather than just naturally following Him, but what about our bodies? Straight people don't have to choose to be straight in order to follow God. They just are. Would a just God design some human bodies to be natural and others to be unnatural? Of course not. So homosexuality must be a choice, otherwise someone could not possibly be held morally accountable for being "unnatural."

But what about those people who claim that being gay is biological (a part of our design)? If this is true, engaging in homosexual acts is a product of someone's natural design, and therefore has God's stamp of approval (and we know God does not make accidents - He knew us before He made us in our mother's womb). How could it be a sin for someone to act on God's design? It's can't. But then, what about the Bible calling homosexuality unnatural, is the Bible wrong if being gay is biological? No, the Bible is God's inspired Word, it can't be wrong. Conclusion: being gay cannot be biological, and therefore as a Christian, I will reject all evidence pointing to the contrary of this conclusion. And although there is a giant host of studies by reputable scientists,

http://nymag.com/news/features/33520/

we have no choice but to reject it, right? Because it we accept it, that means that either God is unjust or the Word is fallible. But God has to be just, which means that the Bible is fallible, and if the Bible is fallible, on what Rock can we stand? So Christian's caught in this dilemma point to failings in the evidence that being gay is biological. OK fine, those points are often valid, but lets get out of the lab and just look around, shall we?


Now, I am not a man, nor am I married, but I know my way around a hard dick. I would say that the vast majority of humans can say the same thing (with maybe the exclusion of some lesbians and sexually inexperienced straight women) so it can serve as a helpful observational example. When was the last time you saw a man's dick get hard over something that did not trigger a basic, biological arousal mechanism? Straight men, when was that last time your dick got hard thinking about another man? Straight men, would you agree that the blood that flows to your dick when you see a women that you find attractive, is something biological, seemingly natural and more importantly, something beyond your control (other than looking away)? How the fuck can anyone claim that being gay is a choice? If a gay man's dick does not get hard when he sees a woman but it does when he sees a man that he is attracted to, what part of that is a choice - beyond biology? Exactly, there is none.

***And silence to all those Christians that say "well, maybe it is biological, but then it is that gay person's moral responsibility and moral cross to bear to remain celibate in order to not act sinfully." That's bullshit, and we all know it. Wasn't Christ the one who said if a man has sin in his heart he has sinned?***

Christian's it is time to stop being terrified of our wall of Truth crumbling and maybe consider that God is bigger than that wall (our mortal minds of understanding). Let's get ourselves a little dirty and wrestle with the things we can't quite reconcile. Who knows, it might teach us some humility and grace in the meantime.

The Trade Off

For me, buying a house has always been the most "adult" thing anyone can do. More than babies, more than marriage, more than anything else, buying a house, is to me the epitome of "settling down." In buying a house, you are proclaiming to yourself and the world, "I am rooted. I am choosing to live here and not anywhere else." No more freedom to just get up and go. To be able to just go and go wherever you choose is the enticement of renting. You can convince your partner to go, you can wrap up sleeping babies and go, but you can't take your house with you where ever you want to go. There is a part of me that gets why people would want to buy a house; the inherent roots, safety and security. A home. But at 26, the call of living elsewhere - and not anywhere in particular, just some place I have not lived or seen - is too strong, too loud, so that the idea of trading off the freedom to move for the security of roots is not yet worth it to me. Maybe in five years or so, but not now. The trade off just isn't worth it.

But trade offs are life. They permeate every every decision we make. Shampoo with moisturizer or color stay? A decision with built in trades offs that I had to make yesterday. A college degree that is in the subject I love and am passionate about but has no marketing abilities, or the degree that will get me a guaranteed job out of the blocks of graduation? Trade offs are nothing new to us; we are all aware of them and feel their presence with every decision we make. There has been one trade off however, that I have been wrestling with for quite some time now, and I'll confess, I don't know what I think on the matter - which is for me, a bit extraordinary.

