Have you ever...

• known you wanted to say something -- could feel the words and concepts tickling the edge of your consciousness -- but couldn't exactly say it because the concepts didn't come clear enough to put into your limited words, regardless of how much your lexicon has grown and expanded?

• wished that you had the knowledge to fully express that which lies inside you threatening to take the life of its holder, knowing full well that your wellspring of thoughts could truly change the world if only you could just get it out?

• known what you wanted to say but couldn't say it, for fear that what you would say could cause a brushfire in the room that could consume you and those around you?

• known that said brushfire was a risk you had to take, because it would be better than the fire burning inside you, creating such intense heat and pressure that the valve you call your mouth could no longer be clamped shut because the word-steam threatened to blow it wide open?

Why is it that, when expressed in this way, an inner-conflict of passion and insecurity sounds like something akin to what a two-year-old goes through when their self-will and curiosity develops before their language centers do?

I'm just musing now -- no real topic to ground me. But then, that's what brushfires are like -- they spread randomly, letting the wind blow them this way or that, without a real reason for existence except that someone or something sparked them into being.

I feel sparked. I feel alive and on fire! But unlike the wildfire, I feel in charge of my direction. I know where I'm headed, even if I don't know exactly how I'll get there. That uncertainty accompanying certainty leaves me with a feeling of exhiliration!

Have you ever...

• let the words blow the lid off of your well-groomed exterior, spilling out into your perfectly ordered world, messing up the polished floors and getting on everyone around you that you are sure will not like the inconvenience of your mess on their shoes? Yet when the words settle, and the adrenaline leaves you after the pressure is relieved, you worry what the fallout will be, only to not have any fallout to worry about?

A responsibility I've learned is mine is to not worry about what others will do, say, or think in reaction to my active participation in the world. Because when the dust settles after I've done my thing it becomes apparent that I'm worrying about nothing. Worry is a thief that steals your purpose, steals your confidence, and leaves you in fear of unreality. We all have something to contribute, without which the world would be incomplete. Worry is not only an enemy of the individual, but to the whole.

Yet it's there for a reason. Worry was planted somehow. Bounded discourse? Paternalism? Racism? Communism? Ism, schisms -- worry invades within after being birthed by -isms without. The only way to stop it is to ...

stop. To be a rebel, to take claim of your education, to break all the bounds on your discourse. And not just for the sake of it, but for the good, well-reasoned, responsible contribution to the world that you were born to make.

http://notes-inside-my-head।blogspot.com/

I had to post this link to a lovely blog from a new mum in London. It's postpartum hilarity, to which I relate well.

In fact, some of what she said related to (or at least reminded me of) some recent philosophical reading we've done around the bean-shaped table. Allow me to copy and paste:

People, it seems, need routine, whether they know it or not, whether it's good for them or not. Following a routine is comforting. We know what's coming next when we're in a routine. No big surprises. No big changes. We can relax. Sit back. Turn on the TV. Crack open another packet of biscuits. Slowly, slowly our routines settle us, de-stress us, relax us... and turn us into over-weight spuds with no will power, no social life and a craving for cheetos.

Our new friend, blogger Sparx, is talking about her baby's routine and about the routine of people crowding onto the Tube merely because it's the tube they always take (despite the human crush and all its accompanying odors; despite the fact that another one will be along in 3-5 minutes), and somehow that got me to thinking about the routine of education.

According to Paolo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, traditional education takes on a 'narrative' nature, in which one narrates -- the teacher, whom Freire calls the Subject -- and others sit and patiently listen. These are the students, also known by Freire as the Objects. Even in the handy labels he bestows, it's apparent that Freire sees education in this traditional, broken sense, to be happening to the students, rather than something in which they actively participate.

To hear Freire tell it, this passive education is grievous to the Objects, while it deifies the Subject. He describes timid listeners who are subjugated in every way to the teacher, and a teacher who sets education's agenda for the students through rote memorization and static, lifeless facts.

I should stop here to clarify: I like what Freire has to say. I agree with his observations. But I would posit that people -- being creatures of routine -- grow accustomed to this education-as-usual, and are not really complaining. Not that education-as-usual is acceptable and profitable. It's just that Subjects and Objects alike have grown accustomed to the narrative routine. If we weren't creatures of habit, this classroom routine of give-and-give (teacher to students) would not have developed, nor would it last. But it does. Case in point: Elementary math is taught differently than the way I learned. Long division is no longer long, but clustered. I found myself grumbling inside when I couldn't answer one of my son's homework questions in that framework; I wondered allowed what they were teaching him when I embarked on explaining how long division is really done. His math experience isn't fitting the routine developed for me in the fourth grade. Instead it was retrofitted to function better for its students today. And I think that is good -- but also not, because it isn't well-rounded enough to accommodate an already-established society that these kids will grow up and be asked to work in.

