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A wise woman once told me: You don't lose your virginity when you have sex. You don't "lose" anything. You gain an experience and you have your sexual debut.

I feel like this can apply to anyone. Whether you’re saving your first time for marriage or you’re simply waiting til it’s right for you and your parter I don’t think sex means loss. I think the concept of “losing” a piece of you is harmful to peoples’ minds. Like you’re less of a person because of having sex? Anyways, sexual debut is kind of an awesome term. 

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here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

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Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained

C.S. Lewis (via thedesperatescousewife)

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Just out of curiosity, I decided to do a google image search of "Seven Deadly Sins" to see what I would come up with. There are a few pictures which are just simple graphics, but what was disturbing was the amount of pictures of women. 97 images from the first six pages (168 pics total) are of women. That's just about 60%. The remaining 40% aren't even of men, usually it's just some kind of graphic. Out of all of those pictures, there were only 12 that featured men alone (I counted men + woman as female, because they were all focused on the woman's sexuality). That's 7%. Even if you disagree with how I counted, there is still a very clear imbalance.

The 7 Deadly Sins are not relegated to just one gender. They are something that affect all of us equally. I think this points to a disturbing trend among conservative Christianity. There is continual blame on Eve alone for the fall of humanity (bitch ate the fruit, didn't she?), women were hunted and burned as witches, women are given less power in the church, and even Mary, the most exalted, is only such because of her role as mother (clearly women only have power in direct proportion to the usefulness of their uterus). Heck, you even get people like Mark Driscoll who insist that male infidelity exists because women "Let themselves go".

It is not Christian to judge a woman based on her sexual or aesthetic value alone. It is not Christian to blame women unfairly for the world's sin. It is not Christian to bar women from positions of power.

Boyfriend and I watched "The Davinci Code" this weekend. It is a work of fiction, and not something that people should call out as heresy (I find it interesting and a fun movie/book). What did strike me was that even though it is fiction, it's believable. Why? Women have been so mistreated by the Catholic church especially (to be fair, they've been around awhile) that it almost makes sense to have some kind of conspiracy behind it. Why on earth else would there be such a mission to make sure that women are second class citizens?

In Church on Sunday, I was struck by the reading of the passion story. It was the men that abandoned Jesus. They fled from him in the Garden, Peter denied knowing him, and at his death all of them went into hiding. Except his female followers. They helped bury him (Joseph of Aramathea was not identified as one of the 12), and they went later to check on the grave. It was the women who not only proclaimed him risen, but it was the women who needed no further prove than Mary's word. 

And yet the Church was to be built on a system of male hierarchy?

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Life, painting by my sister Megan Sawyer

http://meganmariesawyer.weebly.com

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Death, painting by my sister Megan Sawyer.

http://meganmariesawyer.weebly.com

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Not too shabby, self

This makes 20 posts for my Lenten thing, which is pretty good. It means on average I blogged every other day instead of every day, and seeing as I had some pretty darn good reasons not to on a few days, I'll count that as a win.

My mom informed me that Lent actually only counts to 40 days without Sundays, so technically you can break from what you are doing on that day. It kind of feels like cheating, especially if it's something like "I'm not going to go crazy and road rage at people".

I did keep a fairly good tally of when I failed and when I didn't. Here's how I did (and yes, I recognize that there is a week until Easter, but Holy Week works a little differently):

1. Sloth - Fail. I probably worked out five times total in all the 40 days. Whoops. Granted, injury made that slightly harder for two weeks, but still. Although I think this points out nicely that spiritual discipline isn't meant to be easy. Following any religion, or even just following guidelines for better living,  is not convenient or something anyone can do.

2. Envy - Fail...ish. I say "ish" because this one was kind of tricky to actually judge. There were only five times that I actually did some legit facebook stalking, but it was kind of hard when it got into the status update thing. Sometimes I realized that I was doing it out of habit and getting sucked into the "oh, everyone is having fun without me" thing, but more often it was just to see what was up with some people. I think there was a win in here because I've drastically changed my facebook habits to the point where on a normal day I only spend about 20 minutes checking notifications and maybe sending a few messages or chatting. I got back to using it as social networking instead of a mindless distraction.

