The Death of a Childhood Delight

Dearest General Mills,

I am writing this strongly worded letter to protest against your meddling with that most beloved of childhood fruit snacks: Shark Bites.  I just now opened a packet of Shark Bites and am looking at them sitting menacingly on my desk, mocking the destruction of my formative years.  Everyone has been redesigning their packaging, and apparently everyone sucks at it.  The new Tropicana cartons?  Suck.  The new Pepsi cans?  Suck.  But you, General Mills, you didn’t change your packaging; you changed your colors!

These colors are not the colors I grew up with.  Where’s the yellow?  What is this pastel purple doing in here?  Blue?  I don’t remember blue!  And I didn’t get a single white one.  In better days, I would have bitched about it – but now, now you change the flavor of the white one on me!  It has gone too far!  Where is your sense of decency, General Mills?!  Now I don’t know what kind of fresh hell to expect every time I bite into one of those artificially flavored predators.  It’s madness, General Mills!  Chaos!  Anarchy!  If I don’t know what flavor fruit drop I’m eating based solely on its color, well, then, I just don’t know what I can believe in anymore.  Up becomes down, black becomes white, and a delicious mystery-flavored majestic Great White Shark Bite becomes shitty fake orange flavor.  You are single handedly destroying all that’s good and decent in that cutthroat world of children’s fruit snacks.

Mark my words, General Mills, this aggression will not stand!  You are tampering with perfection and the people will revolt.  Your cereal is undeniably great, but this…this is too much.  I am disappointed in you, General Mills.  Gushers and Shark Bites are the last bastions of the truly great fruit snacks.  Strike that – were the last bastions.  Gushers are still standing, but I’m afraid it’s lights out for Shark Bites.  They are no more, they have ceased to be.  They’ve expired and gone to meet their maker.  They’re a stiff!  Bereft of life, they rest in peace, soon to be pushing up the daisies.  Their metabolic processes are now history.  They’ve kicked the bucket, snuffed it, shuffled off their mortal coil, run down the curtain and join the bleedin’ choir invisible!  These are an ex-fruit snack!  Are you happy now, General Mills?  Are you pleased with yourself?  You should be.  Thanks for a whole lotta nothin’.

Sincerely,

Water Chestnut, III

simply not a time for wit.

I have an amazing husband.

And I’m sure a lot of people say that as a nice quaint overview of how their husband is, but I really mean it.

My husband keeps me far more grounded than I would be on my own. He makes me feel beautiful. He loves me for my intelligence and humor. He works hard trying to provide for us and our ever growing family.

When he comes home from work he never strays from helping with housework, which, these days, means doing 75% of it. Spending time with me and the pups. Making sure I have everything I need or think I may want. He will run an errand at the drop of a hat. I have to censor what I say around him, because sometimes I’ll think out loud about wanting something, and he’s suddenly in the car rushing to go get it.

Because of the constant adoration, I was always worried that he never had the time he needed. After late night conversations, I wished he would love himself nearly as much as he loved me. But I just hoped and prayed that the love I had for him would suffice.

Unfortunately, it was made abundantly clear in the late Thursday evening that the infinite amount of love I have to bestow upon this man, will never fill a missing part that needs to be recovered and restored.

Friday evening the most amazing person I’ve ever met went and picked up his first chip, for 24 hours of sobriety, along side our dear friend who has been on this journey for quite some time.

The vice had been manifesting itself for the last couple of years. Never constant, continuous, blatant drinking. He never missed work, because he’s too responsible. He still kept up with the million boyfriendly/husbandly duties around our home and in our relationship.

But there were binges. Becoming more frequent. After worrying, there were discussions of just cutting it out of his life for awhile, start over fresh, but a few weeks later there would be another.

There was always a reason. Stress, boredom, hints of depression, but he was going to fix it. Because he always has a way of taking on the entire world. He is always so determined to make it right. Especially for me, especially for our family.

And he would fix it. He would get focused. He would redirect. He would communicate. He didn’t have to go back to being his loving self, because he never left that state. I don’t think it’s in his nature to ever not be the loving, doting partner he’s been for the last five years.

Thursday was different. For the first time there was no excuse. There was no reason to show up a couple hours after leaving the house teetering back and forth. He told me he wasn’t drunk in slurred words. He looks sad. He looked defeated. Like the world had won, and he had just as soon given up because there was no use fighting anymore.

And a part of me had given up too. There had been ultimatums the last go around. I promised him the next time it happened, he would no longer be living in our craftsmen at the end of the quiet street. I called his parents, he was far too drunk to drive, and once his dad got there, I retreated to a place of anger and fear. Wondering how our lives ended up here, and, more importantly, where they were heading.

We spoke that night on the phone. More me yelling than anything else. The next day I still had so much anger inside. I was so frustrated with him and myself. Letting all those other times go by because I loved him and knew he was sincere. And more importantly, that somewhere in there, he was sincerely hurt. But something, someone. An entity I knew he had yet to figure out and battle. So I would remind him about the millions of brilliant qualities he possessed and hope this time, once again, my love could conquer all.

Friday he came over for dinner. Much less a screaming match, as a conversation plagued with tears. Afterward he went to that AA meeting, picked up his chip, and called me later for a status report.

He’s officially realized he has a problem. One that goes beyond the strains of working too hard, and not having much to show for it or the fears of bringing a new life into this world when you still don’t feel like you know quite where you belong.

Most importantly, he’s realized that although he wants to carry the weight of the world on his back, it will do nothing but snap him in two. Finally, he told me Saturday night after his second meeting, that he realized he can’t do it alone. He’s realized the importance of a support system and hopefully he’s realized the fallacies of what a real man is/does and how that has put many before him in the same situation.

