Effortless Effervescence

Seriously: NOT COOL.

A popular priest known as “Father Oprah” has left the Roman Catholic Church and joined the Episcopal Church less than a month after a tabloid published photos of him cavorting on the beach with his girlfriend in a scandal that rocked South Florida’s Spanish-speaking community.

On Thursday, as thunder boomed outside and paparazzi cameras flashed, the Rev. Alberto Cutie (KOO’-tee-ay) held a news conference at the pulpit of the Episcopal Church’s Trinity Cathedral. Standing behind him: the Episcopal bishop, a half-dozen Episcopal priests and his girlfriend.

This story incites a sputtering, screaming, throwing-things-at-walls rage in me. Why? NOT because a priest fell in love and had a secret affair. People are people, no one is without sin. No one. This includes clergy. I’m not mad that Rev. Cutie is leaving the Catholic Church and becoming an Episcopal priest - um, it seems to be the logical thing to do since he doesn’t want to give up his vocation OR his relationship with his girlfriend. What makes me OMFG PISSED OFF is that the Episcopal Church seems to have welcomed him with open arms and without condition. Sure, he has to jump through some hoops to be an “official” Episcopal priest, but it appears that the ECUSA is going to let him pastor a new congregation without asking him to take a time out from ministry at all.

NOT. COOL.

The issue here is not sex. It’s the breaking of vows. It’s the betrayal of trust. It’s the secrecy, the lying. It’s the fact that Cutie lived a double life for TWO YEARS and when he was caught by a tabloid and taken to task by his spiritual authorities (his “boss,” if you will), he flounced to another denomination instead of humbly saying, “Dayum, I messed up.”

Something that may not be understood by people who aren’t part of a Christian community: a pastor has a lot of influence, and power, over the people in his* church. Sometimes his influence extends beyond his church to other churches in his area (if he serves on denominational or ecumenical committees, for example), and to unchurched people in his community/nation (if his church does outreach, say, in the form of soup kitchens, clothing drives, or educational reform). When a man chooses to violate the vows that he took when he became a priest, he is not only sinning against God, he’s betraying ALL the people he committed to serve, all the people he’s instructed and counseled over the years. And he needs to make amends.

But that’s not what Cutie is doing. He’s unwilling to say, “You know, my bad judgment shows that I’m not in a place to help other people right now. Once I get my head on straight, I’ll BRB.” Because he’s clueless, someone else needs to smack some sense into him. Unfortunately, the Episcopal Church (which, by the way, is the denomination I served in for five years, and I love them dearly, but they can be so full of FAIL sometimes) is asleep at the wheel. The ECUSA has recently seen a dramatic drop in church attendance as well as a decline in new priests entering the ministry. Many Episcopal congregations across the country have NO PASTOR because there’s a huge shortage of clergy. Of course I don’t know the whole story behind Cutie’s conversion (disclaimer alert!), but I have a sneaking suspicion that the Episcopal Church’s lack of judgment has a whole lot to do with their desperation to fill pulpits and pews. And that is NOT. COOL.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that making a Big Mistake disqualifies anyone from ministry. I’m not saying that it’s wrong for a pastor to be married (or, for that matter, gay - which I have to mention because The Gay Episcopal Bishop Debacle caused my Diocese to implode a few years ago). What I’m saying is that it’s wrong for someone to be so arrogant as to assume that his sneaky, selfish actions have no impact on the people he promised to serve in humility and purity.

NOT. COOL.

* There are many women pastors/priests in Christian denominations around the world, including the Episcopal Church. When discussing pastors/priests in this post, I’ve chosen to use only male pronouns for the sake of simplicity, and because the priest in question is a male.

Just to warn y’all, I really enjoyed this book, so my review of it could spill onto the annoying side of enthusiastic. Okay? Think you can handle it? If you say so…

OH MY GOD LAMB BY CHRISTOPHER MOORE IS THE BEST BOOK I’VE READ IN A LONG DAMN TIME

I warned y’all.