3. Lust-Win. Not a huge win, because I did mess up about four times. I'm calling it a win because of the level of awareness about it. Each time I goofed up, I said "Oh wait, shoot, Lent". There was a sort of immediate correcting in my actions. This was a very amusing task for boyfriend, and I think I did spectacularly with his teasing me about it.

4. Wrath -Win. I'm calling this a win for the same reason as Lust. Also, I've noticed much better driving habits and better awareness on the road. I've been a lot less frustrated and enjoy my time in the care more. I'll definitely keep this up.

5. Gluttony -Win. I broke 3 times, once because there was literally no other food option for dinner unless I wanted fries, and the other two I'm counting as medical. I would give more detail, but, um, I don't really feel like getting into that. After talking to my mom about the technicality of breaking the Lenten fast for Sunday, I think I might tailor this slightly. I have pretty low iron, and I noticed that I wasn't getting that much protein because of the strange eating schedule I have. I'm going to go with a once a week meat, which is still a very VERY reduced amount of meat to eat, which I think keeps with my principles about eating meat while still taking care of my general health.

6. Pride - Fail. I'm calling this a fail because there isn't really a grey area, and because it was the one I thought I could be most strict about. I did one post that was decidedly political because I was SO MAD about the issue at hand. However, I have noticed that I'm much less inclined to post, well, everything I see, partly because I'm not on facebook as much. I rather like that more often those ideas turn into actual conversations, instead of shouting matches on my wall.

7. Greed-Win.This is the only sticky note with ZERO tallies on it. Woohoo! Here is what did tempt me though: earrings, photo frames, shoes, and a teapot. For being such a feminist, this is kind of embarrassing. I'm wondering now how I can make my purchases better reflect who I am as a person and what I stand for. Hmmm.

So now we are into Holy Week. I'll be making a few posts about it because I honestly feel that this week is the most important one in our faith, and seems to get very little attention. Look also for me to unveil my plan for the seven coming months! (Oh yeah, you forgot about that part, didn't you?)

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Jesus! He’s the true rebel, the un-sexy rebellion: being un-sarcastic and caring and un-cool just for the sake of doing what is right and just.

Edward Burkhead (philosopher, architect, and dear friend)

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And you all thought I forgot!

So it is true that the blogging kept me more accountable, not because I was worried about people reading, but because it kept it more to the front of my mind. Although still going fairly well, I had a (massive) fail on the pride front and had two instances of some road raging. Oops. I'm pretty sure God forgave me.

The reason for the sparsity in posting was due to one main reason: I sprained my back and I spent a good portion of my time flat on my back. It wasn't good times. As such, it wasn't really feasible for me to spend time sitting at the computer composing a blog post. So although I had some good things I wanted to say, I just wasn't able to. Couple that with being MEGA BUSY during the last few weeks of the most intensive part of my student teaching AND helping out with the South Oakland Shelter ministry at my church AND being part of the Interim Task Force at my church AND attempting (and succeeding!) to actually be a social being....well. You know. Blog was last priority.

BUT I have been thinking about and keeping track of my project still. After my pride fail (I posted a very long rant about how many Republicans seem to have an extremely negative view of the Spanish language because of the racism surrounding the people who speak the language), I started to try some tentative toeing of the line with my posts. I don't think being a Christian means having no opinion. I don't even think it means having an opinion that isn't controversial. Jesus himself preached a very radical message, so radical that the ruling class at the time thought it was necessary to kill him.

This isn't to say that you can say whatever you want. I was reminded of this Bible verse from Philippians when I was thinking about how to be actively engaging in issues of the day in a Christian manner:

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.(Philippians 4:8)

If that sounds familiar, it's because it's read at nearly all religious weddings. Most often it is used in the context of sexual purity and honoring spouses and all of that.

However, if I think that my ideas are the truth and are right, I don't see reason to not express them. The key is that I sure do so in a manner that is noble, admirable, or praiseworthy. Comments like "Seriously Republicans??? How stupid do you women-hating bastards have to be??" clearly don't fall in this category.