Sandy volunteers in my office. She's 70 years old, looks 15 years younger than that, and has one of the warmest, wisest and giving spirits I have ever come across. Sandy's warmth and wisdom was not born from a life of rainbows and candy canes, but like most people who exude loving strength, Sandy had until recent years, a very difficult life. Married to a man that stifled her passions, desires and joys, Sandy learned to endure a life that did not feel her own. No, Sandy did not survive Auschwitz or something that traumatic, but by remaining committed to a man that she was unhappy with, Sandy experienced a deep loss. Loss of youth, loss of years and above all, the loss of the precious, set time one has in this life. Since the death of her husband, Sandy has reclaimed her life. With no sense of bitterness or resentment, Sandy has been doing the work of learning to love her life. And she does; it is clear that she is in love with life and living. I believe, and Sandy will confirm, that she was able to discover the joy of life because of the long, difficult years of feeling that her joy did not matter.
For me, Sandy embodies the paradoxical reality, that those who can walk through the fires of life and not be consumed, are those that are the deepest in touch with what it is to be alive, human, and joyful. It is in those dark places, the wasted youth and the joyless years, that you discover truths about life and who you are, that once you are on the other side of the pain, can bring you to a place of strength and flourishing. Now, that's not always the case. Those who go through the pain and ultimately break from the weight of it will not feel that same unshakable joy once on the other side - they can't, their broken. But those who do make it through, and who like Sandy, grew from the difficult times, have something that they are able to hold on to, something that those who have not experienced deep pain don't get to have. I see it in the same light as artists. When you look back upon the great artists of societies: painters, writers, musicians..., you see that most of them were on the fringe. The fringe of society, humanity and sanity. Being on the fringe however, gave them the eyes of unique perspective through which they were able to see clearly and articulate truths about the realities of the human condition. There in lies the deep trade off. To have that perspective, you often have to live outside of the masses, but to live outside of the masses is often painful, alienating and sorrowful.
So is it worth it? Is the insight, the strength, the perspective made possible by the fires of pain worth it? I have no idea. I know that I am drawn to people like Sandy; as though I am gaining joy by association. I also know that they are the people I seek in times of pain, because they have been there, and they know what it is to not only survive, but to survive with grace. The problem is, no matter the ultimate benefit you may be able to gain upon the conclusion, living in the pain is painful no matter the outcome. A broken heart hurts regardless of the lesson learned. The devastation of disease or death tears apart lives and breaks the spirit even if it heals over time. If someone puts on a happy face in the midst of suffering and says "oh, but through pain we gain strength," their full of shit. Pain hurts no matter how you dress it up and it is never to be romanticized with the promise of insight and strength. Here in lies the trade off that I may never find peace in. The Apostle Paul's letter to the Philippians, may be the best reconciliation of realities that I have ever seen on this matter - but even his insight provides no clear answer. But then, that's the essence of a trade offs, now isn't it?

Dan Savage

I have a track record of getting on kicks. When I was a kid I was obsessed with rabbits and being Asian. Then I was all about running and being a runner. Then it was history, and then This American Life... and so on. Getting on certain kicks is for the most part, normal. Throughout peoples' lives, passions and enthusiasm for things or activities ebb and flow, with me however, I tend to take things just a little too far. And it's not that I make it my whole identity or anything, I just obsess, talk about and consume to an extreme degree whatever it is that I am really excited about at any particular point in time. Currently, I am all about Dan Savage.
Now, I had heard on a regular basis Dan Savage read essays he had written on This American Life. Essays about love, sex, being gay and life in general - and I loved what he said every time he was featured. It was not until I was talking about Dan with my friend, Justine, that I made the cross over from being a pronounced fan of Dan Savage when featured on This American Life to getting on an official, Alana-style, Dan Savage kick.
It started with just going to his column, Savage Love, and then it spread into listening to his podcast, and then I knew i was on an official Alana kick when I realized that I had been spending months of lunch breaks pouring over every single archived article. Years' worth of weekly columns pretty much dominated my free time. But it makes sense, Dan's column is the shit...let me tell you why.
To begin with, unlike the more mainstream sex-advice-public-write-in-ditties, readers of Savage Love get to hear from all voices across the sexual/relational spectrum. With this being the case, you hear from people who share your kinks but you also get to hear from people with kinks that can be, if nothing else, interesting and enlightening. And as much as this may sound like a The More You Know public announcement, Savage Love does of great job humanizing people that the large majority of people may write off as freaks by showing over and over again the truth that people's sexuality is complex and that there is no such thing as "normal." Also, Dan is mean, blunt, hilarious, kind of an asshole and for the most part, offers his readers sound advice and judgment on sex, sexuality and relationships.
**As a side note: hearing from people who share your kinks can be a great way to get tips on how to act on them in a safe and enjoyable way - there are some great ideas out there.***

Moral of the story, Google Dan Savage or Savage love, or just follow the links below.

