Marta's Mathoms

Over at ChristianityToday‘s Hermeneutics blog, Andrea Palpant Dilley wrote an interesting defense of her decision to put her kid in a private school. Her main point, and I think it’s usually a good one these days, is that we need to tone down the vitriol and actually see the complexity, the nuance in peoples’ situations.

To that end, Mrs. Dilley gives us some details about her own situation. She says she’s a good person, and as far as I can tell she actually is one. She’s involved in her community, cares about racial justice and equality and all the things those public school advocates apparently value so much. (In her words, “To public school advocates, I’m one of those people destroying the educational infrastructure of America, complicit in wrecking the hard-earned egalitarianism of a public classroom where kids of all creeds and colors can meet together in unity to learn about everything from planets to caterpillars.“) And yes, there’s a touch of seeing herself as put upon, maybe even a bit victimized, but that’s at least understandable. I think sometimes we underestimate a bit how hard it is to come from a position of privilege and want to work for a more just world where you’re not so privileged, but at the same time are fighting a very natural drive to do what’s best for the people you’re closest to. Your family, your kid, even your neighbors. I’m not saying this tension makes everything we do in the name of it okay; but I do see how you can look at people proclaiming form on high that all private-schoolers are selfish, elitist, etc. and think: if she just walked a day in my shoes, she’d see it just wasn’t so simple.

So I’m sympathetic to Mrs. Dilley’s position. I’ve been there, not with education but with other things, and like I said, I do agree with her central point that we need a more nuanced, merciful way of approaching public policy questions like to private school or not to private school. I’m also a proud beneficiary of private parochial school (grades 7-8 + the tail end of grade 6), and while I went to public universities most of my social life was anchored in the Campus Ministries building. So I get the value of Christian bubbles, the real value of them and also the pull of them psychologically. That’s what makes my reaction to Mrs. Dilley so frustrating. I agree with her conclusion, but I found the road she took to get there, pretty thoroughly muddled.

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Originally published at Faith Seeking Understanding. You can comment here or there.

I’m not going to use the word “misogyny” after this line right here. Other people have called him stronger things: sexist, homophobic, even racist. For a lot of people those terms have a tinge of intention to them (you can’t be, say, a sexist, without intentionally trying to push women down), and I’m honestly not sure that’s what’s going on here. But here’s the thing: you don’t have to go nearly that far to cross into what John Watson would call a bit not good.

In fact, I’ll go better: privilege is bad. And in my humble assessment, it’s at least one of Mr. Moffat’s biggest problems.

Let’s start with the obvious: Steven Moffat is a fanboy. If there’s any question on this point, consider his recent statement in a TOR piece on “The Sign of Three”:

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Originally published at Faith Seeking Understanding. You can comment here or there.

A few days, Sevenswells (LJ user sevenswells) posted a very good, critical review of the Sherlock episode “His Last Vow” along with an alternate ending that makes significantly more sense than the one Team Moffat gave us. While I don’t agree with her on every point, her criticisms did help me think about a major difference between the Doyle books and the BBC series in a more specific way than I’d managed so far. Specifically, the books give us a Sherlock who uses his spectacular brain to triumph over criminals In the TV show, on the other hand, even when he solves case, the bad guy manages to get away, or be killed, or otherwise escape arrest and jail. Sherlock may still solve the case most of the time, but this doesn’t seem to get him what he really cares about; much less ensure that justice is done.

Let’s start with the most recent example, in “His Last Vow.” There will be pretty heavy spoilers for “His Last Vow” in the next paragraph, but I’ll get back to some discussion based on the first two series. If you’re avoiding series three spoilers you can skip down to “[end of series three spoilers]” below.

Unspoiled eyes duly averted? Excellent.

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Originally published at Faith Seeking Understanding. You can comment here or there.

Cleaning our my RSS feed, I came across an oldish story that sparked my interest. It never affected me and the article I had saved on my “to-read” list is coming on a month old, making me question the wisdom of diving into it. But it’s such a missed opportunity, and such a case study in the kind of opportunity so many Christians race by these days, it seems worth taking a look at.