It has been interesting to see this interpreted on my Facebook wall. A post I made about racist comments surrounding the casting of Rue in "The Hunger Games" were deemed non-political, despite my thoughts about race and racism clearly outlining my personal political bias. Posting a very well done article about the effect of the long war on American troops and civilians was deemed definitely political, even though I offered no opinion and the article itself focused more on psychology and sociology than policy and politics.

Are some issues so politicized that it is impossible to bring them up without immediately stoking an argument, no matter how noble or admirably I frame my reference? Does a well-thought out, well-researched, and respectfully written opinion about current issues in our country automatically get discarded just because of the topic? Although I think this Lenten journey is teaching me a lot about how to be expressive and true to my ideals without being inflammatory on purpose, I refuse to accept that there are issues considered to controversial or "political" to be brought up as a part of regular discourse.

People politicize women's rights, GLBT rights, racial relations, combating poverty, pacifism, and many other things. Does this mean that a Christian cannot engage in these conversations without being inherently political? I think not, but can a Christian then engage in these kind of politicized conversations in a way that is Christlike? That is most definitely true.

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Sins of the father?

Exodus 20:5 – “You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.” (NIV)

This was part of the reading on Sunday. I've always kind of thought that it's a really stupid verse. So if one person does something bad, everyone else after them is screwed? Even if those people had nothing to do with the original sin?

Fast forward a few thousand years from when this verse was written to yesterday, while driving to church with my mom.

I figured out where my road rage comes from. My mom and I were in the car, and the route we were taking to church is filled with TONS of roundabouts. It's actually a very fun drive if you aren't behind people who don't understand roundabouts. This is very rare. Now, as we were driving along, we got stuck behind a particularly clueless driver. My mom started getting all huffy, saying things like:

"Oh come ON it's not that hard!" "These people are just so scared of the roundabout" "Now this is ridiculous!" "Are going to stop AGAIN?"

I kind of started in as well, before remembering "Oh yeah, Lent". While my mom's language is certainly less colorful than mine, I realized that yes, my mild mannered mom is the root of my road rage. Her impatience with bad drivers coupled with my dad's temper is a perfect storm for dropping f bombs on unsuspecting motorists.

It got me to thinking about that verse again. While maybe there's some kind of predisposition toward getting mad in the car, I clearly learned the behavior as well. In the never-ending nature vs. nurture debate, I think it's fairly safe to say that both are at play. If that's the case, then of course the sins of the father affect the son (or mother and daughter). Our parents are our first teachers, of course.

But then if you look more globally. It has been argued that the South never fully recovered from the Civil War, when comparing economic levels, level of education, or even looking at how race still plays out. No one alive remembers that time, but the effects are still felt. Look at North Korea; the continuing dictatorial rule something that has changed that country and will most likely still affect them for years to come, even with a coup. We are paying for years of economic growth from the Industrial Era with pollution and a created poverty class.

When we worship the false gods of our egos, wealth, power, and privilege, it seems that the short-sightedness DOES affect many people beyond the generation we are living in.

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"But meat is soooo tasty!"

The title is what many people say about not being vegetarian. It's always been an odd justification for being a carnivore; I'm sure getting high can be a good time but I've never felt inclined to go buy crack. I know that's being a bit hyperbolic, but I hope you all get my drift.

I really could be a good Catholic, because it seems like guilt does end up driving a lot of my actions. To be honest, I started doing the vegetarian thing because I felt guilty after watching a PETA video. It didn't get any deeper than that. Then as I started talking with more vegetarians and learning about the lifestyle, I was able to nail down a few reasons why I believe being vegetarian is a great idea:

Eating lower on the food chain conserves energy and is better for the environment. Instead of using farmland for both feed and cows, we can cut that land in half and just grow fruits and veggies. Cows also release a lot of methane, which crazy as it sounds does contribute to climate change.

Modern agricultural practices in their current state of subsidy are bad for farmers. Certain products are subsidized and are therefore produced more. Farmers are increasingly getting little choice in how/what they farm because Big Agriculture makes many of those decisions for them.

The corporations that control and make most of the decisions about agriculture also have a hand in how unhealthy we have gotten as Americans. It is cheaper for a poor family to get a few McChickens (which are made from grain-fed cows and use products that are all heavily subsidized to be cheaper) than to go to the grocery store to prepare a healthy meal. By refusing to at least not buy meat from these people, I can hopefully affect some kind of small change.

