pants

People have made a lot of jokes to John and i about who wears the pants in our relationship. It's an easy and popular question to ask, provoking an easy and obvious chuckle. When we first started dating, i told one of my friends that we'd found that things went a lot better when no one wears any pants at all.

Strange as it may seem, that joke is actually a perfect description of the power balance of our relationship. It's not that one of us wears the pants all the time. It's not that we take turns wearing the pants. We just refuse to put them on at all.

Sarah of Emerging Mummy describes her marriage as a slow dance:

"Sometimes the questions people ask or judgments they imply can make us chuckle, don't they, my darling?

Well, who is in charge here?


We are.

Yes, but if push comes to shove, who is the leader?


We are.

But then who is the spiritual head of your home?


Only Jesus."

Ours is not a relationship where one person holds the power. It is not a relationship where we both jockey for power. It is not a relationship where power is shared. It is a relationship where we don't consider power or control, where the question never even comes up. We stand together, move together, stop together. We aren't trying to get anywhere except closer. Our relationship is not an eighteen-wheeler on the highway in need of someone to steer it. It's a slow dance in an empty room.

Reason #4 Why I Should Live With My Boyfriend

So that neither of us will be the only person in the house who locks the door.

Writing Retreat, Day 4

These are two poems that i've been working on for a while. I spent some time on the retreat editing and polishing them.

deployment


this is the shape of things:
the trees are naked but for their coats
of ice, bordering the highway
like hand-carved crystal.

this is the shape of things:
hard and clear, the trees
tell me that maybe
i've already said goodbye.

this is the shape of things:
you are leaving,
i have already gone.

no atheists in foxholes


her brother, the agnostic, prays
over his food, asks for a blessing.
he sends out his requests
without naming names.
no longer certain that anyone hears, he nevertheless prays
over his food.

protestant to the backbone, she
lights candles anyway.
she thinks it can't hurt,
and it might help to see
hope
keep burning. she waits and prays
far from his hospital bed.

sometimes the lines blur,
and what matters is faith.

Writing Retreat, Day 3

I am a terrible, terrible person. And so is C.

That's the only preface i will give to the following bits of dialogue, with accompanying commentary by myself and C, overheard at breakfast on day 3. T is a morbidly obese sophomore, and A, M, and J are her three male friends.

On Words:
T: "That was rhetorical!"
C: "Does she know what that word means?"
Me: "I think that, whenever she says something and doesn't get the reaction she was hoping for, she just covers by saying that it was a joke or rhetorical."


On Identity and Relationships:
T: "That's because I'm a different species. I'm more highly evolved than you."

T: "If you ever talked to a girl the way you're talking to me, she'd kill you."
A: " . . . you are a girl."
C: "No, she's a different species."
Me: "And a more highly evolved one, at that."


T (on being reprimanded for asking for the loan of a pocket knife to peel her orange, and being told that she should carry her own knife): "I don't want to be needy. I'll just be friends with boys who carry pocket knives."

A: "I don't know if I want to be friends with someone who just beats me up (verbally) all the time. If our whole relationship is about fighting, why are we even friends?"
T: "That's not what our whole relationship is about! And I don't beat you up!"
M: "Take the way you argue, and imagine that it was made physical. It would be a fistfight."
T: "No, because A wouldn't hit a girl."
Me: "I thought you weren't a girl?"


A: "You make me feel awful!"
T: "Yeah, that's the point."

A: "Okay, Eleanor Roosevelt said that no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. So, I do not consent to you making me feel bad and beating me up verbally."
T: "You're the one who makes me feel bad!"
A: "Okay, what do I do? And why do you consent to it?"
T: "You just don't do the things I want you to."

T (to A): "I was adding that to why I want to beat you up: because I don't like the way you think."

T: "I'd have a better chance with pretty much all of the freshmen."
C: "A better chance of what? Dating them? Eating them?"
Me: "C! That is a terrible thing to say! T would never eat a freshman! She is a vegetarian!"


On Identity and Fetishes:
A: "Why did you smell that (orange peel)?"
T: "It's like a creepy fetish thing."

T: ". . . you'd go through my trash and sell it on eBay. That's a violation of my personal space."
A: "But J does it all the time!"
T: "Yeah, well, I'm used to it from him. I'm not used to it from you."

T (as J was pretending to pour syrup on her): "I do NOT look like a waffle. (to A) You're the waffle. I'm more like spaghetti."
A: "You don't look like spaghetti. You look more like a waffle."

On Power Animals:
T: "A might be a flamingo, because I feel like he gets confused very often."

T: "No. A triceratops is not a real animal."