Back in early December, an unnamed teacher at Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy was placed on academic suspension (some sources say she resigned) after nude photos of her appeared on a revenge porn site. One article describes the site it was posted to as a site “where hackers, ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends often post inappropriate photos, along with personal information about the person.” Apparently the picture was taken from her phone and was posted shortly before she reported her iPhone stolen. This isn’t a site she posted the photo to herself.

So why was is this woman’s job in jeopardy?

A parent of a student at the private Christian university-preparatory school said she and other parents are upset after learning about the nude photo. The school serves children from pre-kindergarten to 12th grade.

“The woman is already a victim,” the parent, who asked to remain anonymous, told WCPO. “But this being a Christian school, parents are upset that a teacher is even taking naked pictures and sending them to people — and…her students are old enough to get online and Google their teacher’s name and the photos come up.”

Let’s get a few things straight here.

First, not all nude photographs are necessarily sexual. I have a friend who struggles with body image issues and had me take a nude photo of her just sitting in a chair and smiling, and she looks at from time to time to remind herself that she really is that beautiful. That’s a genuine story, by the way, not an instance of “Oh, doctor, I have this friend…” I know it sounds weird, but her intent wasn’t sexual in the least, and neither was the actual photography, at least for me. I’ve known other people who have sent photos to their girlfriends (as in female platonic friends; think Sex in the City) as a kind of gag. Not every nude photo is sexual.

Suppose, though, the picture was meant as sexual. Which brings me to my second point: not every sexual photograph is sinful. I don’t know this teacher’s circumstances – was she married, involved in a long-term relationship, etc.? Was it on her phone because she used that as her camera (many people do) or because she was sending it out? Let’s say she’s married and has a husband serving in Afghanistan – could she then take some sexual nude photographs and sending it to her husband to help him weather their separation? What if she was married and living with the man, but he just found it exciting that she’d do that for him? Nude photographs aren’t sinful in every context, even in most contexts. And the woman’s phone was stolen after all. Whatever her reasons in taking them, I highly doubt she meant to have them spread around to titillate strangers.

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Originally published at Faith Seeking Understanding. You can comment here or there.

Over at the Opinionator, Virginia Pye recently asked an interesting question: can you — or should you — write a book about a place you’ve never visited?

China of My Mind

In her own words:

When I tell people that I have recently published a novel set in China, one of the first questions they ask is whether I’ve been there. My response seems to be a letdown. The expectant look on their faces shifts as they wonder why I chose to write about a place I’ve never visited. Sometimes I sense incredulity. What makes me think I can write about China?

She then goes on to describe her own family’s experience with China. Her grandfather was a missionary who was kicked out of China in the 1900 Boxer Rebellion, and her father was what she calls a “China watcher,” an American professor (a political scientist, I believe) who observed China and worked with it but for years was prohibited from actually living there because westerners weren’t allowed to visit. He finally did travel there in 1972, but even then he doesn’t seem to have lived there. Virginia Pye says she never visited herself, and she’s also aware of the danger of appropriation and imperialism that she thinks characterized her grandfather’s efforts there (though she does say he developed a genuine connection with the land and culture).

Pye is very upfront with the fact that she doesn’t know China as an actual Chinese person would. She says she didn’t inherit some special connection with the place just because her grandfather had lived there and her father had visited. She grew up among relics from pre-communist China brought back to America by her grandfather and the “cheap red and gold Mao buttons, quilted jackets in workman’s blue, olive green caps and the most ubiquitous souvenir of the time, Mao’s Little Red Book” her father brought back from his research trips. As the descendant of German immigrants I appreciate this: I grew up on stories of my great-grandmother’s life in Germany under the Weimar Republic, and felt a deep kinship with the country before I ever saw it. I get that. I also get that the connection I had before seeing those places pales beside what I felt after actually standing there. I think Ms. Pye gets it too. She certainly understands there’s a gap between her experience and the experience of someone from China.

So the question becomes: is the connection Ms. Pye has enough? How much do we have to know a situation before we should write it?

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Originally published at Faith Seeking Understanding. You can comment here or there.

Why should a man be scorned, if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls? The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it. In using Escape in this way the critics have chosen the wrong word, and, what is more, they are confusing, not always by sincere error, the Escape of the Prisoner with the Flight of the Deserter. just so a Party-spokesman might have labeled departure from the misery of the Fuhrer’s or any other Reich and even criticism of it as treachery …. Not only do they confound the escape of the prisoner with the flight of the deserter; but they would seem to prefer the acquiescence of the “quisling” to the resistance of the patriot.

