Rate My Professor

At every semester’s end, institutions of higher learning afford their students the opportunity to evaluate their classroom experience by filling out forms on which they may offer anonymous commentaries and ratings for their professors. Once grades have been submitted, copies of the completed forms are then given to professors. Students and professors alike are curious as to whether or not anyone else reads them or whether they serve any purpose other than allowing students to sound off by way of blame or praise. I remember when I was in divinity school and we too engaged in this end-of-the-semester activity, there was a section on our forms by which we could identify ourselves. Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenza told us that she would not read any evaluations that were anonymously submitted. She thought that the anonymous evaluation was cowardly and she would only entertain those assessments in which ownership was claimed. And further, the anonymous evaluation signaled a dead end. How could she discuss a particular student’s point of view with them (if she chose) if she didn’t know who they were?

I always identified myself.

 

On the form that is utilized at the College of Charleston there are eight boxes that allow for 1) a quick “fill-in the circle” rating, ranging from “Highly Agree” to “Highly Disagree” and 2) handwritten commentary. Each of the eight boxes represents a particular element of the student’s experience.

 

Below is a sample of some of the comments that appear on my student evaluation forms this semester along with the heading under which the comment appears (in bold). A brief response from me will follow. I think you will also be able to see from the students’ comments, which often seem to be in complete contradiction that these evaluations say more about the student than ever they do about the professor.

 

1. The instructor is well prepared.

 

“Always ready with some damn deep discussion.”

“She can actually give a lecture without Power Point. Impressive these days.”

“She probably doesn’t even need her notebook.”

 

My response: As for the notebook, I probably don’t. But it’s like Linus’ security blanket. I just feel better with it.

 

2. The instructor presents material in an understandable way.

 

“Absolutely, her points in class are so clear.”

“Material not always clear.”

“Always breaks it down to our level and makes us think.”

“Sometimes the readings are above our level and very difficult.”

 

My response: Stretch…or die.

 

“”Sometimes she sort of told stories.”

“Good stories and tangents.”

“Has stories which relate to material and engages students.”

“Gets way off on tangents.”

“The tangents are the best.”

“A lot of things are taught that don’t deal with the class.”

 

My response: Sometimes the most important lesson is in the tangent. Or the tangent from a tangent. Or the tangent from that one.

 

“Gives an objective point of view on every topic discussed.”

“Does a good job of approaching subject academically.”

“Presents a biased view.”

 

My response: “What you see depends upon where you stand.” Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenza

 

3. The instructor encourages students to express themselves.

 

“Discussion and questions all the time.”

“Yes! This is a great class for thinking out loud.”

“Love the ‘Milk and Cookies Controversy Days!’”

“This class encourages discussion more so than any other religious studies class  I have taken.”

“It’s refreshing not to have to inhibit oneself and one’s ideas.”

“Love the Kazoos!”

“Even though it was 8 AM.”

 

My response: Well, most seemed to be in agreement on this one but…

 

“Encourages feminist perspective, but does not embrace the male perspective in religion.”

 

My response: No comment.

 

I once had a student tell me that in a Philosophy class a young man was attempting to offer a response to the philosophy of one particular thinker and the Professor said, “I don’t care what you think.” So much for the Socratic Method.

 

4. The instructor is helpful.

 

“Very approachable.”

“Goes the extra mile.”

“She bends over backward to help her students.”   [Now there’s an image].

“Doire, you completely understand that as a student life is not one-dimensional and I appreciate that.”

 

My response: I always thought it would be hypocritical or, at the very least counter-productive to teach a course on evil and suffering, which emphasizes compassion, and then not be compassionate to students’ issues and needs. There are stories of pain in those classrooms beyond belief.

 

5. The instructor provides constructive evaluation of my work.

 

If a student writes anything in this box the comment usually takes one of two forms; 1) something like “always comments in a helpful way,” 2) “it takes her too long to get work back to us.”  This latter I concede. Every semester I vow not to procrastinate and every semester I do.

 

6. The instructor is an effective teacher.

 

“This class has turned every preconceived idea I had about religion on its head. Thanks Doire.”

“Made me think more about religion in one semester than my 12 previous years of education.”

“Every class is inspiring.”

“She’s my hero!”

“The best I’ve ever had.”

“She is the best teacher at this school. Give her a raise!” 

“She speaks too much about feminism.”

“She rambles and goes off on these really long tangents.”

“Didn’t learn anything.”

 

My response: Nothing?? The kid learned nothing??

Shoot, I learned at least 10 new things, and I'm the teacher!

 

7.  This course stimulates critical thinking.   

[This box is the most important one to me].

 

“All the damn time.”

“I think so hard it hurts.”

“I can’t sleep at night.”

“Oh man, that’s an understatement. This course made me think of life differently.”

“It is a heavy course due to the amount of thinking I do after class.”

“Too much sometimes.”

“I have made so many epistemological leaps in this class it isn’t even funny.”

“Yes. Now how do I turn it off?”

 

My response: They simply crack me up.

 

8. I would give this course a positive rating.

 

“Yes. Makes you look at religion in a different way.”

“Should be a requirement.”

“Incredible.”

“What you thought you knew before, you don’t really know.”

“Enjoyed every minute.”

 

“11,273,489,508 on a scale of 10.”

 

My response: Awwwwwwww... thanks.

Christmas time is here

Happiness and cheer.

Fun for all that children call,

Their favorite time of year.

 

Snowflakes in the air,

Carols everywhere,

Olden times and ancient rhymes

Of love and dreams to share.

                            

                      “Christmas Time is Here,” (Vince Guaraldi-Lee Mendelson)

 

I suppose everyone expects me to launch into a social analysis of Christmas capitalist consumerism, or to attempt to debunk the myth of a young Jewish virgin girl giving birth to a child, but the truth is… I love Christmas. I always have. 