The "banking" system of education, as Freire calls it -- in which the Subject makes deposits of his or her knowledge into the Objects' mind-accounts -- could be likened to television. The box flickers and prattles as it receives megahertz of entertainment, which in turn happens before the eyes of a passive watcher. Behind those eyes the mind remains passive and inactive. It would seem that Freire esteems the narrative character education has developed little higher, or even on the same level.

While we know our minds suffer gray-rot while we partake of our habitual programs, we develop routines centered on our viewing schedule. Even my favorite new, witty-wise blogger, Sparx, admits to this. She closed her above-quoted entry with these words:

All these questions. I'd like to continue this post and perhaps find some sort of answer but House has started and we watch it faithfully every week... god forbid you ask us to change.

I think some memorization and fact-depositing is necessary. The basic tenets of science and mathematics do not change (or at least not without intensive scrutiny and peer review) and truthfully, asking "why?" can at times make a student bonkers. The Krebs Cycle is what it is, there's no real explanation for its existence, only an accepting and memorizing. The same can be said for pi and the hypotenuse formula and for Avogadro's number ("Why aren't there 7.25 x 10^23 atoms in a mole?" just isn't a question up for discussion.) History should be taught as it happened, not reframed for retelling. I could go on, but I won't...

I don't feel my education is happening to me in this narrative "banking-system" sense, even in the midst of a semester full of facts and laws and scientific theory. While I don't doubt that Subjects and Objects share the campus with me every minute of every day, this is not my experience. Perhaps experience is what separates me from the masses of Objects. Since my return to academia at 34, I have been fascinated with every subject I've encountered. Something my husband said to me a few weeks ago stuck with me. I was frustrated with a recent chemistry test grade. I had worked hard preparing for it, and walked away from the test confident that I had scored well, only to make a D. I was devastated, and in way of comfort my husband said, "I know how hard this is for you, especially considering how interested you are in the subject." Nobody would have said that to me in high school, as I was extremely vocal in my loathing for the sciences. But now, even chemistry is intriguing. I am an explorer seeking ancient treasure, a detective in search of hidden clues, an innovator on the trail of the latest-greatest invention -- every day that I attend classes or crack books or work calculations. And while I do leave some lectures feeling full enough to rip at the seams, I am no meek receptacle.

Nonetheless, I'm not blind to our education system's flaws. Teaching to the test is a hot-button topic in our home. My 4th-grader just finished his latest batch of TAKS tests. He's a brilliant student and has scored nothing lower than an A this year. He's also a non-traditional learner, as is his 2nd-grade brother. Fourth grade seems to be the first year his glorious potential has been on full display for his teachers; up until this year, they've seen talent and extreme intelligence, but only bits of it peeking through uncontrolled distraction and procrastination. I would counter that he was bored and unchallenged, that the teacher hasn't found his ENGAGE button yet. We nominated him for the gifted students program in hopes of catching his interest, only to have his teacher give him a poor recommendation because he wasn't completing assignments along with the rest of the class. It was that last eye-opening move from his 3rd-grade teacher that finally pressed his button, it would seem; he hasn't been late on a single assignment and has impressed his teachers enough this year to start the nomination process without any encouragement from me.

Has he finally come into his own in the classroom -- or has he just learned how to play The Game? The latter would only be negative if it aenesthetizes him and turns his education into routine. I believe you can play The Game well and remain a full partner in the educational process.

Meanwhile, little brother is already in the gifted program, having shown himself to be extremely ... ohh, let's call it ... unique. He is definitely a creative genius by many accounts. Nobody would argue his very obvious giftedness. But he is falling into some of the same procrastination traps that his brother fell for, and what's more, he reads 'below level' for his age group. Who actually sets the level and how is beyond me, but my little genius is below it. Lately we've noticed that the idiosyncracies of speech we once thought he'd grow out of have grown with him, and it dawned on me that they were probably affecting his reading grade. In 2nd grade, students are judged by how fluently they can read aloud, but if a student manifests tongue-thrust and other speech difficulties that weigh down fluency, it seems they can score below level. All the while they are reading long books with complex plots from the same series their older sibling reads -- for leisure -- as my son does.