I joked last night as we were talking on the phone before bed how it felt like we were sixteen in high school again. We had spent most of the day together before his 8 o’clock meeting. He went home, ate dinner, and watched t.v. with him mom. And here we were whispering on our phones together, hoping we don’t get caught because we were supposed to be asleep hours ago.

I hope through this process we do begin to reverse the hands of time. I hope we can remember how to be resilient in most situations. For us to look at life wide eyed again. To diminish this strange level of fear that never existed in the world of curfews and finals. Most importantly, I hope both of us learn how to once and for all break down the walls, allow our bleeding hearts to be open and honest, even if the result is complete and utter travesty, and wake up the next day ready and willing to do it all again.

-krystle

Self-Esteem and the Lack Thereof

Let’s have a talk about self-esteem.  And why I have none.  I am sure a lot of people are going to see this entry as a pity party.  If you are one of those people, you’re wrong.  The thing with my lack of self-esteem is that it doesn’t matter what anyone else says, it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference.  The problem is that I know that I have no reason to feel good about myself.

How about we start with school?  At the moment I have a 3.90 GPA.  That is a result of having gotten two A-’s since I started school.  This is a decent average, though not what I wanted.  Both of them came from classes in which I know I could have done better.  At the same time, however, every A I’ve gotten I can only explain as luck.  There were a couple of classes in which I am sure most if not all of the other students got A’s as well.  People tell me I am intelligent, then why, I ask, can I not have an intelligent conversation and why can I not participate in class without experiencing nearly crippling stage fright, as it were?  The only reason I’ve ever been able to swing A’s is that once I get a few weeks to digest information, I can write a decent enough paper about it.  But on the spot answers?  Forget about it.  That kind of quick logic is something that I completely lack, and it’s something that, in my mind, is what makes someone intelligent.  I, on the other hand, must have at least a few days to come up with a decent answer and only once I’ve had the chance to check the relevant sources.  It makes me feel like nothing of what I say or write is actually something that I have come to on my own, part of my own thought process.  It is only the outcome of reinterpreting everything someone else has done, and sometimes not even that.  Actually, most of the time it’s me just regurgitating someone else’s argument.

Here’s the problem with this, people actually think I am capable of excelling in these academic endeavors.  To tell the truth, I experience nothing short of abject terror every time I take a test or turn in a paper.  After I applied to grad school, I was sure I had no chance of getting accepted.  After all, my BA was done as a Pre-Ed History major, so I had no kind of experience in doing extensive research or writing anything longer than about fifteen pages.  I’m quite sure I was a bottom of the barrel choice and only made it in by the skin of my teeth.  The same will be true if I get accepted to any of the schools I’m applying to for my doctorate.  And that’s a mighty big if.  Again, people are telling me I’ll have no trouble with it.  I’m not sure they realize how competitive getting into these schools is.  Unless I can manage a doozy of a thesis, which is highly unlikely, I have no chance.  There are people who have been capable of getting published as Masters students.  Sure, those are few and far between, but it’s not like these schools are accepting hundreds of applicants every year.  So here’s why I don’t like people saying that I have no chance of not getting accepted.  It gives me false hope, perhaps even a dash of arrogance.  And then when the acceptance letters don’t start rolling in, I will be crushed.  Partly because I’ll know I’m not good enough, and, well, what the hell am I gonna do with a Masters in History and no hope of a doctorate?  All this work for naught.

Next up, social relations.  I’m going to start this out with a quote from Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977 written by the then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.  I know I quote a lot from him, but it’s what I’ve been reading this summer.  “I must say that my fellow students were very tolerant of me, but in the long run it is not very pleasant to have to live on others’ tolerance.” (p. 26)  I always felt a sort of connection with our Holy Father, arrogant or just plain stupid as that sounds, but that quote really solidified that feeling.  That is more or less the way I have always lived my life (I’m sure he doesn’t still feel that way, what with being the friggin’ pope and all).  Sure, in my younger days it wasn’t as pronounced, but it has steadily gotten worse as the years relentlessly and mercilessly march on.  I am a waste of others’ time, but many are too nice to tell me that to my face.  I would dread to hear what people say of me when I am not around.  Actually, that’s not true.  At times that is something I feel, but mostly I don’t think I’m worth mentioning.  I am only invited to social gatherings perhaps because people feel obligated to, but not because of any desire to see or interact with me.  Just another person on the guest list.

I am very reticent to get into physical appearance.  If anyone read Krystle’s post from yesterday, you will note that she said she loves herself.  I have never felt like that.  The best I can manage is the high end of low.  It seems to fluctuate as my weight fluctuates (I have never been able to maintain a stable weight for more than a few months at a time).  Perhaps it’s because I never get positive feedback (that’s not really the word I want to use, but we’ll go with it), none that I believe at any rate.  Any time friends say something like that, I’m pretty sure the real thoughts go through their heads is “Christ, what a fucking mess.”  I do the best I can with what I have, which is to say nothing, but I know the best that I can manage is tolerable.  I will never be good looking or attractive or pretty or, especially, beautiful to anyone.  I’m doomed to the “it’s not what’s on the outside that counts” remarks.  If I were ever to get fixed up on a blind date, I know I’ll be described as “she’s got a great personality.”  There are more reasons for my feeling this way, but I’m not getting into them because I don’t even like to admit it to myself.

Well, I guess that’s enough for now.  I’m sure a lot of people think this is just fishing for compliments, that I don’t actually feel this way.  Like I said at the beginning, you’d be wrong if you think that.  It’s a miserable way to live out my life, but there’s not much I can do about it other than lie to myself.

Sarah Palin: A Lion Among Thieves

I have been asked by someone dear to me to take on the never ending magic and grace Sarah Palin bestows upon our lives.

That winks for you

Sarah Louise Palin was born February 11, 1964. If they didn’t have the birth records to prove it, I wouldn’t believe it. The way that woman spits out babies and winks to all the hunky men in any room, I wouldn’t peg her a day over thirty. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Lou-Lou (one of the nicknames I have for her because we’re so close) isn’t from the future, sent here to show us what a real woman is supposed to be.