 

Friends and family back in Rhode Island used to (affectionately) call me “the Christmas slut.” It seems a harsh characterization I know, but all it means is that I have no Christmas morals. I shake packages, eat cookies and candy canes off the tree and open presents as they come in not waiting for the 25th to arrive. There are those who maintain strict Christmas ethics and will not, under any circumstances open presents before Christmas Day, and then there are the rest of us, the Christmas sluts. It’s just too exciting and tempting and we Christmas degenerates simply do not have the strength of will to observe such demanding Christmas commandments. When my children were little, I would be the first to awaken Christmas morning and if I grew too impatient waiting for them to arise, I would go into the kitchen and make noise to wake them. What kind of a mother disturbs her children’s sugarplum slumber to satisfy her unquenchable thirst for Christmas surprise? A Christmas slut of a mother, that’s what kind.

 

When I was a child, there was no separating the holiday from the Holy Day. I knew that Christmas was about Jesus and loving him and welcoming him was an integral part of my childhood Christmas ritual; midnight Mass or Christmas morning Mass after the presents had been opened always began with the processional song, “Veni, Veni Emmanuel” (O Come, O Come Emmanuel). It is still my favorite Christmas song. I learned early that “Emmanuel” means “God with us.”

 

And Christmas is ultimately an ancient celebration of the belief of a god who comes to earth, in spite of and despite the season’s modern bastardization. It is an observance of the universal myth of communion of the human with the divine; of earth and heaven joined. It is echoed in the myths of Olympus and Athens united; of Horus, the child of Isis and Osiris (one of the first divine families of three). Even the ancient rituals associated with Bacchus and Dionysus were exploited as justification for orgy and excessive drink. And the Romans complained in their missives to Saint Paul that when the new Christians arrived for the agape, the “feast of love,” some of them consumed too much wine and approached the table a bit too tipsy. My French-Canadian uncles were simply echoing the traditions of the ancient Christians when they went to midnight Mass after having consumed screwdrivers and a keg of beer amongst themselves, consequently singing “Joy to the World!” with a bit too much joy. There is nothing new under the sun. 

 

I love Christmas trees that sparkle with lights. And Christmas carols that move me in tender remembrance of the child I once was who thought that the baby Jesus was just the sweetest present ever. I love sugar cookies and vintage glass Christmas balls that must be handled carefully lest they crash to the floor and splinter into shards so small one finds traces of them in July. I love wrapping presents while watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” for the umpteenth time. I always, always cry when Donna Reed is on the phone with Sam Wainwright and Jimmy Stewart is so close to her he can smell her hair and he grabs her, the phone crashing to the floor and they hug and kiss in tears and desperation (sigh).

 

Doire Christmas tangent: When analyzed theologically of course, the whole premise behind “It’s a Wonderful Life” is false. According to Catholic tradition God only made a  certain amount of angels at  the creation of the universe and that’s all there’s ever going to be. One cannot become an angel. There will never be any more angels, so the whole story line of Clarence and the bell ringing when an angel gets its wings is counter to doctrinal angelology. When one dies one can join the communion of saints, but not the heavenly host of angels.

 

Doire Christmas tangent II: In Catholic angelology there is a hierarchy of angels (of course there is) comprised of seven types of angels on a scale of most illustrious to least. At the top of the list are the Seraphim, those gigantic Amazonian angels with powers we cannot begin to imagine. Second, are the Cherubim who stand at the gates of Eden with "a sword flaming and turning to guard the tree of life." At the bottom of the list are “Ordinary Angels,” which to me frankly, seems an oxymoron.

 

I love Christmas cards and packages; Christmas fudge and candy canes.

I love funny little Santa figurines and golden snow globes.

I love to find surprising presents to give to the people I love.

I enter into the season with joy and good intention.

 

And now, if you'll excuse me, this little Christmas slut has presents to open early…

Pepere: Part II

French was the language of my childhood. My parents and grandparents spoke the French-Canadian version of French, which is somewhat different from French French. Take for example, the word for vomit. No really, there’s a story behind my choice of that particular example (of course there is). When I was five years old I had to spend the night in the local hospital to have my tonsils removed. It was the first time I’d spent a night away from home and it was very scary. I had a dream that night that I vomited all over myself in my hospital bed. I woke up, thinking there was vomit everywhere. But I didn’t know the English word for “vomit,” only the weird French-Canadian one, so I began to scream, “Je renweille! Je renweille!” (The real French phrase would have been “Je vomite.” MY word is so NOT a French word that I don’t even know how to spell it and can’t even check a French-English dictionary, but I pronounced it “RANH-WAY-EH.”). The nurse of course had NO idea what I was screaming, which made her agitated, which made me more scared. When I finally looked around and saw no vomit, I calmed down.

 

I understood every single thing my grandfather ever spoke to me in French. There’s something about Grandfather French that lends itself easily to translation.

 

Pepere loved to play cards. Oh, how he loved to play cards. When he sat at the kitchen table to play he wore a green-tinted sun visor (to keep the light’s glare off the cards?) and little garters to keep his long sleeves at elbow length. His favorite game was pinochle but that was so complicated for children to play that when he played cards with my cousin Ronnie and I, we played Cribbage. He made his own Cribbage boards in the basement. Every Sunday night my aunts and uncles would gather around my grandfather’s table and they would play marathon games of cards, my grandmother sitting staunchly aside, Uncle Norm every so often lending her a glance at his  hand.

 

My grandfather allowed me to make his cigarettes with a little machine that had the word "Laredo" stamped across the front. He bought me ice cream on a stick. We walked to the neighborhood store and he bought 2 FudgeSicles or 2 Ice Milks and we sat in the backyard on the wooden bench that he’d made. He always did the same thing with his wrapper. When his ice cream was finished, he’d insert the stick in the paper and twist the wrapper tightly around the stick. It was the way it should be done, so I did it that way too.

 

I was 11 years old and in the sixth grade when he died on a beautiful June day. My tender age and my intense love for him probably contributed to its remaining the most sharply painful experience of my life. I don’t know how else to explain it. My father’s death surely was the greatest loss, but the first cut is the deepest I suppose and so my grandfather’s death was the cruelest. I was inconsolable. Walking out of Saint Agatha’s Church on the day of his funeral I remember sobbing from such a deep place within me, I couldn’t catch my breath.