Seriously, though, this book rocked my socks. My friend Kerry recommended it to me almost a year ago. It was on my list of Books to Buy and Read, which, unfortunately, is not a real list, just a vague idea in the back of my overstuffed mind, so I often don’t get around to actually buying and reading these books for a loooong time. Finally Kerry just bought me a copy because she was desperate for me to experience its awesomeness, and I am SO glad she did. I took it with me on our road trip this past weekend, and plowed through all 400 pages in a day and a half.

Lamb is a Gospel told from the point of view of Biff, Jesus’s childhood friend. Biff wants to set the record straight about Jesus’s life - particularly the first thirty years of Jesus’s life, which are woefully unrepresented in Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John - the Gospels most folks are familiar with. According to Biff, he and Jesus (whom he refers to as Joshua) traveled the world in search of wisdom and knowledge. Jesus knew that he was the Messiah, but he didn’t know what the meant. Exactly what was the Messiah supposed to do? In the course of their search, Jesus and Biff learn quite a bit about philosophy, love, friendship, self-discipline, but they never get an exact answer to the “What the hell does a Messiah do, anyway?” question. Jesus continually asks his Heavenly Father for guidance, and the old bearded dude in the sky is rather tight-lipped on the subject. (Something I’m sure many readers can relate to - something, perhaps, that gives us some insight on Moore’s relationship with God.) In the end, Jesus gets the job done, but not the way that Biff had expected. Biff’s a little pissed about it, too.

Moore says that he didn’t write this book with the intention of offending anyone, but I promise you, many Christians would be offended if they picked up Biff’s story. I would not call Moore’s tale blasphemous, but it is irreverent, which is probably why I liked it so much. Mostly, it made me think. When you grow up in the church and know all your Bible stories inside and out, you get a certain version of events lodged in your imagination. There were several points in Lamb where I said to myself, “Wow, I’d never thought of it that way,” or, “Huh! That could have happened, sure.” Rather than offending me, this book strengthened my faith, because it helped me to see Jesus in a new light, to understand better what it means to call him fully God yet fully man.

Here’s who I DON’T recommend this book to: people who cannot laugh at their own dogma, and people who really, really don’t like Christianity. But for those of you in the middle, who have faith or wish you had faith, or who have no desire for faith but no animosity towards this Jesus fellow: you’ll get a kick out of Lamb. You may, like me, end up adding it to your canon of spiritual texts, just because it’s just THAT fun and insightful.

Blogging can be (and often is) an exercise in vanity. We who blog talk about the things that are important to us, post pictures we like, make fun of the people who piss us off, and et cetera ad infinitum. But blogging is also (often, not always) a form of performance art, especially when one blogs on a public site. If I cared only to hear myself talk, I’d keep my words locked up in a diary. There is a time and a place for that, but on my website, I want my words to have some entertainment value. I want this to be a place people love coming back to.

So tell me, folks…

My husband and I took a road trip this weekend, and I learned some very valuable lessons.

1. When deprived of caffeine, my bladder can successfully wait 200 miles between pit stops.

2. When provided with caffeine, my bladder’s lucky to make it 50 miles without stopping.

3. McDonald’s uses the same antimicrobial cleanser they used 13 years ago when I worked for them. I know this because EVERY SINGLE McDonald’s bathroom smells exactly the same way. However, no amount of that cleanser can cover the smell of copious amounts of urine. (This is actually a lesson I learned 13 years ago, but I received a “refresher course” this weekend.)

4. Murphy’s Law of Urination, Part One: The smaller and more cramped a public restroom is, the more people need to use it at any given time.

5. Most establishments on I-95 haven’t figured out that coat hooks would be a low-cost value-added fixture to add to their public restrooms. Not having to loop my purse over my neck while squatting in the stall would improve my customer satisfaction tenfold.