She’s everything I want to be.

Sarah “Foxy for Fifty” Palin is a hunter. Whether it’s the infamous wolverine of the Alaskan Tundra or the baby calf in her next door neighbor’s yard, this lady is shooting it down, slicing it up, and serving it to her 9834 kids back at the ranch. She won’t let the barbed wire fence of liberalism stop her from getting veal normande on the table for her hungry brood. Priorities. Discipline. A great shot. Not giving a damn if what she’s taking does not actually belong to her. Just some things that make this woman an idol to many. Namely me.

I’m going to be honest. I never want to be a soccer mom. I didn’t want to be that mom that spent my entire day simply toting my children from practice to rehearsal to lessons. I didn’t want to have to drive a minivan or an oversized SUV. I was not going to spend the rest of my days in mom jeans.

But then I heard about this “hockey mom.” I can drop my kids off on ATV’s, throw their hockey gear at em, and tell them to be home before the sun sets in six months. I can pull my teenage daughter out of high school when her pregnancy bump starts showing, and I can force her into a potential marriage if I become vice president. Most importantly, I can dress in snazzy suits and have quite the bouffant atop my head.

Now that is the mommy life I can get used to!

It’s recently been in the news that Sarah “45 and Loving it” Palin has resigned from her post as Alaskan Czar (Russian reference!) to step back into the quiet role of wolverine snatcher/pelter. She will not be running for re-election.

And although she broke my heart with those words, I found her speech rather poignant. The way she kept saying the same thing over and over again, to make sure she got her point across. How she feigned confusion to keep that allure of innocence people went nuts over not so long ago. The awkward laughing, stammering, a random “hell yeah!”, I thought it was a true masterpiece.

Unlike those who said “Watching Sarah Palin’s Press Conference on Friday was like watching a drunk seal trying to land a plane, or in basketball terms (which Sarah prefers) like watching a grade-schooler try to score on Kobe while jabbering inanely.” – David Stemler, The Huffington Post

Do you know what I say? I call tom foolery. Oh, and sexism! Sarah Palin misses her mark a few times, and she’s a complete joke? George Bush misses, falls flat on his face a cajillion (real number, even if the spell check doesn’t want to believe it) times, and he’s crowned (I know my American politics) president of these united states? TWICE? Party foul!

That’s like when a guy accidentally spills a drink on someone at a club and he gets his ass kicked. But in soft core porn, a girl spills a drink on another girl, and their shirts come off. Both of them! Even the one without any potential set in stains! Same scenario, different sex, two very different outcomes.

I count Sarah “Watch Me As I Walk Away” Palin down, but not out. SOME are saying she’s stepping down because of this little issue of having someone build her house for free so that they can have exclusive contracts with the state. I say Alaska is barely a state, it’s a terrain. And if there’s one man who can grapple with the wolves, escaped cons from the mainland, and build government facilities, Alaska is lucky to have him. And Alaska was lucky enough to have a czar who could find him out there in that barren wasteland.

The sad reality is that no one, and by “one” I mean bastard men, wants to see this fine ass mother of 23 stepping into the King of the Universe role, and I have to say, it may just be time for a queen. A queen who isn’t afraid to push that red button. A queen who would push that pretty red button for any reason at all. It could simply be because her bouffant is falling, she looks on the back of her hair spray can, and realizes it’s made in China.

Well, goodbye China. Stop sending us shit goods and thinking we’re just gonna take them because we are forever in your debt. I guess we just repaid you.

With annihilation.

I want her to move the American capital to Alaska. That way we can keep a closer eye on the Russians, our one true enemy in this world. I love her audacity tenacity to pass a law lowering the aid to pregnant teens of Alaska while her own borderline retarded teenage daughter is knocked up by a guy named Levi. Do you know what that tells me? Sarah “Say My Name” Palin holds very close to the “you snooze, you lose, dude” motto that I run my life by.

Oh, your mom isn’t the czar of this state? Too bad. Should’ve kept your legs closed! Have fun riding the bus, bitch. Oh, and trying to afford diapers!

Sarah “Watch Me Work This Pole” Palin, Captain, my captain, I will follow you to the ends of the earth.

But not the white collared prison, where you may end up.

Black folks don’t fare well behind bars.

- Krystle

*Note: Everything I’ve written about Alaska in this entry is completely accurate.

The fate of my fatness

Fat is relative.

With this in mind, me and my size 14 ass are:

• Average by American statistics
• Obese by the BMI standards
• Morbidly obese by daytime talk show standards
• And a purely freakish anomaly by Hollywood standards

I heard a really interesting interview on NPR the other day about the cold hard science of the BMI. A scientist/doctor or some other really smart guy from Europe was saying that the BMI was only supposed to be used as a way to find what trend an entire group of people (originally it was an entire nation in Europe) was moving in. The creator of the infamous body mass index even said, specifically, that using the equation in individual circumstances can be dangerous.

He continued by explaining that following the BMI chart, almost all athletes are considered overweight. He, himself, who bikes roughly ten miles a day, also tips the weight to height ratio and is placed in the overweight category.

He explains how incredibly dense bone is. Then how much denser muscle is than fat. Looking simply at your weight and height doesn’t say much. Basically he ends by saying, the whole thing is a crock of shit.

And I concur.

But it’s still hard to get the last seven years of being “obese” out of my mind.

Even at my thinnest, which meant a size 8, I was classified as overweight. This was, of course, before my throws into sociology and learning that not only was the BMI potentially inaccurate, it was also blatantly racist. I figured it was my boobs and my butt that pushed me over the line. And, although I was completely happy with the way I looked, it was still hard to figure out how being athletic could put me in such an unhealthy category.