 

A few days later, back in school, my sixth grade class was assembled on the steps of the auditorium stage to practice singing our songs for the end-of-the-year concert. I remember only that we were singing a song about a man flying an airplane in the clouds. Something about the man or the music or the moment reminded me of my Pepere and I began to cry again. My teacher didn’t know what was wrong. She pulled me out of the row and asked. Through my sobs I barely managed to say the words, “My grandfather died.” She walked me to the Nurse’s office. The Nurse was told why I was crying. She put her arm around me, led me to a cot and allowed me to lie down and rest. I fell asleep and dreamed of clouds and of men flying.

Yankee Speak

Oh man. Now I've done it. Yesterday at Starbucks when calling a drink order I said, "Vaniller Latte." I'm never going to live it down. All morning my co-workers were saying "vaniller." I  must have been very tired because usually I am on my guahd. This is almost as bad as the time I was filling out a job application and spelled "Harvard" the way I say it. Yeah... try convincing a potential employer that you have a Masters degree from Hahvard when you can't spell it... I was hired, but they never let me forget it.

Pepere

Last week I made a tortiere for the department holiday luncheon. A tortiere is the traditional French-Canadian Christmas meat pie. On Christmas Eve (Reveillon), French-Canadians would attend midnight Mass, come home and gather to eat tortieres, drink beer and open presents. When I make a tortiere the smells take me back to the nostalgic place of childhood; of seeing the world from a stature so small everything is wondrous and big.

 

My grandfather was born in Quebec at the end of the 19th century. His family moved to Rhode Island when he was just a baby. He played semi-pro baseball (second base), hated “I Love Lucy,” followed the Red Sox, made his own cigarettes and loved me. I grew up in an environment one doesn’t too often find these days. My grandfather owned a “tenement house” in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. Each of the four apartments was occupied by members of my family. My grandparents lived “first floor front,” my family lived “first-floor rear.” In the second floor apartments were two sets of aunts and uncles and their children. There were eleven cousins in the house. In the apartment just above ours my aunt and uncle lived with six children. These apartments had four rooms. I never heard any noise. My mother tells a different story. My brothers held a grudge for a very long time and reminded me repeatedly that because I was born they lost their living room. One set of parents, two sons and a daughter required three bedrooms. In a four room apartment that meant three bedrooms and a kitchen.

 

When I was very little some of my cousins were already teenagers and they taught me how to dance the Frug and the Mashed Potato. My  cousin Susie would tell me about the latest in her seemingly endless string of boyfriends and dreamy-eyed, she would sing “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore” for the current one lucky enough to bear that name. My three oldest male cousins would come downstairs so that my mother could alter the hem on a new pair of pants they needed for that evening’s date. They were very handsome and played musical instruments. They successively all joined the Navy and when they came home they wore their white or navy blue bell-bottomed sailor uniforms, the little white sailor cap worn cockily to the side. Women swooned. My cousin Michelle, just a few years older than I told me about sex and destroyed my belief in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. She was a dare devil and the rebel of the house, and my hero.

 

But for me, the figure in the house that loomed the largest was my grandfather Samuel, my “Pepere.” My grandfather was a “machinist.” I still don’t know what that means. I don’t know if he operated machinery in the textile factories that were the economic foundation of Woonsocket, or if he repaired them. I do know that because he was a “machinist” he always had work, even during The Depression. I was the youngest of the grandchildren living in the house and when he retired I was not yet in school. He was home. I was home. I was his shadow.

 

My family’s apartment and my grandparent’s apartment were separated by a narrow hallway. I pattered across that hallway so early in the morning that I'd still be wearing my pajamas and I watched him while he made his breakfast. I don’t even think I knocked. Pepere ate the same thing every morning of his life and it was so gross, I never took a bite. I think he offered a little to me every now and then just so he could see the look of terror on my face at the prospect of actually taking a spoonful. First, he filled a bowl with Wheaties and added the milk. Then he cracked a raw egg over the cereal and placed the bowl at the back of the stove to warm. Now mind you, the egg wouldn’t cook. He allowed the mixture to sit, which meant that the egg white oozed through the eventual soggy mess. And then he ate; egg white and yolk and Wheaties dripping from the spoon. In the winter my grandmother always had a big pot of oatmeal cooking on the stove and I ate that, but not in the usual way of course. I’d spoon big dollops of the cooked cereal on the corners of my buttered toast and eat the gook-smeared toast with my greedy little hands. It is a comfort food for me, even now.  When I am sick I make oatmeal and toast and spoon the oatmeal on the bread; it makes a precarious journey from bowl to mouth, the oatmeal so heavy on the toast, the bread is always on the verge of limping over.

 

My grandfather played the harmonica, the piano and the mouth bow. The latter a marvel to be sure and I recognized the sound years later when I heard the boing-boing of it on a Buffy Sainte-Marie album. I think the only time he lost patience with me was when he tried to teach me the piano. Day after day I just couldn’t get it. He resorted to applying little Scotch-taped letters to the keys to help me along but to no avail. And rather than risk furthering his frustration, I quit.

 

He had a wood-working shop in the basement and he gave me little chores to do, like sanding or varnishing. I had a little sterling silver charm bracelet with filigreed charms of Catholic saints, a gift from a pious aunt. Because of my love for Church (not the aunt), it was my most precious possession. One day my grandfather presented me with a new charm. He had carved a basket from a peach stone, varnished it ‘til it shone and attached a little silver ring to the miniature handle so that I could add it to my bracelet. After his death, I lost the bracelet on the street, in the snow and when the snow melted I searched and searched into spring. Up and down the street, again and again I walked with my back bent, eyes to the ground.

I never found it and I was heartbroken.

 

I know that every child likes to think they were the favored child of an important adult in their lives. But I really was my grandfather’s. My mother said so. To everyone else he appeared gruff and grumpy. He lost his temper at the never ending parade of cousins and friends on the front porch, despite his bellowing, “Get off the piazza!” I don’t know why French-Canadians would call a porch a piazza. It hardly seems like a French word to me. We heard his profanities, muttered in French when he found orange peels under the piazza.  My little girlfriends were afraid of him. I thought they were silly. Towards me, except for the short-lived piano tutorial, (and even then, he’d walk out of the room rather than speak a hurtful word), he was never anything but gentle and loving.