So while I fully expect my children to learn how to function in the system in which they find themselves, to go with the flow when necessary, I also expect the system to grow, shift, and change shape in order to accommodate those within it, for which it exists. I think Freire would agree that the teachers -- the entire educational system, for that matter -- serve the students, not the other way around. My sons are not objects that meekly flip the lid of their skulls back so that an all-knowing teacher can pour a pre-approved knowledge-broth into them. We struggle to mold a teachable attitude in our children that is fully balanced with enough confidence to remain inquisitive, curious, and unafraid.

Wearing clothes at home -- Covering, part 2

In my last post I talked about covering my faith in my day-to-day life, around those that don't share my beliefs. When one compares covering a part of identity to covering the body with clothing, it's almost understandable that one should cover when away from home, moving about in the day. I don't know about you, but when I get home I like to get comfortable. There's nothing like undressing for a relaxing hot bath and a soft robe at the end of the day. But what if we were required by social custom to wear professional wear -- say, pantyhose and uncomfortable stiff suits -- while in the 'comfort' of our own homes? I'd have to wonder where the word comfort actually fits in that scenario.

I sometimes feel the need to cover even while around fellow believers, or to dress in stiff suits while at home with family. While it's easy to lump all Christians together into one category -- where, incidentally, we should all be, living together in unity -- one must take into account the formation of denominations. Denominations are delineations along faultlines of disagreement, separating Christians into not-so-tidy subcategories. It seems that the presence of a teaching in the Bible isn't enough for it to be true; unfortunately we have to analyze and interpret the Bible, and then fit it around what we want to believe.

I believe that spiritual things are timeless, that while my contemporary life is circumstantially different than the lives of those who wrote the Bible, I have an eternal relationship with the same God as they did, so we share a vital commonality. In that, I have access to the same spiritual, miraculous, even mystical experience that they did.

Now that statement, as broad and undefined as it is, can cause some serious doubt about my hold on reality. Therefore, it's not discussed much -- especially with Christians -- unless I'm confident that I'm with people that share the same conviction. While that belief seems (to me) almost central to faith in God, many people disagree.

I was raised Baptist, where I was taught specifically that God no longer does the same things He did while the early church was being established, as recorded in Acts. This doctrine explains that miraculous signs were necessary for forming a strong network of people to call the church, and that in our modern age, miracles aren't necessary to convince people, who have been exposed to Chirstian teachings all their lives, to believe in God. When I started exploring this on my own, I found scripture that ran exactly contrary to that teaching. The further I went in my research, the more I wanted to share my findings with those that were teaching something that was starting to look untrue.

That was my first experience with the pressure to cover my beliefs. I found that you have to be careful what you say to a person about something they've believed for a long time, because it can be interpreted as an attack on their identity, and it hurts like a personal attack; therefore, they are prone to pushing back or even lashing out. This isn't exclusive to matters of faith, but can be observed in many areas and circles of influence. Dropping an untimely and dissenting word into a conversation, even if its intention is harmless, can be like dropping a grenade into a foxhole.

Another example. I belong to a book club comprised of close ladyfriends from my church. Over a year ago, I was hosting our monthly gathering. As is our custom, the host chooses the book, and I had chosen a collection of essays penned by a surgeon. Fresh in the headlines was the Terry Schaivo case, and I felt it would be subject-appropriate to discuss the case in light of what we had just read in this doctor's account. My personal belief is that the essence of Ms. Schaivo was suffering when kept alive by a feeding tube. While her life is precious and priceless, her life was not being lived in her condition. I believe that her family, though good-intentioned, was keeping her spirit trapped. Starvation may not be the humane way of ending a trapped existence such as hers, but it was eternally more sympathetic than continuing a life in which over an hour's worth of video was taken to get several seconds of what appeared to be a sentient response to a baloon. I found out that holding that belief put me in the extreme minority in this particular circle; and the other view was so passionately held that I backed away and covered my dissenting view quickly.

So covering is an activity I pursue while among those with whom I share a common belief system, too. Huh. Perhaps I shouldn't be so concerned with how my beliefs are received by those around me. Maybe they don't care as much as I perceive they do.

Legal cases concerning covering and discrimination notwithstanding, maybe daily collisions with covering pressure that others experience are perceived bigger than they are, too.

Hi, my name is Corey, and I cover.