Then I entered college. I believe it was my gender and society class where we spoke about this mythical index that could put everyone in a category and that was where one stayed unless he/she got off his/her ass and got an eating disorder until one was down to a healthy weight. We spoke about how the majority of black women were disproportionately considered overweight/obese and the majority of asian women were disproportionately considered underweight.

Either way, just a quick reminder that white’s always right and the rest of us are either lacking or over compensating for not being as such.

And still, knowing all of this, I would enter my weight and height into random magazines telling me to find my healthy weight, and over and over again, here I was teetering over the line of obese. It was really hard to look at myself in the mirror and still see pretty while knowing in my head that by the majority of American standards I was far too round and quite unhealthy to be considered desirable.

I have never had an illness that is related to obesity. No diabetes, high blood pressure, weak joints, or heart disease. My shortness of breath is much more a side effect of a decade of smoking than my weight.

I have pornstar tits. An ass that goes on for days. And much more an hour glass figure than that of an apple of pear. I hear it’s the weight around you middle that is the biggest indicator of your health and the ratio between belly and hips.

Mine is healthy.

I get hit on to this day, even almost five months pregnant. In fact, the mail man that delivers to our office is really old and does this really creepy up and down thing with his eyes everyday. It makes me nauseous.

My husband finds me desirable and actually gets offended when I call myself obese. To him the definition of obese is nothing like that of the BMI or medical world.

But it’s going to take more than compliments and blips of soaring self esteem to erase the last seven years of being one of the outliers that is driving America into debt because of my health problems (which are none) and waiting for a store like Forever 21 to realize that their clothes on a girl like myself won’t look quite as hideous as they once thought. I still make sure I stay between the weight gain limitations of an obese woman during pregnancy. I just can’t imagine attempting to take off another fifty pounds on top of the first fifty I’ve been vowing to take off for the last two years.

So since fat is relative, I’ve decided to spend more time relating to the real women of the world. I also vow to spend more time simply relating to myself. I’ve stopped reading magazines for diet tips. I don’t beat myself up when I’m too tired to work out. I stay away from shows like The Biggest Loser and Dance Your Ass Off. They’re inspiring, but I don’t need the guilt that comes with eating food while watching them.

I really do love myself. Some days are better than others. I swear I can gain five pounds of water weight over night. The same dress that looked amazing in the store, can suddenly display rolls I didn’t know were there. I thank God my head doesn’t turn all the way around so that I am not cursed with the ability to literally stare at my own dimply ass.

But I am making a concerted effort not to dwell on these and other interesting physical flaws.

Soon I’ll have to have the self esteem for two.

And that will never happen if I barely have enough for one.

- Krystle

Deficit of Validity

“To what extent can peoples united in states live exclusively on the basis of the guarantee of the freedom of the individual without a uniting bond that is antecedent to this freedom?” (The Dialectics of Secularization, p. 31)

Discuss.

It’s an interesting question, not to mention completely impossible to answer satisfactorily.  Can a state united solely on the bounds of the democratic process exist if there is no pre-political bond that bolsters that unity?  Is there a deficit of validity if legality is the only legitimating mechanism in a constitutional state?  Does there need to be pre-existing moral or ethical or religious commonality that is not political in nature in order to ensure the perpetuity and legitimacy of the state?  If the democratic process is, as Jürgen Habermas argues in The Dialectics of Secularization, a “communicative praxis that can be exercised only in common and that has as its ultimate theme the correct understanding of the constitution” (p. 32), how can one guarantee that the “correct understanding of the constitution” that holds the state together is uniformly interpreted?

I touched on these issues in my post on Catholic citizenship, but let’s broaden the discussion to include the race/class/gender dynamics.  In No Constitutional Right to be Ladies, Linda Kerber asserts that “[i]n the liberal tradition, rights are implicitly paired with obligation” (p. xxi) and she goes on to define obligation in this context as “the means by which the state can use its power to constrain the freedoms of individual citizens.” (Ibid.)  In other words, the state uses the democratic process to control citizens.  The ability to fulfill the obligations of citizenship, like voting or serving on juries, is controlled by the state.  Before women, unpropertied men, racial minorities – the list goes on – were given the vote, they were barred from participating in the democratic process; the very glue, Habermas argues, that holds the society together.  So, when citizens are refused the opportunity “to make active use of their rights to communication and to participation, not only in what they rightly take to be their own interests, but also with an orientation to the common good,” (Dialectics, p. 30) how is that “orientation to the common good” supposed to be fostered when its driving force, the democratic process, is withheld from large segments of society?

Here is another way to ask these questions: can the secularized state generate “its own motivational presuppositions on the basis of its own secular elements” (Ibid., p. 31) absent a pre-existing unity amongst a given society?  In the case of the United States in particular, one could certainly argue that there was a common set of political beliefs, at least as pertains to the attainment of freedom, which existed prior to the establishment of the state.  Habermas claims that these common political beliefs as well as the writing of one’s own constitution – that is to say, a completely new constitution, not just the constitutionalization of existing governmental institutions – are the dominating factors in the creation of this insistence that all citizens have the right and, indeed, the obligation to work, through the democratic process, for the common good.