 

To be continued…

 

Early Morning Ramblings

I think I suffer from some weird form of insomnia (but then, what other kind would I have?). I have no trouble getting to sleep, but I awaken at an ungodly hour (like 4:00AM) and then cannot fall back to sleep. So this morning, I found myself sipping coffee at 4:30, listening to Christmas carols and writing...

 

** In the past week or so a travesty of justice has been committed. And I won’t be speaking here of war, disease, genocide or poverty. I have expounded on those global realities of evil often enough in these blog entries. No, this is not a universal injustice. It is, some might judge, a trivial one but I am compelled to speak of it. Bob Dylan’s Modern Times has not been nominated for a Grammy Award in the categories of Album of the Year, Record of the Year, or Song of the Year. He has been nominated for three Grammys in less prestigious categories; Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album (Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album??), Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance (well, make up your minds. Is it folk or is it rock?), and Best Rock Song (Someday Baby, which is actually my personal favorite from the album…why do we still call them “albums?”).

 

Regarding the nomination for Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance I would snub my nose at those who make no secret of telling me that they think Bob Dylan “can’t sing.” Screw you.

 

By way of protest this week I have been playing Modern Times at Starbucks during every shift I have worked and I have sported my Bob Dylan denim jacket. I mentioned the gross insult which has been hurled at the best damn album of the year to a colleague this week at which point he  said, “Hasn’t Bob Dylan had enough recognition?”  Huh?  What’s THAT got to do with anything?  When did Muhammad Ali get enough? When did Bach get enough? Hasn't Albert Einstein received his due? Shouldn’t each achievement be judged on its own merit? Shoot, if “enough recognition” is the criteria for no more recognition than maybe we need to stop talking about how great Jesus was.

 

OK…Ok… I’m finished now. Who cares about the Grammys anyway? I just don’t like it when Bob is underappreciated.

 

** Final exams have been graded. Final grades have been submitted to the Registrar’s Office and I am now officially on “Christmas” vacation. And yet, I cannot stop thinking about something a student wrote in a paper. My Intro to World Religions classes had a choice of four topics on which to write their final paper. One of the topics was to “choose a religious tradition we have studied this semester and write a paper that describes how that tradition addresses the ‘human condition.’  Consider the following questions in your essay:                                                              

* What does the tradition assume concerning the self, human nature, and human freedom, e.g., about the  human capacity to know truth or the “good” and to do it?  What problems do you see with these assumptions?

* How are the tradition’s concepts of deity or ultimate reality reflected in the ultimate resolution, i.e., its account of salvation or enlightenment? What IS the solution according to the tradition?

* How does the tradition describe the human condition and what does it present as the fundamental, or root cause?”

 

One of the students chose Christianity. In the body of his paper, he wrote this sentence, “However, to be good is not the point of Christianity.” In the margin I wrote, “How unfortunate.”

 

I should know better by now, but it was a stunning remark. I marveled at how a person could be raised a Christian (which he admitted) and walk away from 20 years of Christian education without a sense that Christianity entails ethical teachings and obligations. Perhaps it is because I was raised a Catholic and it was made abundantly clear to me even as a child, that central to the commitment of being a Christian are the mandates to love, to be charitable, to be virtuous, generous, self-sacrificing and concerned enough about the suffering of others to extend a hand to alleviate it.

 

So, what did he say was “the point of Christianity?” Why, salvation of course. But of course! Set your sights on the prize of the afterlife and to hell with the world down here. Who cares as  long as I am  saved?

 

And by what means is one saved?

 

Good ole’ Martin Luther… He won his place in history when he nailed his 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg chapel in the 16th century and thus launched the Protestant  Reformation. With all due humility (ok, maybe not so much), I charge that he made a grave error when he asserted that salvation is achieved through faith alone. “Justification by faith, not works.” Under this system (evidently) all one need do is declare, “I believe” and eternal salvation is won. So, why give a flying #@*! about anything or anyone else, except for those one would tend to love anyway as a result of being human and of having a family and friends?

 

This is the kind of Christianity that views Jesus of Nazareth primarily in terms of the spiritual salvation he brought to humanity rather than the ethical model for living he exemplified. The focus is on his death, not his life. The imperative is to declare the ascending Jesus rather than the earthly Jesus who sought justice. Liberation theology (all of them) has its roots in the work of the Jesuit priests who lived with the poor in Latin America. They asserted a theology "from the bottom up," i.e., God leans on the side of the poor rather than the triumphant. The liberation theologians thought that theology is useless if it isn't on the ground. And theology as a project is empty if it doesn't lead to justice.

 

In Hinduism and Buddhism one must work towards one’s liberation from Samsara, or for one’s Enlightenment. Imagine  how Buddhist practice would change if all one need do to attain nirvana is to accept the Buddha into one’s heart and declare him an Enlightened Being. I suspect the Noble Eightfold Path would quickly fall into disuse.

 

OK, admittedly I have oversimplified the analysis. And yet, that student’s remark was indeed astonishing to me and perhaps poignantly representative of the underlying theological and (non) ethical imperative of American Christianity today.

 

** one more thing to tell. A friend and I went for a pizza the other night. On the wall of the little pizzeria is a reproduction of DaVinci's The Last Supper. My friend asked, "Why are the disciples all facing the same way?" I said, "Because the TV is on the opposite wall."

 

Giving Thanks

For twenty-seven of the past thirty years, I have cooked a traditional Thanksgiving meal for someone; twenty-two of those years for my family in Rhode Island. But even after I moved to South Carolina I continued to cook turkey, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie introducing some of my new Southern friends to a traditional holiday side dish, French-Canadian meat stuffing. This recipe, with a few variations also comprises the filling for tortieres, the French-Canadian Christmas Eve meat pies.

 

My first turkey was cooked for my then soon-to-be-husband. We had just moved into our first apartment and he was changing the lock on the door (from the outside). As the turkey cooked, I sat in our new living room watching “Start the Revolution Without Me,” starring Donald Sutherland and Gene Wilder. I laughed and laughed, not paying any attention to the hammering and banging going on outside the apartment. After a long while, I heard a noise at the living room window. I got up and looked outside and there he was, tossing rocks at the window and shouting to me to open the door! Turned out that the banging wasn’t normal installing-a-new-lock banging but, I’ve-locked-myself-out-and-want-to-come-in banging!