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/SavageLove?oid=1192438

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ObrFwjesno

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZvit_XXASg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crSUj-mcn0A

what are we laughing at?

I like laughing, I do, and fortunately for me, a lot of things make me laugh. From Wes Anderson's "dark humor" to Dumb and Dumber slap-stick, to the "harsh" humor of Forgetting Sarah Marshall to the satire of South Park to squirrels on water skis. There are few forms of humor that don't get a laugh out of me. I'm also really good at laughing at myself. Life is just too intense and we humans are just a little too ridiculous for anyone to take themselves so seriously that they can't recognize their own ridiculousness and laugh.
Being able to laugh at myself is something I am proud to say I do really well. A peculiar quality to be proud of, but if you grew up in my family you would know that the ability to laugh at one's self is a skill that one must be dedicated to cultivating. Now, society applauds the ability to laugh at yourself; good, that's great. And like most things, my family took starting-point ques from the mainstream and then ran to an inappropriate extreme. This is the story of humor in the Kalinowski Family.
Growing up, Funny was king. Now, most families have their quirks and twists, but because we lived in the literal woods and were fairly isolated, homeschoolers, we had no other forces to sort of, balance us out. Family quirks held significantly more developmental weight in our homeschooling family then they would have ever held, had we also been surrounded by additional developmental forces. We weren't and they did, making my family's obsession with Funny a major carving tool in my person.
In my family, the ability to say with perfect delivery, the most hurtful thing in the funniest possible way, could only be trumped when the recipient was not only able to laugh at, salute and swallow that statement but then instantaneously produce a reciprocation even more witty and hurtful. I realize that kids in schoolyards practice the same "one upping" dance, but the difference with us was, this cutting game was played amongst homeschooling siblings that knew everything about each other - including deepest doubts and fears. Another key, damaging difference being that, schoolyard kids can walk away from a bout of "friendly teasing" and say to themselves, "I hate that fucking douche bag," while us siblings on the other hand, had to genuinely convince ourselves that the cutting statements made by our siblings were in fact, just funny and not at all hurtful. They were your siblings and classmates; no good burning bridges, they were all you had and there was no making new friends with some other, nicer kid in the class.
Beginning this life as a emotionally sensitive, easily manipulated ball of mush, I was of course, the bully's dream target of mockery. With three older siblings and two younger, I had no choice but to grow some thicker skin. Although I did improve over the course of my first 13 years, I was never very good at the hurtfully funny retort portion of the game; I couldn't think of something mean about the other person fast enough. And because sinking wasn't an option, the way I learned to swim was by becoming an expert at "taking the joke." Proving that I not only caught the sarcasm and appreciated the joke by laughing at, and then elaborating on my sibling's joke about me, I found that I was able to gain back a large stake of power lost by the initial joke. Owning someone else' joke as my own, developed into a fairly dominant component of my own sense of humor and personality - hence my tendency for self-deprecating humor.

It was not until I did the whole "self-discovery" bit in college and I began figuring my shit out that I got a little self-confidence, and realized that there is in fact a difference between funny, self-deprecating humor and being pathetic and laughing along with people who are talking shit about you. I didn't get that difference until college, and I'll admit, that even though I have come a long way, I do tend to err on the side of letting people talk shit when I shouldn't let them. Side note: if I do err on the side of not standing up for myself these days, it is less because I don't have the confidence in myself or am afraid, but more because the idea of being that person who couldn't laugh along when they should have, is still more pathetic to me than the person who gets walked on. Moving on (and we are going somewhere, I promise).