How, then, can we justify the manifestly illiberal trends in American, and even global, political history?  Some would say that we can’t.  Some would say that they are merely an outcome of the culture or the time period.  Even in that light, how do we defend the persistent illiberal policies in both our country and abroad?  Cardinal Ratzinger believes that there is a deficit of validity in this regard and that unified pre-political ethical or moral underpinnings are essential to the continued existence and fruitful perpetuation of democratic and secularized constitutional states.  He writes that “[i]n the process of encounter and mutual penetration of cultures, ethical certainties that had hitherto provided solid foundations have largely disintegrated.” (Ibid., 56)  That is not to say that he believes that legality does not legitimate the power of the state.  Quite to the contrary, he argues that “[f]reedom without law is anarchy and, hence, the destruction of freedom.” (Ibid.)  However, simply because law exists does not mean that it automatically provides a means by which the existence of a democratic state is validated.  Habermas says that through the writing of one’s own constitution, which supposedly results in the participation of all citizens in the democratic process, undemocratic trends will be suppressed.  Ratzinger, on the other hand, insists that “total consensus among men is very hard to achieve, the process of forming a democratic will relies necessarily either on an act of delegation or else on a majority decision.” (Ibid., pp. 59-60)  He goes on to ask “[w]hen a majority (even if it is an utterly preponderant majority) oppresses a religious or a racial minority by means of unjust laws, can we still speak in this instance of justice or, indeed, of law?” (Ibid., p. 60)  In other words, if a democratic constitutional state operates on majority rule because it cannot expect total unanimity from the entire population, and that majority is, as history has shown they can be, blind to injustices, how is the unity of that state upheld through solely political and secular bonds?

I think we can agree that in many cases it isn’t.  The very existence of war attests to that, especially in the case of civil war.  As Habermas himself said, the continued peace of a constitutional state rests upon a uniform and “correct” interpretation of that state’s constitution.  Differences lead to factioning and fragmentation, differences which cannot be corrected unless there is massive accommodation on all sides of the disagreement.  The Founding Fathers did not want to see the creation of political parties.  Indeed, Thomas Jefferson said, in his Inauguration speech I believe, that “we are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.  Let us unite with hearts and minds.  Let us have peace and love in our relations with each other.”

Would that it were, Mr. Jefferson, would that it were.

Why I Can’t Be Liberal…Or Conservative

I think all of my entries so far have at least tangentially been about religion.  I’ll expand soon, I promise, but this is one topic that has been on my mind quite consistently for many months now.  It came to the forefront of my thoughts after my priest gave me a button on Saturday that says “those who ignore history are doomed to vote Republican” on it, which was followed by a reading the comments on a blog I frequent which were quite disparaging towards Catholic Democrats.  You are warned, however, not to expect religion to be absent from further posts.  It’s something I study and something I do, so to speak, so it crops up in most things that interest me.

I have a confession to make: I’m not a liberal.

…and I’m not a conservative.

As far as religion is concerned, I would probably be pegged as at least moderate and leaning right, though I come off as far right to some and far left depending on the observer.  The problem is that I am ecclesiastically conservative and politically liberal.  The reasoning for my political leanings is almost entirely based upon social issues and an acute distaste for the war-mongering of the right.  This is quite the pickle.  For staunch conservatives, I’m not a real Catholic because I have voted for pro-choice (though they use the derogatory “pro-abortion” terminology) politicians, but I am out of touch with liberals because I have a very literally conservative approach to the faith, and more specifically to liturgy.

Let’s start with the conservatives.  There are three core Church teachings that set me apart from that contingent: abortion, pre-marital sex, and contraception.  The argument could be made that these teachings are very much interconnected given the fact that many abortions occur because the woman is unmarried, often rather young, and could not support a child.  That’s as may be, but I think the primary teaching that drives a wedge between myself and conservatives is abortion on its own.  Despite what they say about anyone who is pro-choice, I don’t like it.  No one likes it.  No one argues that it is a positive good.  There are two situations and two alone in which I think it is a necessary evil: when having the child seriously threatens the life of the mother and rape.  If I am not mistaken, and I very likely could be, the former is something the Church has acceded to, but the latter is not up for debate.  I certainly don’t think it should be a form of birth control for the stupid and irresponsible.

(Incidentally, I think instead of sex education classes in middle and high school, students should be forced to watch a season of Sixteen and Pregnant.)

For liberals, well, I’m just too Catholic.  I had a conversation with someone the other day that got onto the topic of Latin being the official language of the Church.  He doesn’t think it should be removed as the official language, but he also thinks that it should not in any circumstance be used in Mass.  He said it’s because he doesn’t understand it and nor does anyone else.  My argument is that with the proper catechesis, the major prayers could be sung in Latin with no massive confusion on the part of the congregation.  Sacrosanctum Concilium, Redemptionis Sacramentum, The General Instruction of the Roman Missal, and the liturgical norms for the Archdiocese of Atlanta all clearly say that at least some Latin should be used in Mass.  His response?  Well, that would be exclusive of others who might be at Mass who aren’t Catholic.  It’s a little too Catholic, in other words.  And there’s the problem.  I support the creation of a unique and singular Catholic identity, while liberals want to “throw open the windows,” as Blessed John XXIII said before the Second Vatican Council, so that we don’t isolate ourselves from other Christian denominations.  I think they forgot that Paul VI said after the Council that “the smoke of Satan has entered the Church.”  Some parishes have taken it so far as to eliminate the Creed from Sunday Masses so as not to “offend” those of other faiths who might be present.  These are also the types that allow anyone to receive Communion at Mass and often argue for a far more democratic organization of the Church. They have forgotten that the Church is divinely instituted – with a divinely instituted hierarchy – and that we have no control over it, we are merely servants while she and her liturgy are sovereign.  You start tinkering with the liturgy, it becomes a human device and its divine nature is compromised if not outright erased.  Their churches and liturgy bear no signs of being distinctly Catholic; no crucifixes, no statues or images of saints, no incense, no bells, no Latin.  There are Protestant churches that look, sound, and feel more Catholic than these “modern” churches.  These people are inclusive to a fault.  However, their inclusivity does not include those who do not agree with them.  Namely me.