That’s probably not a very happy quote to start a Christmas wish with but I’ve been thinking about it quite a bit, or at least the basic point behind it, as we’ve gotten closer and closer to the holidays. This last year has been a very difficult one. I’ve learned my graduate school career was ending sans terminal degree and tried to work out what I was doing next. I’ve applied for jobs and been on interviews, with some encouragement but no job offers. I think I’m a little more confident and steady in myself than I was, though I’m still less comfortable than I once was. I think I’m not the only one dealing with, though: people who have lost jobs or are dealing with family members in jail or sudden deaths in the family. A lot of uncertainty in the world, or at least our worlds these days.

In light of that, it can be hard to celebrate Christmas and have it feel authentic. And thinking about this quote has helped me approach the holidays in a slightly different way. To spend time and celebrate the good things in life isn’t escapism in the sense of deserting; it’s about appreciating something better or higher than our daily lives. Like Sam’s mention of a light beyond the grime of Mordor that the shadow couldn’t touch. It’s beautiful in its way, and it gives us a beauty to draw on. More than that, days like Christmas help us imagine a better way of being, I think. They remind us we’re worthy of things like joy and beauty and generosity.

Which is important, probably especially when you’re having a hard go in your daily life. I think that’s why I’m so drawn to Sherlock and Doctor Who these days, because it’s a way to play with things that have a deeper significance and seem good and beautiful. It’s about dreaming about a deeper, better kind of way of being. That’s why I love fanfic and fannish discussions: because they give me a connection with other people who are trying to imagine all of that.

I didn’t start this out to be so philosophical or heavy-handed. I don’t think people need to feel ashamed of enjoying things like Christmas or fandom, that it’s something that needs to be explained. But the philosopher in me is very drawn to the explanations of why both are good, why it’s more than an indulgence. And I think letters like the ones above and Sam’s about light in Mordor (love that!) help me make sense of why.

Regardless: I do hope you have a wonderful day of light, family, love and peace if you celebrate it. That you enjoy whatever you celebrate when you do. And that if December 25 isn’t that day for you, that you stay warm, find an occasion to smile, and generally have a good day.

Ná merye i turuhalmeri, y’all!

Originally published at Faith Seeking Understanding. You can comment here or there.

It’s been close to a month since I’ve actually sat down and watched Sherlock, so this morning I thought I’d watch the unaired version of the pilot. And this show had me at “This is Inspector Lestrade. Please call me when you get this. I think we’re going to need you.”

For the record, that’s 1:42 in. There’s just something about the way that’s handled that so gets at Sherlock’s relationship with the Scotland Yard, the difference between being needed and wanted, the juxtaposition with John Watson waking up from a nightmare all alone and being (to quote Reichenbach) “so alone, and [John] owes you so much.” It’s just really quite wonderful, particularly after a while away.

In that vein, and as my fannish share of the day, enjoy some fannish humor making fun of Anderson.

#1. Star Trek/Sherlock crossover, By Barachiki @ Tumblr:

#2. Sherlock headcanon. I’m not entirely sure why this one amuses me so much:

#3. Signatures of the Sherlock crew, by Taggianto @ Tumblr:

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Quote of the day. Not that this will become a regular thing, but I stumbled across this quote from Mark Ruffalo on fanart of Iron Man and the Hulk. And his description really struck me as entirely too right: “I endorse it 100 percent. You know what it is? It’s open-source creativity.”

Pinterest: Recent funnies

Journalism + Blogging I’ve Read This Last Week:

1. Western nations with social safety net happier, by Benjamin Radcliffe
2. Who Needs a Gun?, by Gary Gutting
3. How Did Jameis Winston Evade a Rape Charge?, by Emily Bazelon

Have a good day!

Originally published at Faith Seeking Understanding. You can comment here or there.