Covering. The pressure to conform, to assimilate, to behave in a way that plays down the prevalance of a "social stigma." That, according to 60's sociologist Erving Goffman, as cited by Kenji Yoshino in 2006.

In contrast is the phenomenon of passing, which indicates that a person is pretending to be something that he/she is not -- or pretends to not be something that he/she, in fact, is. A closet homosexual, a secret sadist, a business professional hiding a cocaine addiction. In times not-so-distant, light-skinned African Americans felt the need to pass themselves as white in order to excel professionally and socially, without stigma.

Passing is keeping a facet of one's identity or lifestyle hidden. Covering is downplaying a known attribute. It's public knowledge, it's accepted, but it shouldn't be flaunted.

While I understood (and sympathized) that many in our society have felt pressured to cover, I thought I couldn't relate. I'm middle-class, white, raised in a generation after women fought and won the right to equal opportunity. Additionally, my nature is very W-I-S-I-W-I-G -- "what you see is what you get." I've never felt the desire to hide my actual identity. I've passed up several opportunities to cover, that probably would have played to my advantage. It just never occurs to me to live at any other volume than out loud.

Upon reflection, however, it has become apparent to me that I do cover. It's not intentional anymore, because I've been doing it for so long. I'm uncomfortable with it, but I feel it takes great effort to not cover due to force of habit.

I cover by not openly discussing my Christian beliefs for fear that others will be offended. Why? Because I've been asked in many different situations and circles to not be so ... radical ... so outspoken ... so -- so Christian. It's alright to be Christian, just not fanatical.

My first-born son is named Nathan Josiah. Nathan was a prophet and trusted advisor to King David. Josiah was Israel's youngest king, anointed as leader at age 8, credited for serving well. Ancient texts were found under his watch that revealed some of (then) contemporary Israel's practices were offensive to God; Josiah undertook an educational campaign and changed law to remove the offense. The Bible records that peace prevailed in the land while Josiah was king; in the Old Testament account, that is a rare and good report on Israel's history. My husband and I chose our son's names because we want wisdom and discernment for him, attributes for which these historical figures are known.

When my grandfather heard his name, he exclaimed "Well, hell -- why not just name him Jesus Christ?!"

I believe myself to be reasonable, not dogmatic, unobtrusive. I don't force my opinions or values on others, even when I'm open with my faith. I don't condemn people to hell, I try to not criticize or judge. I don't give unasked-for advice. Others, passionate about other causes -- gay rights, recycling, political involvement, supporting public radio, just to name a few -- would be hardpressed to claim the same. I long to share God's unfailing love with others. When I see a person in need, I desperately want to pray for them. What stops me? The stereotype of Christians using their faith as an emotional and intellectual crutch. The undercurrent that charges our society -- a society that exalts in freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of expression -- to feel free to believe, express, and speak whatever you want, so long as it doesn't make anyone else uncomfortable.

I guess I do relate. My faith in God is part of me. My faith says that Christ lives in me; through me and other believers, Jesus still lives among humanity. I guess I do feel the need to cover -- to suppress or downplay a part of my identity, and in doing so I am left feeling disengenuine, lacking integrity. Stigmatized.

My current conclusion regarding covering is that, historically, the pressure is generated customarily, not legislatively (although race discrimination has historically resulted in discriminatory laws, it originated in customary practice.) Christian faith was also customarily embraced and revered in our society. Unfortunately, bigotry hid its ugly face behind religion; some that stood against bigotry felt compelled to reject faith in God as well. The ironic result is practicing Christians feel an unyielding social pressure to downplay the life-altering importance of the hope we place in Jesus Christ, and the mission He left to his followers -- to share the story of His sacrifice and His grace with all of mankind.

Coptic Christians that have fled Muslim persecution in Egypt emigrated to Australia, only to face it there as well. Muslims in the Sudan have rampaged and slaughtered villages, because their populations were Christian. We in America view this with moral outrage, a cluck of the tongue and a shake of the head, and call it a violation of human rights. We, however, are civilized -- instead of killing the outspoken, we merely ask them to hold their tongues and apply social pressure when they do not. Like the Liverpool Central School District in upstate New York, who refused 4th-grader Michaela Bloodgood the constitutional right to give friends (during non-instructional time) a homemade flier the size of a greeting card. The first sentence read, "Hi! My name is Michaela and I would like to tell you about my life and how Jesus Christ gave me a new one." She and her had to go to court to get the opportunity to share these fliers; after she won her case, the school district says it is studying the decision and "reviewing its options." Are they, perhaps, looking for another way to suppress her freedom of speech and force her to cover?