When I look back, it is clear that there was an obvious progression from a the ball of mush kid that I was, to the place where I am today; a place where I may not be completely healthy or balanced but where I at least have a sense of awareness on where I want to be going. This progression was of course something that I was completely oblivious to until sometime in 2005 when I heard a very convicting sermon by my pastor, Rob Bell, about jokes and humor.
Having been able to do it myself, I found that I judged (and still do, although I try not to) people I met who couldn't take a joke or who chose not to grow a tougher skin. At the time I had a roommate named Julie, who is just a wonderful person and I love her to death, but the woman could not take a joke to save her life - not even a stupid joke like a "your mom" joke. She would get hurt and offended very easily, and made it clear that not only did she not like being teased, but she never wanted to become someone who could handle being teased. This just blew my mind. I couldn't grasp the idea of someone being perfectly OK with being a wuss. I would tell her, "Jules, if you grew up in my family, you would have been eaten alive!" and she would always say, "well, i didn't." And I kept making jokes and teasing her because in my head, these were things that "she should be able to handle," and it was not until I heard Rob speak about humor that it occurred to me that maybe I should not force Julie into being able to handle a joke, but rather just stop teasing her.
Rob's sermon was based on the notion that God does not have to accommodate humans and show us love and grace in order for us to acknowledge that He is God. He's God, He could just demand that we do, but He does; He shows us love by meeting us where we are at. Because God is in the position to accommodate, He does, because that's what love does. This really struck home, because I realized that my actions towards Julie were not at all grounded in love. Yes, Julie should be able to take a simple joke, but the reality was, she couldn't and as someone who was in the position to accommodate, I should have.
Thinking about how love actually looks, it got me thinking and eventually realizing, just how hurtful my family was and still is to each other. Even as adults, we say the meanest shit to each other - the words that you know that will cut the deepest, and yet we expect the other person to laugh and tip their hats at the wittiness of the remark. And as much as I genuinely do laugh much of the time, and how much I love how casual we get to be with each other in that kind of environment, I do ask myself, how is this love? If there is to be anyone that builds us up and makes us feel safe and at ease, shouldn't that someone be a family member? Even though we are relaxed and don't have to guard what we say around each other, you do have to always be on your guard, ready for any biting word that if you allow it to, makes you feel like shit. When it comes to my family's relationship to humor as it relates to our interactions, I am conflicted.

The truth is, life was really harsh growing up, and humor was the means by which we were able to look at and talk about the difficult realities we were facing without breaking under it's pressure. Humor made it so we could do the hard work of processing the shittiness happening around us, from our house burning down to being poor, without letting the scariness overcome us. In short, humor was our release valve. Given the choice between having grown up in a family where harsh realities were not talked about but just swallowed, versus my family's use and often abuse of humor for the sake of openness, I would choose my family every time. But that's not to say that there were no unhealthy consequences, because it's clear that there were.
I can see that I have some scars, some war wounds if you will, from having grown up "with wolves," but like all scarring events in life I am still responsible for how I choice to respond to those wounds.
On the one hand, I like that I am able to laugh in the face of any shit life throws my way. I can, and I do. I know how to survive and enjoy life even when I am scared beyond belief. I would not have that skill if it had not been forged in the ruthless crucible that was my childhood. On the other hand however, I know that I am scarred and that I now have the natural tendecy to be harsh, ruthless and careless with others. Reckless with people's feelings may be my reasonable defualt, but I don't want that to be, I don't want to be the reason for someone else's wounds. I am responsible to love like Christ, even if there is good reason for me not being very good at that. The son that is beaten by his alcoholic dad has good reason to grow up and be an asshole to his kids because that's all he ever knew, but he shouldn't. Having reason to be an asshole is not an excuse, and that's why I like how Christ-like love works so much. Christ takes where we come from into account and meets us at our starting point, but He always demands that we don't sit in and wallow but grow and be held accoutable to keep growing. The beautiful paradox of grace and accountability working together simultaneously. JC is one good fellow indeed.