Here’s the rub: the conservatives, in my mind, have legitimate reasons not to accept me because I have problems with Church teaching.  I have the problems, not the Church.  Her wisdom far outstrips my own and it is up to me to reconcile myself to her demands.  The liberals, on the other hand, don’t pay attention to what the Church says and does.  The “spirit of Vatican II” types are the worst of the lot because they have so thoroughly entrenched themselves in this outmoded approach to the Church that they refuse to see that their little happy clappy world is falling down around their ears.  They refuse to listen to reason.  Their understanding of religion is not based on the laws and wishes of the Church, they accept what they feel like and the rest, well, if they find fault with it they reject it and see nothing wrong with that.  It’s based on feeling, not on thinking.  It’s all about leaping without looking.  Now, I understand that a certain amount of that is intrinsic to faith, but the thing I like most about Catholicism is that it is a reasoned faith.  On the bright side, these types of staunch and frankly irrational liberals are becoming fewer and farther between because their entire theological understanding is so rooted in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s that those who were not of age in that period don’t have the same cultural framework that created this whole mess in the first place.

I have to stop myself at some point and this seems as good a place as any.  Suffice it to say, I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place.  Only when the Church is once again united and we see ourselves as pure and simple Catholics can I find myself totally accepted by any parish I may happen upon without the arduous task of parish shopping.  Until then, a part of me will always be rejected by this parish or that.  To be perfectly honest, it makes me sad.  Sure, I’m also frustrated, angry, and even at times confused, but the overarching feeling is sadness.  I feel sad when I attend Mass in my own church because I get nothing out of it, but I also feel that sadness in other churches because I know I’ll never get that at my parish.

As my belly gets bigger

I found out today that my baby is roughly the size of a lemon. It’s a little insane to think of this foreign entity in terms of length and weight. I know I’m getting bigger, but to think that he/she is also growing is a bit much to take in sometimes.

But as I grapple with this I am also starting to grasp a new sense of the word exhausted.

It’s hard sometimes to just think about the end result when you wake up in the middle of the night 29374389 times to pee and another 927349037 to blow your nose. Then you step out of bed first thing in the morning, not quite refreshed, to realize you’re completely swollen, you go to take a look in the mirror and your face has broken out again, and you’re hungry, but everything you think about makes your stomach slightly churn. Sometimes it hits me: for the next five and a half months I will never not be pregnant. It’s a permanent state.

I’m sure there’s a resounding “no shit” being thought or even muttered right now, but unless you live it, you’ll never know the exhaustion felt. It’s not just the physical toll, it’s the emotional mess you become, and the hyper-awareness that comes from being a future mom in this day and age.

I often long for the 50’s where all they told you to do was rest. Evening cocktails were a habit and smoking was fine because it kept your weight down. Your baby was a separate entity and neither you, nor the environmental hazards around you, affected its progress. You were knocked out in the hospital and woke up to a new born baby. Surprise!

Now it’s: don’t stand near that, don’t listen to that, don’t breathe that air if you can help it, make sure what you’re eating doesn’t have this, that, or the other.

Having panic disorder, this does not always sit well with me. If I hear there’s a one in 9784345 chance doing “that” can affect my baby negatively, I don’t do it. I know my baby will end up having that deformity and every time I look at him/her, I’ll know I did that, and it’s my fault.

So I haven’t looked at alcohol or tobacco since I found out. I did have a dream the other week that I got super wasted, I mean sloppy drunk, but I don’t think that heightens my child’s chance of fetal alcohol syndrome. If it does, I’ll probably still find a way to blame myself.

What I will not be partaking in is the new age phenomena of natural child birth. God bless those who do. I, myself, will be so hopped up on drugs, they may request an intervention post delivery.

I’m excited about this baby. We weren’t seriously trying, taking ovulation tests, taking temperatures, keeping my legs in the air for the next twenty minutes to let gravity fight for the cause. But it was a, if it happens, it happens, and we’ll have a nice edition to our ever growing family. (Which right now consists of two dogs and a dwarf hamster name Bubbles T. Hambone who tried to commit suicide last week by jumping off a very high table, but that’s another story for another time)

What I’m not quite understanding are those coming out of the wood works who are just as excited if not more than we are about the new edition. Don’t get me wrong, I’m blessed to have an amazing circle of friends, who are really more like family, who have rallied behind us, have already offered babysitting services for the next three years, and are getting anxious about not knowing the sex because they need to know what to get the dumpling ASAP.

What I was not expecting was my boss deciding this child was hers.

My relationship with my boss is a very interesting, complex, somewhat absurd one. I didn’t tell them I was getting married because I was worried of the backlash. Not because my boss was a neo feminist nazi who has condemned marriage and anyone who enters one, but because she is 30-something and has been with her boyfriend on and off for ten years and still no ring on her finger. And as professional as she wants to be, it’s hard for her when something like that happens. She’s proper and polite and then she’ll drop this rude snide remark that stops you in your tracks.

She took it better than I expected. But if I was that worried about a marriage, imagine how I felt having to sit her down and let her know that I was knocked up.

Once again, she took it well. She’s one of those people who says she wants to adopt, couldn’t go through child birth, but (in the same breath) she wants to have three kids, and since she’s in her 30’s they have to come out back to back to back.

Exhausting.

Anyway, she put on a happy face and genuinely seems glad for me. She asks me how I’m doing. Sometimes she asks to rub my belly. All fine and dandy.

But last week, she seemed to come to a decision that she will be living not so vicariously through me when it comes to this offspring. Basically this is her baby, she just won’t be carrying it or delivering it or taking care of it.

Do you think I’m joking?

She’s already planned what mural will be painted in the nursery. She already knows who is going to paint it. And she really didn’t give a damn whether I wanted one or not, which I don’t.

Most people would tell me there was a simple solution. Tell her to stop. Not quite as simple with our complex relationship. What it boils down to is: She has fired people for less. Not to mention we only have a staff of five right now and my desk is literally right outside her office. So even if firing wasn’t in the works, angry stares and the cold shoulder would be. And I have to figure out if it’s worth going through the next six months in misery, or if I should just suck it up.

I mean, I don’t hate murals. I just wasn’t planning on doing one. It could look nice. I’m sure our son/daughter would appreciate it. I wouldn’t mind an animal theme.