T: "Maybe (the unicorns) are all in Atlantis and you just can't find them!"
J: "Atlantis is underwater."
T: "So? Maybe unicorns can breathe underwater!"
J, A, and M: "No, they can't."
T: "How do you know? Have you ever seen a unicorn breathing underwater? No, you haven't. So you can't prove that they can't."

T: "I'm an education major, so therefore I'm right."

Sleight-of-Hand Salvation

Some Christians seem to feel that God is a carnival magician, hiding truth like a bean under a cup. The only way to win salvation is to correctly guess which cup hides the bean. But i think God is just happy that we're playing at all. God wants us to want Him, to chase after Him, to pursue the ultimate prize of a relationship with Him. We should care less about getting to Heaven some day than we do about drawing near to God today. When you stop caring about the prize and focus on the game, you'll find much more value in both.

My salvation is not contingent upon whether or not i guess the truth correctly. Nor is my salvation contingent upon how many of my friends guess the truth correctly. My salvation is contingent upon whether or not i love God and love others.

I'm sick of the either/or approach to Christianity. As if any of us have all the right answers. I think a lot of us probably have some right answers, but arguing about which people and which answers will get us nowhere. It's much better to listen to one another in love, pray earnestly, read the Bible, and decide in your own heart how to live your life.

There are times when we must hold one another accountable. But that is a personal accountability. One person going to another in love and having a conversation. You can't just tell them that they're wrong. Talk to them. See if, together, you can figure out where they strayed from the path. It may be that you'll discover that you're the one who is off track. Go to one another quietly and in love, and talk and pray together to grow closer to the truth. Don't be harsh or condemnatory. Don't assume that your spiritual discomfort on their behalf means that you are right. Be willing to listen. Be willing to be wrong. Be willing to agree to disagree, understanding that your rightness or wrongness has no effect on your salvation.

It's not about guessing the right cup. It's about playing games with God. He just wants to hang out. And when our goal is growing closer to Him rather than finding the salvation bean, we end up accomplishing both of those ends. Christianity is a relationship, not a contest. According to Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct behavior: "There are three possible parts to a date, of which at least two must be offered: entertainment, food, and affection. It is customary to begin a series of dates with a great deal of entertainment, a moderate amount of food, and the merest suggestion of affection. As the amount of affection increases, the entertainment can be reduced proportionately. When the affection is the entertainment, we no longer call it dating. Under no circumstances can the food be omitted." Think of God in these terms: the affection is the entertainment. The point isn't that you're winning a giant stuffed teddy bear or seeing an amazing concert. The point is that you're spending time together. The other stuff is a nice bonus, and it's always better to experience something wonderful with someone you love. But the point should always be the someone, and not the something.

"But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you." -- Matthew 6:33 When all we care about is winning the game, we will likely lose, and even the winners will experience little or no pleasure in their victory. But when we focus on the joy of the game, not only are we more likely to win, but we want to keep playing even after it's all over. Which is good, because an eternity in Heaven is going to be a freaking long time, so we should be excited at the prospect of hanging out with the people there.

Writing Retreat, Day 2

The scar on my left index finger was incurred during an unbelievable bout of stupidity. I had been painstakingly whittling something for weeks despite having no whittling talent or training and nothing but a Swiss army knife to work with.

But it was my latest obsession, and i took any and every opportunity to work on it.

One day, we were at a stoplight. I knew it was a long light, so i pulled out my tools. So engrossed was i in my work that i didn't see the light change. The old Ford Windstar minivan started moving with a lurch, and the knife blade slid smoothly into my finger.

I stared at it for a moment, watching the blood bubble up around the blade. It had gone in horizontally and lay under my skin. Then it clicked: i had a knife in my finger. And it hurt.

I don't remember what i said to my dad to alert him to the situation. I remember him yelling at me in a panic as he tried to find a place to pull over. Our first aid kit was empty. Dad found an old Sunday school paper to wrap my finger in until we got home.

Writing Retreat, Day 1

C and I had decided to buy supplies for the weekend. We therefore stopped at a liquor store before hitting the road in earnest. She had to get cash first, so i entered the store alone.

I was planning to buy wine, so the display of wine glasses just inside the door caught my attention immediately. I haggled with myself for a minute.
"Look! Only $4.99 for four wine glasses! That's such a great deal!"
"But how will you fit them in your suitcase?"
"I'll make room somehow."
"But you have so many wine glasses at home. You don't really need any more."
"But those are all Pammer's. I'll need my own when i move out."
"That's true, but . . . "

I grabbed the glasses before i could say anything else to change my mind and i set off to pick out some wine. C came in and saw me holding the glasses. I explained my conflict and that i as trying to decide if it would be worthwhile to buy them.
"Bear in mind that i have, like, 47 wine glasses at home," i told her.
"It's not worth it," she said.

The wine glasses went back and I bought two bottles of wine for just under twelve dollars total. Don't judge me.