Last week there was a specific day when I came across quite a few people riled up about folks not keeping the “Christ” in “Christmas.” Mostly it was online, but I also ran across it in overheard conversations offline as well. Which, you know, got me a bit riled up as well. I started counting around mid-afternoon, and from that point on I heard three people complaining about stores wishing Happy Holidays rather than Merry Christmas, and two more complaining about the Xmas abbrviation; I think there were sevenn or eight conversations I overheard that day, all told. Something about that focus always seems distinctly un-Christlike to me, and also not particularly fitting given that Christmas is about love and peace and togetherness, so it feels like failing at Christmas spirit as well.

(Sidenote: This abbreviation actually has a long, fascinating history in Christianity. It’s not a modern invention to write out the name of Christ from the holiday.)

The line doesn’t have to be offensive. Directed at my fellow Christians, it can be a good reminder to focus on the things that matter about the holidays and not get carried away with the glitz. It can mean to make time to read something meaningful to mark Advent, or make it to church for the weekly wreath-lighting, or (even better, and this is not either/or kind of or but one that opens us up to a both/and): a time to remember that Christ the King spent his first nights shivering in a stable and that many of my fellow humans who bear the thumbprint of God just as much as I do still are shivering and hungry. It should be a call to recognize our shared humanity, to reach out to those who are suffering (and to keep reaching through January and beyond, but baby steps…). Also perhaps to remember that Christmas, the Incarnation, is the beginning of how God broke through the tribal walls of the ancient world. The baby born in Bethlehem was not meant to be simply the God of the Jews, but the God of anyone who’d follow Him.

Which is what makes the way this phrase is usually used so frustrating. The gripes I noticed last week of “Happy Holidays” vs. “Merry Christmas” and the “Xmas” abbreviation do seem to be the most common. Typically these seem to be cultural signifiers that the person saying them honors a specifically Christian holiday. It’s an affirmation that Christianity isn’t just the biggest of the various holidays people celebrate. It seems, at least in my experience, to be about getting people to say “yes, we are all like you; yes, your traditions and way of doing things are the most important, indeed, the only ones worth mentioning at least right now.”

I will gladly wish my Christian friends a Merry Christmas. I’ll gladly share it with people who are happy that I’m celebrating a holiday meaningful to me, even if the religious holiday isn’t actually important to them. And I’ll even share it with people who aren’t religious, who just enjoy all of the non-religious aspects of the season, the family and friends and food and quiet nights together and music and decorations and kitschy old movies and, yes, even the picking out of gifts for the people in your life. That’s Christmas, too, though for me as a religious Christian it’s never going to be all there is to Christmas. And on the flip side I’ll say a happy Chanukkah to my Jewish friends (which I just realized I haven’t actually said online; a happy Chanukkah to all who celebrate it!), much as I wished a good Diwali last month and an Eid al-Fitr back in September to people I know who celebrate those special days. When my friends celebrate something that’s meaningful to them, I like to share it with them.

To my mind, you can’t both insist everyone wish people a Merry Christmas and at the same time expect the word to hold onto a specifically religious connotation. It just doesn’t work that way because most people saying it won’t be particularly religious. Even if they claim the Christian religion, even in America where we have so many churches and so many people ticking off the Christian box on surveys, the vast majority of people won’t invest a lot of time and effort into their religion. It’s something that gets them into a church for an hour on Sunday morning, and that’s if you’re lucky; most likely, it’s how they think of themselves culturally but may not actually affect their life that much except at special holidays when they get together with their extended families. And for other people, it doesn’t impact their lives at all. Even if I could get all those people to say the words “Merry Christmas,” they probably wouldn’t mean the same things I do when I say them.

And that’s really okay. It doesn’t keep me from keeping the Christ in Christmas, although focusing on whether other people do rather than doing it myself probably does. It’s kind of like Thanksgiving prayers when I was a kid: I could either listen to the prayer and actually pray it, or I could crack my eye open because I suspected my cousins weren’t really praying and I wanted to check if they were making silly faces at each other. But I couldn’t do both.