 

The most difficult Thanksgiving was the one immediately following my father’s death. His absence created a huge space, but no one talked about him. It was as if everyone thought that if we didn’t speak of him, we wouldn’t be in pain. Human beings can be so foolishly wrong. There we were, without the man who had always been there; the one whom to us, had been larger than life; the one we loved more than any other and we were pretending as if he had never existed. At some point, I realized that the only way to ease some of the pain of that day was to talk about him.  I lit a candle and put it in the window. My son asked what I was doing. I told him that I was lighting a candle for Pepere. As we sat down to dinner and ate, I invited my father into the room. “Remember when he……?” And then it began. All the memories spilled out from all of us and we were, I think, better that day because of them.

 

It has been my custom the past few years to make a list of those things for which I am grateful. A bit cliché, I know. But here they are…those things in my life for which I whisper a tentative “thank you” to whomever or whatever is listening:

 

• For a family who loves me in spite of myself
• For a home that feels like home.
• For winters without snow.
• For living a mere three minute's drive from the Atlantic Ocean.
• For having more fun at my work than anyone has a right to (except for the grading papers part).
• For music that enriches my life beyond measure.
• For music stores that have sidewalk sales and sell old vinyls for 25 cents.
• For poetry and good books that contain sentences so perfect I read them over and over again.
• For planes that fly to NY and bring me to my children.
• For stars so beautiful, I want to learn the constellations.
• For lazy Saturday mornings accompanied by coffee and last Sunday’s NY Times crossword puzzle.
• For good meals and good conversation shared with friends.
• For yummy bottles of wine.
• For singer-guitarists who call me up to the mic to sing Joni tunes with them.
• For cowboy boots bought at 60% off at a shoe store in SoHo.
• For golden angel snow globes that play “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” when I crank them up.
• For a gorgeous four-poster, hand-carved, mahogany rice bed with clean white sheets into which I slip at days’ end.
• For life, which brings one damn gift  after another….

 

response

This entry is a response to the comment that was made below, which was in turn a response to my most recent blog entry:

I don't know who you are. I may know you, but I don't know who you are based on your screen name. It really doesn't matter. I don't know whether to thank you, or to apologize. I would thank you for reading Wiesel and for allowing it to touch you so profoundly. I would apologize for being the catalyst that led you to read Night and for inviting you into such a dark and evil place and time.

Years ago I was having dinner with my best friend. I was so excited about teaching the evil and suffering course. She told me that for years she has been trying to figure out why I had such a fascination with the topic and why I insisted on teaching this particular course. Then she said, "Finally I have figured it out." I said, "You have? Then please tell me." She said, "You are committed to teaching that course because you have tremendous faith." I said, "Who? ME?" She said, "Yes. You have tremendous faith in your students; that when they encounter suffering, they will be moved to compassion. And that when they are confronted with evil, they will recognize it and will not tolerate it." And because she knows me better than any other person in the world, of course she was right. And my faith in humanity is affirmed again and again by people like you and by my students, who consistently and repeatedly prove my other friend wrong; the one who said that compassion and altruism were rare traits in human beings. He was just wrong.

So That It Will Never Happen Again

There is a section of my evil and suffering course that never fails to touch me. I have been teaching this course for 7 years and whenever we get to the section on Post-Holocaust theology I get sucked in; I get sucked in to the horror, the disbelief and the evil. By “sucked in,” I don’t mean tantalized or tempted like one who strains one’s neck to gawk at a traffic accident one is passing on the highway. Though when reading Elie Wiesel’s Night, one gets a sense that one is reading something that one should not, like a voyeur peeking in on secret things one has no right to. The honesty is so raw, so brutal; I want to whisper to him, “Elie, you didn’t have to tell us that. You didn’t have to confess.” No, when I say, “sucked in,” I mean swallowed, spiraled downward, sunk-in-the-chest sorrowful. There is a part of me that is drawn to Holocaust literature; poetry and memoir, history and theology. I am drawn to the pain like a moth to a flame and I think I know why. I think I know why. I want it to touch me. I want to offer to Elie Wiesel my pledge that I will never forget; that I will always remember and by entering into it, in the only way I can, I find a way to bring a passion into the classroom that will hopefully spark in my students an appreciation for the power of memory that Wiesel has been writing about for 50 years. And perhaps, they will join me in my pledge to Wiesel never to forget. And so the memory will live on. This is no grand gesture. It is a small thing. But it’s my thing.

 

But I enter into it not only for my students. It is not just a professional strategy. I attempt to enter into it also because there is a part of me that forgets the magnitude of cruelty. On a daily basis I walk around in the world believing that people seek the good for others; that human beings are compassionate and kind and truthful. And then I read Night. And I am reminded not only of the suffering endured, but of the cruelty inflicted. As I read there is a tension in me that understands the reality of the page and yet cries out, “How could this happen? How could this happen? And how could the world watch and do nothing?” I expressed this to a friend once; my disbelief at the unfathomable depth of the capacity for human beings to enact evil and he said to me, “Why are you so surprised at that? What is more extraordinary is that human beings can actually be altruistic.”  His statement was stunning to me. The idea had never occurred to me that it could be the other way around; that cruelty might be the norm and benevolence the rarity. It is a startling statement and though I can entertain the thought academically, I cannot accept it categorically.

 

When my students read Night they are required to write a two page response to it. Some of them allow their horror and anguish to spill out onto their own pages and their heartbreak is evident. Others are rendered speechless and tell me that for them to attempt to even comment on Wiesel’s memoir seems to them impossible, if not obscene. And yet, they try. Others read it and though they may have been deeply moved, they do not express it in their own writing. They write about the book as they would any other and their papers read like dry book reports one might write about Moby Dick or Jane Eyre. And some stubbornly hang on to their theodicies and attempt to offer a “reason” for it. In their attempts to defend God in the face of God’s silence and absence at Auschwitz and thereby justify the evil, I become impatient. I write things in the margin in the heat of the moment. Within the hour I must return to their papers with White-Out and take back my scathing comments and biting sarcasm. But over and over again I read the same statement; that Wiesel wrote it “so that it will never happen again.” So that it will never happen again.