But no monkeys, because my boss my doesn’t like monkeys. I’m not kidding, we’ve already had this conversation.

I’ve weighed the pros and cons. Insurance is much better than no insurance. Putting up with a little insanity is easier than dealing with some deeply hidden rage that only comes out during annual reviews. I’d rather her ask me if I need something than tell me I need to work late. I’m sure once I stop working here, her iron clad grip with loosen if not completely let go.

And I guess I’m not a huge fan of monkeys. But I do think they’re kinda cute.

Maybe I’ll get a little one painted in a corner.

-Krystle

Religious Citizenship

As I am sitting here eating my Spaghettios and drinking my Cran-Apple juice, I’m trying to figure out exactly what I should say about this day of days.  I already made my V-Day homage at Mass this morning by attempting victory rolls.  No one got it though, which is unfortunate because I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to do it.

Maybe I should write about how great America is because we came out and made our voices heard in the last election.  Or maybe because Sarah Palin resigned yesterday, thus making Alaska a great state again.  Or maybe because I could go to Mass this morning not fearing any violent retribution for having done so.  You know what?  That sounds like a pretty good idea.  In the process, I am going to draw heavily upon a paper I wrote in my US Legal History class last semester.  It’s 15 pages long, so I’ll just provide excerpts.  The paper is called “Constructing Catholic Citizenship: The Problem of Catholics and Citizenship in History.”  The most important place to begin is the beginning.

Over the course of American history the ideal of American citizenship has been an endlessly shifting vision of rights, obligations, and participation.  Historians of Catholicism in the United States have sought to explain the place of Catholics within that vision and how their faith has affected the willingness of others to grant them full participation in the public square.  Whether it is through education, voting rights, holding office, or even attempts to change or influence public policy, Catholics have throughout American history experienced mixed results in their goal to convince the non-Catholic American populace that they can be both Catholic and loyal American citizens.  Citizenship itself can be constructed in a number of ways.  It has been used as a tool to politically or legislatively enforce adherence to socially constructed norms, while it has also been understood as a status symbol representing a person’s attainment of full political participation in the polity.  In the case of minorities, it is a statement of equality with those who have long excluded large proportions of the population based on race, gender, class or, in the case of this paper, religious affiliations.  It is my intent to present an overview of the historiography of the construction of Catholic citizenship in America.  Many historians have emphasized the essential role of education in inculcating potential members of the body politic with the democratic virtues necessary to make them effective and loyal citizens, while others have stressed the importance that Catholics be allowed to carve out a space for themselves in the public square without being forced to abandon or compromise their faith in the process.  The stories these historians tell illustrate the struggles many have faced in constructing their own citizenship in a pluralistic nation that has not always been open to allowing perceived outsiders their chance at full participation in the American experiment.

As I said, I could attend Mass this morning without fear of violent retribution, but that is not to say that I do not experience a disturbing amount of prejudice as a result of my being Catholic.  I experienced this to a surprising degree on Facebook not long ago when I responded to a thread on a group I belong to in which someone had written that any religion was nothing more than superstition.  This is what I wrote:

I think most religious people would be offended by deeming their religion as nothing but superstition. I cannot speak for anyone else, but Catholicism is based upon reasoned belief. We aren’t duped into it and we don’t adhere to the faith out of an irrational fear of what will happen if we don’t.

Sure, organized religion can be called a cult, but only in the truly literal sense of it being a body of believers who share a system of rites and ceremonies, not as it is defined by popular culture (that is to say, with a negative connotation).

Here are a couple of the choice responses I received:

ALL religion’s are CULTS . As a species, it’s tragic that we have aspired to the heights we have reached, only to know that a large percentage of our masses still subscribe to this hoodoo nonsense. To have faith is to have an unwavering belief in a lie. WAKE UP PEOPLE, throw off your chains & accept the fact that THERE IS NO GOD.

janya thats exactly what a cult wants you to think. and cult mentality is what gets religions out there, thats how they started. its also what makes me mess with the jesus people that try to give me shit, and yell mean things at them.

Catholicism is based on reasoned beliefs?

It is refreshing to see so many people recognizing that all religions are cults. I would have expected a very different thread in response to this. What with SO many brainwashed religious folks out there.

Jayna . . . how’s this for reasoning? ” …the belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree…”

What I liked most about being catholic is confession! Bless me father, for I will keep on sinning, because you are always here to forgive me! AMEN! whatever!

I don’t think the *reasoned believers* will get your analogy [the one about the “Jewish Zombie”] even though it is technically accurate.

Nice, right?  I know these people are insecure, close-minded idiots, but still.  I really did not think I would receive this kind of hateful vitriol in response to what I said.  And that’s what it is – pure and unmitigated hate.  I may be allowed to practice my faith, but not without the uninformed and spiteful attacks that I posted above.  God forbid I attempt to stand up for my religion in the public square.  There are a few historians who have called this “citizenship ambiguity.”  Am I supposed to divorce religion from political ideology?  At Mass this morning my priest said that we are Catholics first and Americans second.  There are many throughout history who have taken exception to this stance.  Here is another excerpt from my paper in which I address this issue:

This idea of divided membership or citizenship created further complications, however.  In “Believers as Equal Citizens” from Obligations of Citizenship and Demands of Faith: Religious Accommodation in Pluralist Democracies, Michael McConnell argues that believers of any faith experience what he calls “citizenship ambiguity,” which he describes as having “two sets of loyalties and two sets of obligations.  In this respect, [believers] resemble resident aliens, or, at best, persons with dual citizenship.” (p. 92)  Catholics have been viewed as having conflicting loyalties in a significantly more tangible sense than other believers because of the foreign and highly structured nature of the Catholic Church.  The fact that the central authority of the Church is located in Rome has instilled in many non-Catholic Americans the notion that Catholics owed both their spiritual and temporal loyalty to the Church and her pontiff.  The ‘whore of Rome,’ as the Church was often referred to in the nineteenth century, subverted the authority of the state and posed a dangerous threat to the unity and tranquility of the nation.  McConnell argues that the tension between their religious and secular loyalties “is not inherent in the situation of religious people in secular communities, but is a result of either government, or religion, or both, overstepping their proper bounds.” (p. 93)  The problem here is that enforcing a rigid separation between secular and religious values creates differing interpretations of exactly what is best for the community at large, and “[t]o tell religious citizens that their conceptions of justice or the common good must be ‘bracketed’ is to treat them as second-class citizens.” (p. 106)  For McConnell, the full measure of citizenship is not simply political participation, but the ability to participate without having to leave behind an integral part of one’s character.