The vast majority of animals we eat are raised in horrific and unsanitary conditions. To be clear, I do not believe that eating another creature is inherently wrong. What IS wrong is torturing that animal at all stages of its sad life before it ends up on your table.

Cutting out meat cuts out a lot of saturated fat, and often leads to healthier eating. I have found that since I have to be conscious of my protien intake (about 70 grams), I am more conscious of what I eat in general. While being vegetarian, I ate much less fried food, less junk food, and way more fresh produce.

Because the prevailing food culture is centered around meat, vegetarians have to get more creative. I've been more adventurous in my cooking, and I've been more curious about food from regions that heavily feature vegetarian cooking.

For more info related to this, "Food Inc." is an extremely good documentary. Not everyone needs to go vegan to affect change. I firmly believe that if everyone makes some small tweaks, the change we see will be immense. If everyone in the country choose to have two totally vegetarian meals a week, we would see much more changes happening to the food industry (especially in areas of husbandry) than if a few earnest college students decide to go vegan.

So what do you think? Could you and your family pick two nights a week to go veg?

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Religious purification

As I finished my last post, I decided that you all get TWO for the price of one today, because my last phrase reminded me of a conversation I just had.

One of my very good friends is Jewish. He was procrastinating on some law school work and took to reading my blog instead. We then got on to the topic of our various traditions, and I asked him if there were any observances in the Jewish calendar that are similar to Lent. He said that the only one that seemed similar was Yom Kippur.

This sent me on a hunt to see what other traditions are out there:

Judaism: The celebration for Yom Kippur is a 25 hour fast with a majority of the time spent in prayer at temple. It is a solemn and very culturally important day that focuses on atoning for sins. Interestingly (according to wikipedia), it is a day that many secular Jewish people will actually go to the synagogue because it is such a significant day. 

Islam: During the entire month of Ramadan, Muslims fast from dawn until dusk. The fast is to encourage a feeling of nearness to God through expressions of gratitude and recognizing their dependence on him. It is a time to atone for their past sins, and think of the needy.

Hinduism: although there is no specific time set aside during the year, a great portion of their faith tradition is daily prayer, meditation, and cleansing through water. Fasting accompanies most of their religious observances. What is notable is that Hindus all practice vegetarianism as a form of life. It is not an option.

Buddhism: buddhist monks do not eat after their mid-day meal. The difference is that it is not seen as a fast, because fasting is an extreme. Buddhism is primarily concerned with finding a middle ground.

Eastern Orthodox: in addition to Lent and other more common fasts is the Fast of Nineveh, or Ba'utha. This was observed by many of my Chaldean students, and special lunch accommodations were made for them since they couldn't eat until after noon (and should eat a vegetarian or vegan diet). 

Mormonism: Fast Sunday is the first Sunday of the month.

Yes, most of these involve fasting. The more I look, the more it seems that nearly all major religions include some kind of period or discipline used as a form of purification, and nearly all of them involve some kind of bodily comfort. Even in the secular world, we have the ever popular New Years Resolution.

It seems that as much as religion is focused on the metaphysical world, there is a very real need to connect those concepts with something physical. Atoning from sin is a very ethereal concept, but when you also take the time to fast and deny your body something, that sense of cleansing becomes very real.

We wash ourselves. We refrain from various foods. We devote time to quiet contemplation. We gather in community with those who are on a similar journey.

The spirit of Lent, I would suggest, is one that is alive and well in the collective, religious mind of nearly all people. What do you think?

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I am a sloth

I am not on my laptop, otherwise I would probably have gotten a good pic of the fail that is the sloth sticky note on my mirror.

True story: have done what I set out to do sloth-wise about 6 times the entire season of Lent. Whoops.

Despite this, I feel much less, well, sloth-like. I think it's a combo of a few things. Primarily, I haven't been pouring nearly as many pointless hours into facebook. I'm probably on there no more than 20 minutes each day. That has freed up TONS of my time. What have I been doing instead? Playing my horn. Drawing. Actually talking to real people on the phone. Going to church. Baking banana bread. Doing more to keep the house clean. Listening to Spanish sketch comedy. Reading.