 

But it is happening again. It is happening now. Genocide is occurring in the Sudan as I write this and the world is silent again. And perhaps we can delude ourselves into thinking that 60 years ago the world did not act because it did not know, but not now. We read about this modern genocide every day on the Internet, in the New York Times and in Newsweek. We cannot plead ignorance. What shall we plead then, when future generations charge us with apathy, or cruelty, or immeasurable sins of omission? Shall our defense be that apathy and silence in the face of evil are in fact simply the norm for human beings? That we were simply displaying our true natures? Shall we protest the accusations by confirming that for the privileged and powerful to rush to the defense of the weak and vulnerable (when there is no self-interest involved) is an act that is just too extraordinary to be expected? Or will we read the memoir of a man or woman from Darfur who survived the horror, and pledge to remember “so that it will never happen again?”

Random Thoughts and Strange Encounters

** Today as I was standing in line at Starbucks, there was a mailman speaking to an older couple I have known through Starbucks (they come every day). They had struck up a conversation and discovered that they'd both lived in Rhode Island; the mailman in Newport, the couple in Providence. Nancy pointed me out and said, "She's from Woonsocket!"  Mailman said, "You're from Woonsocket? Do you know Bert _________?" 

 

I said, “Yes, I do know him. He’s my brother.”

 

I am NOT KIDDING. Turns out the mailman just moved from Newport and is one of my brother’s best friends. He called him from his cell phone immediately. When Mailman handed the phone over to me, my brother said, “He’s crazy.”  Mailman took the phone back and then said to me, “Know what your brother just told me? He told me not to even try to touch you.”

 

That’s the thing with protective older brothers…they always treat you like you’re twelve years old.

 

** The other day as I was teaching Post-Holocaust theology, I was lecturing on theologian Emil Fackenheim’s response to the Holocaust. I mentioned that Fackenheim has proposed a 715th commandment, “Thou shalt not give in to despair of God or humanity, lest Hitler have a final victory.”  I realized later that I had incorrectly numbered the commandments of the Torah. There are 613 Commandments therefore Fackenheim has proposed a 614th commandment. And then, I knew what I had done. I had confused the number of the Commandments in the Torah with the number of home runs Hank Aaron had to hit to beat Babe Ruth’s record…

 

** There is a proposed amendment on the South Carolina ballot this Election Day to ban civil unions for same-sex couples. One of the proponents of the amendment was interviewed on the local news the other night and this essentially, was her argument:

That marriage was instituted to recognize the commitment of heterosexual couples to the procreation of children. Marriage is beneficial for the propagation of the species. Marriage was intended to provide a social and religious arena for the survival of the species. Marriage as a sacred union was created by God and is intended for a man and a woman. 

        *First of all, the human species is not an endangered one and seems hardly to be threatened by extinction in the very near future (unless, of course we all blow each other up).

        * Secondly, how would any of that STOP if same sex couples were allowed to marry?

        * Thirdly, the argument from sanctity is one for the churches, not the state. Congress and state legislators have no business discussing and deciding what is sacred and what is not. The framers of the Constitution saw to that. The issue is not sanctity, but Constitutional rights. Are gay and lesbian couples denied the same rights that are extended to heterosexual couples under the law? Clearly, the answer is yes.

 

** Voting Democratic in South Carolina is comparable to a 300 pound woman ordering a Diet Coke with her two Big Macs. It makes us feel better about ourselves, but doesn’t really make all that much difference.

 

** Sixteen years ago today I was working as a part-time teller in a bank as I worked on my Bachelor’s degree. At 9:30, just after the Brinks truck had pulled away after delivering the week’s money order, an armed robber in full rubber Halloween mask entered the bank and demanded the Brinks delivery. I was at the teller station closest to the door and so consequently,closest to the bandit. It was difficult to hear him with the rubber mask and while on my knees with my hands up in the air, but finally I clearly heard him say, “You’d better get it fast or I’m going to start shooting f***in’ tellers,” at which point he looked me straight in the eye. I shouted to the head teller, “Pat, he wants the Brinks bag. Get the Brinks bag.” She was frozen in place but at the direction was ableto move into the vault and retrieve the $250,000 contained in the bags. He got what he wanted and left. Some of the people who worked in that bank could not return to branch service and had to be placed in jobs in the Operation’s Center. I wanted to go to work the next day, but the bank insisted I take the next day off and not return until after the weekend. I was determined that some bully with a gun was not going to decide how I would live my life. I also learned through this experience that I am cool-headed in crisis situations and that I am not afraid to die. (Even though I don’t want to, I am not afraid to).

 

 

"Now everything's a little upside down...

as a matter of fact, the wheels have stopped. what's good is bad, what's bad is good, you'll find out when you reach the top, you're on the bottom."   (Dylan)

A few weeks ago when the killings occurred at the Amish school in PA, one of the elders was interviewed as saying that they celebrate a person's day of death more than their birthday, because when a person dies they go to heaven; the little girls were in heaven now and with God, and so they were better off. I remember thinking then how so many religions invert what is instinctively and traditionally “the good” of the experience of being human.

 

Life is good, but in religion, death is good. It is the myth of death to life, which can have some pretty serious repercussions. Baptism is made more important than physical birth because it represents an eternal life. The life of this world is denigrated to secondary importance. What really matters is the afterlife, immortality. The consequences of such a view render physical life to be rejected as inconsequential and I daresay, joyless. Suffering is trivialized because there is a greater plan for it in some eschatological scale of justice. In every world religion there are teachings that stem from dualism, the separation of the physical and spiritual life into two opposing realities. The body is perceived as an obstacle to the divine and must be renounced, ignored, suppressed.

 

Sex is experienced as good but is rendered an evil. And even within the societal constructs of marriage, for centuries sex was regarded as necessary not because it provided human connectedness and relationality and yes, pleasure, but because it was the only way to conceive babies.