Cliche, but these are my favorite sites

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/SavageLove?oid=1148168

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/

http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

http://www.marshill.org/teaching/index.php

http://www.theworld.org/

http://www.npr.org/

The Future Present

Although I have never gone to war, the month before I moved to San Diego felt as though it was the last month I was going to live. I'm clearly over dramatic here, but the reality is, the level of significance a person places onto an event, person or thing is relative to the life experiences of that person. Moving to a new city for someone who has say, survived Auschwitz, is just not big of a deal. I however, did not survive Auschwitz, so my move to San Diego, was a big fucking deal. That being said, I knew that the move to San Diego was going to be horrible. I was going to be lonely, stressed, anxious and depressed. And even though that's is the inevitable anytime you do something scary by yourself, that knowledge does not change the reality that you feel like shit. That knowledge therefore, also brought into relief all the more clearly just how precious that month of July in 2006 was to me then and would be forever more. July was the end. The end and the climax of a world I could not fathom letting go of.
I had moved to Grand Rapids, MI temporarily crippled, January 2, 2002 to attend Calvin College. Over the course of the next five years, that odd, bubble-like town that is full of Dutch, Calvinists became the incubator of my adult self - and not only my adult self, but the version of myself that I really like.
Now, many people recognize the weight and significance of something, someone or an event upon reflection after the fact. Given my relationship with memory and the act of remembrance, I don't work like this. While in the moment, even while some significant event that appears to be insignificant is still happening, I can not help but be fully aware of how significant it is and how I need to be taking it in very consciously so that I remember everything in the future. Sounds like it could be a cool ability, but the truth is, my inability to just experience something as it is happening; to just enjoy a cool moment for what it is, makes it so that I am constantly living in the future, obsessed with and preoccupied with the past, which is in reality, the present.
The month of July is a perfect example of that annoying trait. That July was significant, it was special, it was the end of a golden time that would never be lived again and it was a month of willing myself to let go. But because I was so aware of all this significance at the time, I ended up mourning the end before the end even came. On a daily scale this happens to me a lot. Because I am so aware of how temporal experiences are and how quickly beautiful realities are lost I cherish too tightly, the good things as they happen, to the point where I am missing those realities before they are gone. Does that makes sense? In short, I experience my present in terms of a memory.
Looking back, I think this odd quality in me is an overcompensation that developed subconsciously when, beginning as a very young person, I listened very carefully to old people telling me to appreciate my youth and to never take it for granted. To appreciate the good in your life, because once it is gone, that specific good is gone forever. That each good experience us unique and precious. I think their words hit a little too deep, because it sent me on this course of living, that to be quite honest, I am not too thrilled about. But then, there is of course a flip side. And I really do like that flip side, almost as much as the other side annoys me.
The flip side is that I do feel that I am fully aware of just how many areas of my life are to be cherished and counted as precious. And just as the oldies commanded me to do, I do appreciate the fact that I am in what's considered the "prime of my life." And it does feel good to be so aware of the constant flow of good things happening because it makes me look forward to the good things to come as well. And being grateful of the moment as it is happening also puts me in a place to share my appreciation for those around me instead of after the fact. So there's that. There is that really good flip side, but there is still a "but" and I am not quite sure what to do with that.
I think that I am troubled by this quirk in recent days because lately, experiencing my present as a memory is making me sad. The idea of my present good realities being no more in the distant future is just a little too much for me to handle. Similar to the grieving I felt that July, but different because this time, the projection of loss is not a phase of life but rather the fear of losing a someone.
While falling asleep against the person I am in love with, I am so overwhelmed by how good I feel that I find myself tipping onto the side of sadness because I know that at some point, this intense good will be no more. The weight to take it all in, to truly appreciate the now, to mark moments down in my memory for when they are gone, is a weight that sometimes feels crushing. Although, I'm not sure if I want to let go of that weight either.

Jimmy Carter's Mexican Cafe

http://www.jimmycartersmexicancafe.com/

Delicious. Colorful. Awesome.

Don't let the name fool you, this place may be named after a white dude, but good 'ol Mexican cuisine pumps from the kitchen of Jimmy Carter's Mexican Cafe. A block from my house, Jimmy Carter's is our answers to many breakfast, lunch and dinner questions. My personal favorite, the fish tacos. They're fucking delicious. Enjoy.

Waltz With Bashir

I get stuck on the phenomenon of memory. It's more than a fascination, the conscious act of remembering has informed my entire person and how I view the world. How we remember, the dreamlike colors of the images that get stuck in our mind and most importantly of all, what we chose to remember are questions that I pearl over in my mind to the extent that living in the present is difficult.

And it's not just one's ability to remember or their personal account of "how it all happened" - what we remember shapes not only how we see ourselves and our identity in the present but how we move and conduct ourselves into the future (On a personal level as well as the macro level when talking about national or collective remembrance).

You may have already guessed, but this last point is a big deal to me. It's the crux of what I obsess about when something comes up that brings how and what we remember into question.

I think a part of the reason memory is so interesting to me is that the memories we have are something we paradoxically have no control over, and yet at the same time, the nature of our reflection (a force we control) on the present directly shapes how that moment or event looks to us in the future. It's crazy. I love it.

Watching Waltz with Bashir last night got me all fired up about this topic of remembering - especially because I have been really wrestling in a somewhat passive way, with the topic for the past month or so for some very personal reasons. Ideas. Ideas that get a little too jumbled for me if they are not forced out in some sort of semi-organized fashion. So that's what I am going to work on over the next little chunck of time - see if by organizing my thoughts, I can stop pearling over the act of remembering in some sort of detached way, but just live and remeber those moments of life. That's what I want, right?