In Bosnia, the religious war vascillates from generation to generation. One generation will see Christians killing Muslims and forcing the survivors into exile; the next wave of warfare will show the angry Muslim children grown up to seek revenge on the Christians for this injustice. It's a self-perpetuating cycle. What this latest vengeful generation doesn't realize is that the Christians who killed their Muslim fathers were reaping revenge on them for the death of their fathers. In America, organized and independent bigotry has been endorsed, or silently overlooked, by churches and their ministers. It wasn't uncommon for deacons, church members in good standing, even pastors to belong to the Ku Klux Klan in the deep south. Jesus didn't bring a message of violence or hatred, but of love, grace, and peace. The true message of Christianity was polluted with hate by flawed people, overshadowed by those who would use God to make others subordinate to their thirst for power. People that hate in the name of God misrepresent God. Unfortunately, the frustration of their victims has turned to rejecting God, His grace, and His followers. Are we in our own self-perpetuating cycle?

Personal Responsibility

This term keeps coming up in my thoughts. I was just asking myself what I thought was weighty enough to deserve my blog-attention, and "personal responsibility" came out louder than anything else (only narrowly drawing my attention from "Why do philosophers say so much to say so little?") So I'll ruminate a bit on personal responsibility. Grab your life-preservers, folks; I feel a stream of consciousness a-comin'... It may not be too deep, but it might move along swiftly over some rough patches.

In my previous entry I linked critical thinking to personal responsibility. It is every person's responsibility to consider all sides of an issue before forming a belief around it. The trick of critical thinking is to look around the slant and bias, beyond all the turns and twists and spins of an issue, and truly look at the issue in its raw, natural state. This takes more time and concentration than one is able to devote to any one subject on CNN's Headline News. I wonder, then -- is it is truly possible to form an educated, valuable opinion through precise critical thinking in our soundbyte-driven world? If our critical thinking abilities are hindered by our headline-news exposure, our decision-making abilities handicapped by information malnutrition, is it appropriate to call our media into account for poor decisions made by populations of voters and poll responders? Or would that be the news-consumers shrugging off our personal responsibility onto the media?

Personal responsibility and accountability seem to go hand-in-hand. Could that mean that we as human beings are unable to always assume personal responsibility if we didn't think somebody important to us would call us on the carpet?

It seems that to many (if not all) philosophers, the question does not concern the validity of personal responsibility, but rather to which person(s) we are responsible. Ethical egoists would say that I am responsible and accountable only to myself. Buddhists would say that I hold responsibility to all in the world to which I belong. Solipsism would seem to agree with the ethical egoist, since the existence of my consciousness is all that my cognition proves. Utilitarianism would split the responsibility right down the middle, making me accountable to the greatest happiness -- for all humanity, not just myself.

If all subjects taken on by philosophers are wells as deep as personal responsibility, perhaps it takes a plethora of words to draw them out. Then again, should our teachers and philosophers hold a personal responsibility to speak and write in a clear concise fashion, so as to more effectively reach our soundbyte generations?

Jesus Camp, Culture War, and the lies we love to believe

I was at the movie shop about a month ago with my husband, perusing their selections. We were actually trying to choose between something semi-intellectual -- Pollock if I recall -- and something altogether more worthy of our time -- Idiocracy. But I came across a documentary I had heard some whispers about and was curious when I saw the lone copy on the shelf. As soon as I picked up Jesus Camp and flipped it over to read the liner notes, I got this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach -- you know the feeling I'm sure, as if you've been punched in the gut or are bracing for an impending blow. It's a knowing, that although your rational self is telling you to give it a fair shake before making judgements, your instinctual self is aware that this is not something you want to even entertain. So naturally I did what any intellectually-honest person who has ever had that sick feeling before would have done...

I put it down and walked away. Pollock won out that night.

A couple of weeks later, Jesus Camp came up in philosophy class. I still had not seen it, but I got that same sickened feeling just listening to conversation about it. It paralyzed me throughout the discussion. I couldn't get past this grieving sensation in my center to put together two meaningful words to contribute. Mainly because of the context in which the subject arose. We started class discussion on the concept of freedom as it applied to children forced into conscription in Liberia.

I still haven't seen it (and probably won't), but I know better now why I am so bothered by it. There are at least two reasons -- maybe even three. At least one comes from what few scenes I have seen at youtube.com, and another from the reaction of my peers; as small a segment of population the classroom may be, I'm sure the opinions and reactions therein are reasonably representative of much of the viewing audience.