 

Self-love and self-esteem become vanity; a sense of pleasure at our accomplishments becomes pride; enjoying the fruits of the earth becomes gluttony, rest and re-creation become sloth, etc. etc. How good are YOU at simply doing nothing, because it is good for you to do nothing sometimes?

 

The Seven Deadly Sins should only represent “sin” if one engages in excessive indulgence in the good. They should not lead us to a rejection of the good completely. And perhaps this was the original intention, but this is not what they have become. We are made to feel guilty for enjoying sex, for feeling proud of an accomplishment, for eating a piece of chocolate cake.

 

What if there IS no afterlife and heaven and hell represent constructions of a collective psyche that is merely a mythical confrontation with the fear of death? What if the Garden really was intended to be delightful and we have squandered joy? What if we have it backwards and upside down? What if the physical world is not an obstacle to the divine but is in reality its vehicle?

 

I, for one, will not reject this life. It may be all I have.

 

Now, where did I put that cake?

 

 

thou shalt not erect graven images

Feminism has been embattled in my classroom lately. Last week, one of my classes had to read a chapter from Judith Plaskow's book Standing Again at Sinai, a "classic" in Jewish feminist critique and another from Anne Baring's book The Myth of the Goddess, which is not a theological work but rather an attempt to trace the history of goddess worship in human religious history. Class ended on a note that can only be described as a shouting match. This hasn’t happened in my classroom in a long time. Some of the boys got all bent out of shape with the idea of a feminine divine image. I remarked that hostility to the suggestion that God be imaged in feminine ways may not in fact be a theological issue but a cultural, sociological (and I might add, misogynist) one, i.e., that this hostility doesn't say so much about how people think about God as how they think about women. It is unthinkable to some that the divine be imaged in ways that reflect the feminine. Why? Because in our society the feminine is not worthy. It is not a theological issue because they understand that the God of the Bible is eternal. They understand that in order to have a sex, something must have a body. And they understand that a thing that is infinite cannot have a body. Therefore, God does not have a sex. They do not become disturbed when I suggest that the Bible contains a plethora of images for God that are not male; e.g., “God is like a Mother Bear,” “God is like a Mother eagle,” “God is like a mountain…the ocean…a rock.” The Wisdom of God is Sophia (feminine), the Spirit of God that dwells among humanity is Shekinah (feminine). It is only when one suggests that God is like a Mother, or when one refers to God as “She” that the hostility emerges. I told them that there is a feminist theologian and Catholic nun (Sr. Elizabeth Johnson) who has written in her book She Who Is  that to insist upon only one image for God; to insist that God can only be imaged exclusively in male terms, is paramount to idolatry; it is comparable to creating a "graven image," an idol. That's when a few of the boys lost it. Towards the end of class one of them asked, “What is it that you (meaning, you feminists) want?” I began by saying that the feminist critique of religion and feminist theology were important to me because I am convinced that, “our theology shapes our humanity.” I am convinced that the ways in which we image God directly affect and influence our images of each other. What God becomes, becomes God. To quote Mary Daly, “God is man writ large, man is God writ small.” And as long as only men get to reflect the divine; as long as men are the symbolic representation of God; as long as men are the only human beings who are considered worthy enough to mediate between the divine and the human, then the feminine and women will be rendered inferior. Regarding his question as it related to the issue of women's lives I responded this way, “I would like it if a woman were not sexually assaulted every few minutes in this country. I would like it if a woman were not beaten every few seconds in this country. I would like it if the trafficking in women’s and girls’ bodies was not the third largest illegal trade in the world. If globally, women could be educated, could own property, inherit, sign contracts, witness in courts of law, vote, etc, etc. “ 

 

I received an email later from a young woman in the class who said that on the way out of class someone said to her that if she didn't "think of God as a man," she was going to hell. Just one more reason for going to hell. I am starting to count how many things I violate that condemn me. 

 

Post Script to Spaghetti Summons

I can almost hear some of you now. "Is the Church ordaining women?" The answer to that question is no. The Church stubbornly maintains that it does not have the authority to do so (see my previous blog entitled "Infallible Teaching"). The Catholic women priests mentioned in "Spaghetti Summons" have been ordained by renegade bishops in secret ceremonies which have usually taken place on water (I suspect so that no Diocese can claim authority over them), e.g., the St. Lawrence Waterway, the Danube River. The ordinations were witnessed and notarized; the records I suspect, are kept in secret. The official position of the Church is that the women, by taking part in the conferring of Holy Orders, public celebrations of the Mass and consecrations of the Eucharist have ex-communicated themselves from the Church. This is always the case in ex-communications; the Church always maintains that people ex-communicate themselves by acting against Church teaching. Now isn't that ironic? The women have separated themselves from the communion of the Church by celebrating Communion!

Spaghetti Summons

Ten years ago, and before I moved to South Carolina, I taught in the theology department of an all-girls’ Catholic high school in Rhode Island.

 

And I was summoned to the Bishop’s Office.

 

One night, as I was stirring spaghetti at my kitchen stove, I received a phone call from a reporter for The Providence Journal. She was doing a story on the lack of vocations in the Diocese. At the time, there were only four men in seminary, but quite a few more than four older priests who were scheduled for retirement. One of the angles in her story, was to point out that there were women who had the “charism,” who were trained (the MDiv degree is the “ordination degree”), and who were ready and waiting in the wings to have their hands consecrated in Holy Orders. She had been given my name and phone number by Annie (about whom I wrote in a previous blog entry). So she interviewed me over the phone as I cooked my spaghetti. Her interview questions were of a personal nature, not a theological one. She didn’t ask me to argue for the ordination of women. She didn’t ask me to critique the Church’s practice of barring women from Holy Orders. She did ask me if I had ever thought about ordination. I answered by saying, “As a child I always wanted to be a priest and yes, I have considered ordination elsewhere.”