In addition to this Jürgen Habermas addresses this very issue in The Dialectics of Secularization: On Reason and Religion (which was part of a discussion between he and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger).  Here is the relevant excerpt:

The neutrality of the state authority on questions of world views guarantees the same ethical freedom to every citizen.  This is incompatible with the political universalization of a secularist world view.  When secularized citizens act in their role as citizens of the state, they must not deny in principle that religious images of the world have the potential to express truth.  Nor must they refuse their believing fellow citizens the right to make contributions in a religious language to public debates.  Indeed, a liberal political culture can expect that the secularized citizens play their part in the endeavors to translate relevant contributions from the religious language into a language that is accesible to the public as a whole. (pp. 51-52)

The problem with his reasoning is expressed in the passage of my paper that I posted above.  This line of thought is part of the traditional liberal theory that posits that what Habermas refers to as “constitutional states” actually function in this manner.  That the state allows this type of contribution from religious communities to take place.  The reality is that only some religious communities are encouraged, at least in the country, to make these kinds of contributions and for them to be seriously taken into account.  At least that used to be the case.  Catholics have always experienced problems on this front, but now all religion seems to have been struck from the public record.

This is, again, an example of what’s happening in France – though that is a more radical situation.  In the U.S. there is this fear of any religious voice in the public square; people often cite the separation of church and state as prohibiting expression of faith in politics.  That was not the point.  Separation of church and state meant that the government would not support any one faith or, more specifically, that it would not have any official state sponsored faith (such as the Church of England).  All are supposed to be accepted and, more importantly, all are not supposed to be forced to hide religious inclinations when they are in the political realm.  Religion is more than something that is put on and taken off, it is, ideally at any rate, embedded in one’s identity.  It informs one’s worldview.  While historians have in the past liked to think that there was no conscious effort on the part of the government or American citizens to oppress the religious rights of others, the “new historians” have proven that model as being dangerously idealistic and a misrepresentation of reality.  I will include one last excerpt to close:

This participation should have been a given if the traditional narratives of liberalism and individual freedom were as reliable as many in the past have explained them.  These scholars, however, have shown that the situation was far more nuanced and carried the complications of race, class, and gender along with it.  Complications which necessarily created the need to construct new ideas about what it has meant to be an American citizen.  To understand their subjects’ place in American society, they were forced to reject the persistent liberal theme that is strung through American history because their subjects were relegated to the sidelines of this story.  Ironically, Catholics were often ostracized, particularly throughout the nineteenth century, by those who preached the merits of independent thinking and religious freedom because of the Catholic rejection of liberalism.  Liberal ideas about personal freedom and equal opportunity can be held up as abstract principles, but the realities of social relations in American history have to be taken into account, and when done so, we find that these ideas are nothing more than ideals.

Finally, on a much less serious note, I’d like to impart something on this Independence Day that my friend Katie posted on her Facebook this morning: “May your meat be grilled and your salads be mayonnaise-based.”

Why Michael Jackson was batshit insane:

Because every single one of you allowed him to be.

I haven’t spoken about good ol’ Mike because, well, I didn’t see the need. Everyone else was talking about him. Everyone else was crying, and holding their breath. Now they can finally look into his “magical world.” I almost threw up when I watched the Today’s Show Special where they went inside Never Never Land Ranch almost inch by inch. All those lingering questions are finally being answered.

Here’s a question for you:

Who the hell let’s a grown man buy 200+ acres of land and let him build a fucking fairy tale land? And name that bitch Never Never Land? Someone in that troubled man’s life should have said “bless your heart,” held him in one hand, dialed 911 in the other, and had him committed until he got the help he obviously needed.

I know everyone says they know why he did what he did. He changed his face like that because he hated his father so much, he didn’t want to look like him. He never had a childhood so he came up with this whimsical fantasy land to frollick around in. This is also why he always had children around him. He wasn’t a molester. He was lonely.

All well and good. And I’m glad all of you have your doctorates in psychology and can come up with all of these riveting explanation.

How about someone get the Prince of Pop to a doctor and have a professional tell him the same thing, and then treat him as such?

Instead everyone let’s the sad bastard do whatever he wants because he has a lot of money and can sing and dance. He gets lighter and lighter, he gets thinner and thinner, and get batshittier and batshittier, and people still sleep outside his house in tents 365 days a year.

He has children who he names Prince Michael and another that he dangles from a balcony with a fucking blanket over his head. He walks his children around in public with masks on their faces, and everyone finds that a-okay.

His bestfriend was a monkey. He got so much plastic surgery his face fell apart. He apparently had an awesome prescription narcotics dependency.

But every one of you kept Thriller Michael in your head and kept waiting for a comeback.

Really? The same man that couldn’t walk from his car with his entire entourage into a courtroom by himself? That man was going to moonwalk across a stage?

What do you selfish bastards want from him? I suppose sheer amusement.

Well, I haven’t seen more amusement and excitement surrounding this man than I have with his death. Who knew you don’t need a living Michael when you have a dead one?

Lucky you!

 

~krystle