I’ve been thinking about this issue a little, and yesterday I happened to be listening to my Fiddler on the Roof soundtrack (yes, this is a normal occurrence in Casa Marta), and the “L’Chaim!” song struck me as offering a good third way:

In this song, Tevye, Lazar Wolf, and pretty much everyone who happens to be in the local pub are drinking and dancing loudly to celebrate a wedding Lazar Wolf’s just arranged with Tevye’s daughter. This attracts the attention of some of their non-Jewish neighbors. If you know anything about turn-of-the-century (or previous century) Russian history, you may know Jews and non-Jews have a *cough* difficult relationship. At best – when a group of Cossacks darken the door of a Jewish celebration, it often doesn’t end well. This time, though, they start playing music and dancing along with their Jewish neighbors. They’re doing a thoroughly non-Jewish dance, but it’s a clear attempt to join in on the celebrations:

Zachava zdarovia
Heaven bless you both nazdrovia
To your health and may we live together in peace

The thing is, they’re joining this celebration as non-Jews. TO try to dance a more Jewish dance would probably seem inauthentic to all involved; Tevye is the only Jew to really take up their dance, and that’s when he’s specifically invited in. He seems to be the only one. But the fact that they are celebrating this as non-Jews doesn’t keep them from honoring what’s being celebrated. It doesn’t require them to say “this is how I would do it,” or to become Jews, either. But the message gets across: “I recognize this is important to you, and I want to celebrate it with you.”

In my experience, most non-Christians and nominal Christians respect that the religious side of the holiday is important to their more devout neighbors. They get that there’s more than Santa Claus and Macy’s at work here, even if it’s not at work for them. Even if Santa Claus and Macy’s isn’t even part of their yearly celebrations. That’s fine. It’s even good, and you get lovely blends of different styles that enrich the celebration for everyone when this happens. Imagine if the Russians had just tried to do the same dance as the Jews and hadn’t brought their own style to bear. it wouldn’t have been anywhere near as marvelous of a scene. It also strikes me as a much more thoroughly Christian approach to the holidays, to welcome our neighbors in and share warmth and love without requiring they do it just the way we do. Because if there’s one area where Jesus pushed our boundaries. “Which of these do you think was a neighbor?” indeed.

So to close: Ná merye i turuhalmeri! (That’s Quenya, and if you can understand it we have quite enough in common to be getting on with, whether we celebrate the same holiday in the same way or not. And even if you can’t, I still like you anyway.)

Originally published at Faith Seeking Understanding. You can comment here or there.

Someone apparently asked Brits to label a map of US states. It’s pretty funny. To be fair, there are an awful lot of them, and many look entirely too alike.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/robinedds/its-thanksgiving-so-we-asked-some-brits-to-label-the-us-stat

Curious at how well I would do, I hunted down a quiz on US states and took it myself. There were several, but on the one I attempted I got 98%. The one state I missed was Michigan, which I confused with Minnesota. I actually knew the state they were asking for as “the one with Detroit in it” and where I took Greyhound and visited a friend one New Year’s while I lived in Cleveland. I just have this thing where I swap similar sounding names or shapes that are close to each other. So in this case I knew what the state was and where it was on the map, but got the names switched in my head.

I can’t complain, though, because I lucked out and got New Hampshire/Vermont and Iowa/Wisconsin and Mississippi/Alabama correct. Which really, I shouldn’t have. Law of averages and all that. Still, I think I’m better at this than a lot of people, not because I’m a map geek (there’s that, too). Rather, I grew up with a Tandy Commodore computer, and one of the games was to match state names to a map. Incidentally, that’s the same reason I can type as quick as I can. Someone had to protect the skyline from those aliens, you know.

I’m not nearly so good on the Europe map - 67% at the point I gave up. I’d be curious how many of my European friends can pick their Slovenia from their Belarus, to say nothing of their San Marino from their Liechtenstein. You guys have a hard map. Although I suspect Wyoming and Colorado would be just as puzzling to many non-Americans.

How would you do on these quizzes? Any surprises?

And do check out the Buzzfeed post. The ones toward the bottom are pretty hilarious.

Originally published at Faith Seeking Understanding. You can comment here or there.

Originally published at Faith Seeking Understanding. You can comment here or there.

Because I had to go in to Manhattan to retrieve my keys this afternoon, I decided to catch a showing of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. One benefit of living in New York is lots of early-bird screenings (officially, the movie opened at midnight tonight, I think). My particular screening had a phalanx of what I can only assume were teenage girls who screamed every time the Gale actor came on screen, like you see in old video clips of Elvis concerts. It did break the mood, but that’s obviously not the movie’s fault. Aside from that… B, maybe B+, for the movie itself. My spoilerific thoughts behind the cut.

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