First, some background. I am very involved in my church, which happens to be a nontraditional western Christian church. By that I mean we lean towards charismatic Christianity. While we have our quirks as all flawed people do, I'd say that we're not one of the wierdly cultic charismatic congregations. The spirit, mission, and message of Cathedral of Praise is not only hospitable, it is rational and completely based on the Bible and not loose interpretations. I am not a blind follower, and don't take every message at face value. I trust my pastor -- or else I'd attend a different church -- but I also trust myself to be able to understand the scriptures, to learn from God for myself because of my personal communion with God. I'm also a member of the children's ministry team; I have the opportunity to teach the kids once a month, and I take our group to our summer camp each year.

Adding my involvement in children's ministry and camps to my gut instinct when I touched the dvd at the movie store, equals a state of alert when the documentary came up in class discussion.

From snippets that I saw, that particular camp is not representative of all Christian summer camps. Not even all charismatic summer camps, or all charismatic children's ministry. The camp proprietor mentioned the culture war waged in America, and her intention to train the children to battle effectively against evil influence in popular culture. She said she wanted to see American children as radical about their faith as Muslim children are about theirs' -- ready to lay down their lives for it. This is very strong language, leaving the speaker open to misinterpretation, as if she were teaching Christian kids how to strap on explosives and walk into the local 7-Eleven. Judging by the reactions around the table in philosophy class, misinterpretation abounds.

Here's the deal. Most people in the western world that have grown bitter towards God and Christianity have done so because they haven't seen or understood true Christianity. Instead, they've seen Christian egoism. Religious laws and constructs make it so that one must follow a system of rules and regulations, so that true faith is subordinated to empty ritual and activity. Probably the most misunderstood person in all of history is God, and it's so easy for us to reject anything or anyone that defies our understanding. Either that, or readjust it so that it conveniently fits into our narrow understanding. That, in my humble opinion, is what has happened to the western church and its representation of God. Our mental icon of God is a great Patriarch with a flowing white beard, ready to pass judgement on humanity for all its evildoing. In reality, one of God's names in the Old Testament (for there are many names in the Jewish language, used to describe God) is interpreted as "the many-breasted one." It describes God's abundant provision and feminine capacity for maternal nurture. It also refutes any images of God looking for a chance to pummel us for screw-ups, replacing such images with a loving God wanting to hug us when we're down.

Humanity has conveniently categorized God's nature, and has made rules for following God, calling it "God's will." And many of us have fallen for it, assuming that God actually said what some people through history have said that God said. Reactions to this presumed word of God have ranged from blind following (without honestly researching and contemplating it) to bitter rejection of the message. Unfortunately, God is rejected along with the misrepresentation. And that's what saddens me, for that full rejection involves so much -- not just the hell that we've heard about (all too much) but also life, here and now. I'm saddened that my God is so woefully misrepresented and misinterpreted by those that would say that they are 'His servants' -- and also that so many of my peers would be so intellectually-dishonest to reject faith and God outright, without a fair amount of research. Personal responsibility comes into play here. Too many people that I've discoursed with throughout my life (NOT anyone I know currently, let me be clear) have based their disbelief in God on what other people have done or said, without doing any of the research (ie: reading the Bible) for themselves. That is the antithesis of critical thinking, and to my mind it's shirking personal responsibility.

Back to the "culture war". I hold very little regard for the "culture war". For while many things go on in celebrity pop culture that may raise my eyebrow, they are of little eternal significance. Trends change and sensibilities swing like a pendulum. Behavior is temporary, because life is temporary. What is eternal is grace. Grace is unmerited pardon and favor, and that's what my loving God offers. Grace removes all indiscretions of behavior and corrects them gently. The real war is against grace. Again, it defies our understanding. Probably because we labor under such self-inflicted guilt that we can't imagine the concept. So someone influential along the way struggled with forgiving (probably him-)self or someone else, and began to subtly change the message of God's grace or leave it out altogether. Some perverted form of gatekeeping ushered religion and legalism into our culture, and embittered generations have sprung up because of it.

And the real war doesn't view children as recruits for one side or the other. It's not good vs. evil like the comic books would have us believe. The real war rages over the souls of children, of the people they grow to become. Will they believe in God and grace, or will they reject it because of some misrepresentative message, or some person that let them down?