 

The morning that this Providence Journal edition hit the news stands, I was teaching my class when the school’s principal appeared at the window of my classroom’s back door. I caught her eye and she made that motion with a crooked finger that means, “Come here.” I pointed to my chest and mouthed, “Me?” She said, “Yes. You.” I excused myself from my class and joined her in the corridor. She told me that she had received a phone call from the Chancery and evidently all morning since the story broke, the phone was ringing off the hook at the Bishop’s Office. Diocesan priests and other concerned Catholics had been calling all morning to ask, “What kind of people do we have teaching in our theology departments in our schools?” Unknown to me, the reporter had mentioned in the article that I taught in Bay-View’s theology department. Great. My school’s administration now had to engage in what can only be called damage control.

 

You see, the problem was that even though I had steered clear of outwardly criticizing the Church, simply by saying that, “I had considered ordination elsewhere,” I had implied that the Church’s teaching on the non-ordination of women might not be “truth.” And so I was summoned to the Bishop’s Office to apologize for, and explain my heresy.

 

I didn’t actually have to appear before the Bishop. My interview was conducted with the Vicar for Education (who is now a Bishop). Before I even walked into his office, I had determined what I was prepared to say and what I was not prepared to say. I would NOT apologize for expressing what had been the truth of my life. As I sat before him, I could see the misogyny in his eyes. He hated me. And he hated me simply because I was a woman who dared to challenge. He sat there with his $600 black suit and his gold cuff links and craftily attempted to get an apology out of me. When he would not relent I finally said, “I regret that what I said in the Providence Journal interview was interpreted in such a way as to reflect badly on Bay View Academy, its faculty, or its administration.” In other words, I was sorry that what I had said was received with Catholic paranoia and fear. He realized at some point that this was all he was going to get from me and I was “dismissed.” The incident still appearson my permanent Diocesan record.

 

Actually it is a good thing that the Diocese of Providence does not keep a “Most Wanted Feminists” list, because just a few years before I had been a member of a radical group of Rhode Island Catholic feminists who staged numerous protests right in front of the Cathedral in Providence. If they kept such a list, I would have been in the Top Ten Most Wanted and never would have been hired at the school in the first place!

 

There was a young woman who was a student at Bay-View whose name is Erin. I was her teacher for several courses throughout her high school years. The first class was a tenth grade ethics course. And even then I taught feminist theory; the tenth grade version. Erin was my most vocal objector. She fought me every step of the way. One day in her frustration and I suspect, in the midst of her tenth-grade epistemological leap, she cried in class. She was wrestling and struggling with a Catholic upbringing that she loved but she was intelligent enough to understand the feminist critique. In many ways, she was the first to teach me the power of this message and of the gentleness with which I must deliver it.

 

A few years ago I received an email from Erin informing me that she had been named to the National Organization for Women’s first Young Women’s Task Force. She was one of only 20 young women chosen nationally. At the time she was teaching (ironically enough), in a Catholic elementary school in Rhode Island. One day I called the school’s secretary and found out when Erin would be in the faculty lounge. I called the faculty lounge phone to congratulate her. She was very surprised. We spent a few moments remembering those days at Bay-View.  

 

Last week, I received another missive from her which included photos of her attendance at a Mass celebrated by one of the 60 or so women in the world who have been ordained Catholic priests. She told me that now she was living in Washington, DC and working full-time on the staff of NOW.

 

I don’t take credit for Erin and the direction of her life. I never would presume to do so. But I like to think that as she sat in my classroom, front seat, third row from the left, that I helped to plant a seed that would contribute in some small way to the young woman she is today, and the work that she does. I am so proud of you Erin… Goddess-speed.

October

October has always been my favorite month, except for the last day. I don’t like Halloween. I never have. I think it’s creepy and spooky and weird and the colors are orange and black, which are yucky.  October has the coolest name of all the months because it's so round.

 

I have always loved October because in New England the leaves begin to turn and it is beautiful; reds and yellows and oranges that make the landscape glow. The air becomes crisp and cool and sweaters offer comfort and softness against the skin. Apples are in season. I told a friend a few months ago that I don’t like apples. I discovered this week that this isn’t exactly true. I don’t like apples unless they’re Mackintoshes and I haven’t had a good Mackintosh since I moved to South Carolina; that is, until this week. I bought two and ate one. I went back to the store today and bought six more. They’re from New York. And they’re wonderful.

 

When I was little my mother would make stuffed pumpkin for dinner and it was one of my favorites. She’d make Indian Pudding too. My grandmother would once again make pots of oatmeal in the morning that would bubble on the back of the stove. 

 

The World Series is in October.

 

And my birthday is in October.

 

My favorite birthday cake is yellow cake with chocolate frosting, with those yellow, blue and pink candles that have white stripes spiraling down the side. I pluck the candles out and suck the frosting from the end. Everyone sings “Happy Birthday,” and after making a wish and blowing out the candles, everyone applauds, as if blowing out little candles is the best thing anyone has ever done in the world. But they’re not really clapping because you have blown out a few candles. They are clapping because they love you and they are celebrating you.

 

I’ve learned a few things through all the birthdays I have celebrated.

I’ve learned that having children does not make me a mother, but that loving them does.

I’ve learned that I am not afraid of death. (I learned this one Halloween Day when I was working part-time at a bank and found myself looking at the end of an armed robber’s handgun).

I’ve learned that the best friends are not the friends who share your sorrows but the ones who genuinely share your joys.

I’ve learned that doing the work that you love brings happiness no matter what else is going on in your life.

That one’s past may be inescapable, but it is not irredeemable.

That there is no such thing as “unconditional love,” because my love is conditional. It is conditioned upon the requirements that you don’t abuse me or intentionally injure me or those I love.

That high heels are stupid.

That there really is nothing quite like a little black dress.

That cowboy boots are “me.”

That pineapple on pizza is just wrong.

That the only way to eat ice cream is in a cone.

That surrounding oneself with beauty is not a luxury, it’s a necessity.

That neglecting to add oil to a car for a whole year will blow out the engine.

That saying, “the moon is beautiful,” is a prayer of praise.

That I am responsible for only about half the things I feel guilty about.

That there really is, “No place like home.”

 

I share my birthday with Gandhi. And this year it also falls on Yom Kippur.

Jews will fast. The people of India will give candy away in the streets.

And I will eat cake.