Basically, in taking out some of the distractions, I have started again doing the things that make me an interesting and compelling human being. I might not be running and getting in shape, but I am certainly doing more to not put my talents and time to waste.

Although I will do my best to keep trying to keep up with the actual sloth thing. One thing that I am certainly not is disciplined. Although I am not what one would call "fundamentalist" or "conservative" in my approach to religion, I do admire the will power needed to really adhere to all those rules. Consider, for example, the discipline needed in the Muslim faith to stop what you are doing, get on your knees, and prayer five times a day, or the fasting during the entire month of Ramadan. It's rather impressive.

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This is basically the exact answer that I gave a student in my class who insisted that Women's Day is "sexist". Haha.

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Coveted tea set

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The dreaded single use appliances

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The mall is evil?

So today I went to the mall with boyfriend. He wanted to get out and buy my gift, and I decided this was not breaking my greed rule as he would be doing the buying, not me. Plus, my birthday was WAY before Lent started.

Shopping does not bring out the best in people. There are a few different fails I had while at the mall. While not in direct violation of what I set out to do, I certainly wasn't displaying my best self today.

Story #1: Boyfriend was going to buy me the "How to Train Your Dragon" soundtrack and a Spanish language movie. I told him we were probably best off with a Barnes and Noble type store, but he didn't know where one was. We tried Target first and failed. Much annoyance on my part. We tried Best Buy next. I was already cranky at this point because boyfriend didn't listen to my advice and I thought Best Buy was a dumb choice since I've looked for things there before and the selection is abysmal. Sure enough, there were no foreign films, no soundtrack, and I got irrationally angry at the lack of Spanish music. I started ranting to boyfriend about how no one stocks any Spanish language media, how I don't want to have to buy everything online, and how Best Buy is a stupid corporate machine. In the middle of my ranting and leaving the store, an employee comes up and asks "Are you finding everything ok?", to which I respond with a "NOPE." before continuing to storm out of the store.

I'm pretty sure he thought boyfriend and I were arguing. At least, that's what I hope. Boyfriend gently told me in the care that I was kind of overrating, and it was a bit of a first world problem anyway. Boyfriend was right.

Story #2: Before we even got to Story #1, I saw a display in Target of various single usage appliances. On this shelf were: doughnut makers, mini-pie makers, fortune cookie makers, and cake pop makers. Let alone the ridiculous notion that all of these things are necessary items to consume in the first place, but a specialty appliance just for that purpose?? All of those things could be made easily with regular, multi-usage kitchen things. In the same vein as hot chocolate makers, quesadilla makers, or panini presses, I can't help but be struck by how non-essential all of these things are. The raw materials wasted to create the machines, coupled with how little you would use them....I dunno. I'm kind of sad there's a market for this.

Story #3: Still on the hunt for my birthday gift, we entered the mall. Naturally we didn't find what we came for, but we did get sucked into Teavana. As we waited for our tea beverages to be concocted, we perused the store. This is the conversation:

"I really like these Japanese style cups, but I also like how pretty the porcelain are"

"Yeah, we'll probably end up having multiple teapots I'm guessing"

"That'd be cool. We can have one of each depending on the type of tea we drink"

"Yeah, plus the really fancy china one you wouldn't want to put out all the time"

Recap: in the space of about 15 seconds we established that not only would we have the luxury item of porcelain tea sets, but we would most likely be the owners of multiples sets. Why? Pure aesthetic purposes. I hadn't even had the thought "I think I need two tea sets" until I was in the store looking at them. Similarly, while walking through Macy's I was super tempted to buy some of the nice earrings I saw in there. Why? They were pretty.

What is it about SEEING all the things we could buy that makes us want them more? Very rarely do I think about things to buy until I'm confronted with a direct reason for doing so ("Oh hey, these shoes are really cruddy looking, I might need some new ones to wear to work"). Then we get into these places of commercial splendor and suddenly I'm as materialistic as the people I laugh at for buying mini doughnut makers.

Lead yourself not into temptation, and deliver yourself from commerce?