From what I've seen -- which admittedly isn't much at all (am I intellectually-dishonest by not watching Jesus Camp?) -- God and Christianity are being misrepresented in the film. Either by the camp itself, the people showcased in the documentary, or the filmmakers. After all, what redeeming qualities does the camp leader have that were left on the editing-room floor? But more of that momentarily. The misrepresentation saddens me. And the general public's willingness to believe the misrepresentation saddens me. It's all too convenient to say, "No thank you," to something beyond the scope of our imagination, to reject it from our reality, because to accept it would mean that we might have to change our reality.

The third sickening thought was that a film labeled "documentary" would be viewed automatically as an honest portrayal, as if a requirement for the name "documentary" was to not lie or misrepresent at all. Reality would prove otherwise. Filmmakers can film 5 people saying the exact same thing, and editors can fix it so that none of them said anything alike, but all of them support the slant of the filmmaker. A documentary's message isn't what the people on camera are saying, but what the filmmaker is saying. We cannot be naive enough to think otherwise.

truthloop

Disclaimer: I am not a lifelong student of philosophy. In fact, I'm very new to its study. I don't think the term "discipline" fits into the landscape of my philosophical knowledge at all.

That being said, I was surprised the other day to stumble over what I think is an interesting trend, and I made an observation: Humanity is in a loop.

Long before humanity grew exponentially in knowledge through many amazing technological steps (fire, tools, the wheel, steam and combustion engines, flight, supercomputing -- you know, the usual discoveries) faith was the foundation for life. Societies were built around religions, some so complex that many gods were believed to touch a person's life several times daily. Rituals honoring and placating the different deities permeated life. Rarely did people question faith in their gods. After Christianity overtook Rome with monotheism, gods were ousted in favor of God. Still, faith remained unquestioned.

Even in Descartes' day, faith in God remained (for the most part) unchallenged. When people were increasingly turning to reason from superstition to explain life's ups and downs, God remained, by and large, unquestioned. While some of his (unnamed) contemporaries said that God did not exist based upon our uncertain existence, Descartes refused to agree. In other words, God's existence would go unquestioned, but he would use reason to explain that God does, indeed, exist and is involved in daily life.

As we advanced along an intellectual and inventive timeline, our once unflappable faith began flinching. Today doubt is more common than faith, and logic dictates we start our exploration of reality outside of God. After all, if humanity can split the atom and travel to the moon and back, we no longer need to rely on religion to explain daily phenomena. Yet thinkers throughout generations -- from Plato until present-day philosophers -- have searched for truth beyond what we can see or do on our own.

The goal of our search has remained truth for as long as we could put two words together in an intelligible sentence. I noticed the other day that it seems, in our search for hidden truth, we've been digging around the perimeter of the same mountain. I say this because many of the ideas expressed by different generations, cultures, and disciplines -- be it philosophy or science -- are reworkings of the same ideas. The following is by no means an exhaustive collection of ideas, but a general chronology of thought that I've looked at and have found remarkably similar in content.

• Plato taught that reality lies beyond the sensory information we receive from our eyes, hands, ears, etc. Thus, he uncovered a spiritual realm -- a different dimension from that in which we live our daily lives.
• Hinduism teaches that there is the One that is greater than individual self, and that all life is interconnected within this Brahman, or the One. Hinduism goes on to explain that humanity's highest goal is enlightenment -- Moksha -- which is unity with Brahman, and freedom of consciousness from limitations of our physical reality.
• A Jewish prophet had a vision, recorded in the Old Testament, of God's relationship with the world as a "wheel within a wheel." God is in everything, and everything is in God. The Bible also teaches, "In Him we live, move, and have our being." In other words, God is everywhere always and at every point in time, all at the same time, rather than leading a sedentary life seated on a throne deciding who gets into Heaven, and who gets punished while on Earth. When one believes in God and the teachings of the Bible, it follows, since God made humanity in His image, humanity exists in the same way -- across dimensions, so to speak -- only we haven't escaped our limited physical senses in order to realize or experience this multifaceted existence.
• String Theory, while still not agreed on as an empirically-sound theory by physicists, describes a reality split into different dimensions from what we can physically sense or observe. (It's interesting to note that several contemporary Christian teachers are beginning to link the Bible's teachings about God to quantum physics.)

I find this a remarkable thread of commonality running through all of these thoughts, which were conceived of in different cultures, different times, different disciplines. If, in fact, thoughts are essentially reframed across generations and geography, could it be that the truth that has always been sought hasn't changed, and our need for this truth is, also, unchanged? That, in fact, the questions all thinkers of all cultures and generations have asked have already been answered?

Governments and authorities have orchestrated favorable evolutions of religions, philosophies, and even histories to serve their purposes. Despite these rewritings, people seem to come back to at least similar thoughts of a multifaceted reality, existence after our physical lives end, the nature of Deity, and other big concepts. Humanity's capacity for confusing the truth is pretty amazing -- but then, so is our diligence to continually uncover it.

Descartes and pms

Approximately two weeks into my reproductive month I find myself losing patience with life much quicker than usual. Things that are normally only small annoyances are unacceptably enraging to me. During this time, my otherwise adorable children are atrocious little beasts, my lovingly attentive husband is insensitive to the point of rudeness and neglect, and it seems that every outside energy force is conspiring against me and my unmanageable schedule (which is, at every other hormonally-harmonious time, quite in hand.)

I spent about two hours reading two of Rene Descartes' Meditations during my most recent week of chemical chaos. Naturally I was perturbed. Nevermind that perturbance is is my mental address during that week -- I was justifiably perturbed at Descartes for what I would label a supreme waste of time and mental energy, both mine and his. Only a man would spend so much of his waking time contemplating whether or not he was dreaming. Only a man would need to ask himself whether or not his hands were really there at the end of his arms, instead of making sure those hands were busy earning a living, or creating, or coddling a child, or loving a wife.

He starts by telling his readers that he has "opportunely freed my mind from all cares [and am happily disturbed by no passions], and since I am in the secure possession of leisure in a peaceable retirement" ... oh, boy. To this hormone-addled, overstretched mother, wife, and full-time student, he may as well be saying that he's stoned out of his mind and is either too old or too wasted to be distracted from his urgent mental undertaking by the cute little maid that brings him his breakfast -- or maybe she brought him something else besides breakfast before he started his mental cleanse, therefore he's drained himself of all 'passions'.

I had to leave Descartes alone with his musings on several occasions to stand over my 7-year-old, ensuring his silly antics stopped before he disturbed his brother enough to get him pummeled. When I was satisfied that said 7-year-old really would finish his 40 minutes worth of homework after three hours of stall tactics and that the brother would indeed not pile-drive him into the living room floor, I returned to Descartes, who wasn't any closer to a conclusion than when I left him.

So, if all that we know is a dream -- an illusion -- what, then, is pms?? One can only pray that it, too, is a deception. Oh, but what a cruel deception, and to what end? That women everywhere would be tortured by those she loves, and in turn torment them with fits of rage and outrageous accusations of mistreatment? That we would have to, in a week's time, return grovelling and embarrassed, to repent of our words and actions? What sort of malignant demon would do that to us?!

Eve Browning Cole countered Descartes' deconstruction of reality and concrete evidence of existence is his consciousness, with feminist philosphy: the relational self is the bedrock of existence. We know we exist because we are involved with others, they recognize that we exist, and we recognize their existence and their intertwining effects on our own being. For Cole and other feminist philosophers (who have, undoubtedly viewed the world through premenstrual fog) interconnectivism -- not solipsism -- should be the starting point of thought.

So I'm not the only woman that thought this Frenchman's musing is off-based and ridiculous.

In that frame of mind, it's not just my senses, my emotions, or my body contriving to deceive me; this truly is my existence. I know nothing beyond the pent-up, uncontrollable rush of chaos, the overwhelming load of life, and the constant questioning, "What's wrong with me?!" If the foundation of existence truly is as Descartes established -- "I think, therefore, I am" -- then I am a world of trouble at least once monthly, because I think all kinds of irrational thoughts.

If nothing else, pms proves that the mind is completely interconnected with the body. I believe that I exist of three co-equal components: mind, spirit, and body. I cannot prioritize one over the other. I live in my body; this is my vehicle in this life, and right now -- while I breathe and walk the earth -- I cannot separate my mind or my spirit from it. My body is not a second-class citizen to my mind or my spirit. My mind is not supreme to my spirit, nor is my spirit limited by the imperfect understanding of my mind. While my mind strives to understand proven points of science, my spirit soars to heights and levels of vivid imaginings that are unique and exciting and heretofore unseen! But for now -- while I inhabit my space on Earth and in the lives of those around me -- my body, mind, and spirit are as entwined into one being as I am entwined with my family, friends, and others in my life and around it. And if it takes something as twisted, confusing and wrenching as monthly hormonal upheaval to prove that to me or anyone else -- so be it!