6. Murphy’s Law of Urination, Part Two: The fuller your bladder is, the more bumps will be on the highway exit and road leading to the gas station/fast food restaurant where your throne awaits.

7. Although most convenience stores sell a variety of domestic and imported 40 ounce bottles of beer, none of the ones I visited stocked hand sanitizer.

8. Hand sanitizer would be a welcome addition to the “things my purse must ALWAYS contain,” for the times when touching the bathroom door handle as I exit makes me feel that washing my hands post-urination was for naught.

9. Murphy’s Law of Urination, Part Three: The worse you have to pee, the more stubborn and uncooperative the toilet paper dispenser will be, and the longer your relief will be delayed as you attempt to cover the toilet seat with a dozen small squares of one-ply tissue.

10. Nothing feels better than the first time you sit on your own commode after thirteen hours of communal toilets.

I hope this wisdom I have imparted will guide you in your next journey. Go in peace, my friends.

One of my pet peeves is disqualifying compliments. Here’s an example of social dialogue that sets my teeth on edge:

Susie: “Oh my goodness, Sally, you look so cute in that top.”
Sally: “It would look so much better if I could lose five pounds!”

And another:

Sally: “Susie, this meal is delicious. You’re such a great cook.”
Susie: “Oh, I’m just good at following directions.”

Where did we get the idea that this sort of false modesty is a virtue? Does denying the truth of someone else’s statement, and putting ourselves down with considerable flair, win us cosmic brownie points? I hear this sort of banter from women quite a lot, but men are guilty of it, too. I think many of us learned at a young age that no one likes a braggart, and in an effort to avoid being perceived as conceited jerks, we don’t trumpet our accomplishments. From that point the next logical conclusion was that we’d better downplay our talents and skills when someone else points them out, lest they think that receiving a compliment graciously means we’re peacocking out.

Years ago, I had a small epiphany, and I’ve been a bit evangelistic about it. Whenever you’re tempted to blow off a compliment, stop for a moment and think of it this way: someone just gave you a gift. What do you do when you’ve been given a gift? If you’re well-mannered, you say thank you. And you don’t insult the giver by refusing to take it.

Think of someone who has made it very clear that they were disappointed with a present that you put a lot of thought into. (This is common, and occasionally acceptable, from a three-year-old who has not yet learned her social filters. It is not acceptable - but not uncommon! - from adults who really should be better mannered.) Didn’t you feel like saying, “Well, fine then, I won’t bother next time!” Every time you disqualify a compliment, you’re figuratively sneering at the thoughtful gift someone’s handed you. And by denying the truth of their statement, you’re calling them a liar. It’s possible that, eventually, they’ll figure out that you can’t be pleased, and they’ll give up trying.

What about the insincere compliments? What about the people who want to see us full of ourselves so they can come back later with their Bitchy Stick and beat us like a pinata until all our good will falls out? Yeah, those people exist. But I don’t think that being self-critical is going to ward them off. They won’t leave you alone because you’re parroting what you think they want to hear - “I’m not good enough, I’m not smart enough, I’m not pretty enough.” If anything, it draws them closer, because their self-hatred loves to make friends with someone else’s - anyone else’s! - self-hatred.

So do yourself a favor. (If you can’t bring yourself to try for your sake, then do ME a favor, okay?) The next time someone says, “Good job,” bite your tongue before you say something stupid like, “It was nothing.” It wasn’t nothing! You worked hard, you did well, and someone is acknowledging it! Instead, say “Thank you,” because it’s the right thing to do. Say it because it feels good to soak up any little bit of love the universe gives you. Say it because it’ll confound the haters. Say it because responding graciously to kindness is a guarantee that more will come your way.

Though I am by nature one of the most scatterbrained people you’ll ever meet, I’m also someone who is “accidentally disciplined.” Throughout middle and high school, I wrote every day, mostly emo poetry, unexceptional but important because it was my mind and heart working on paper. Though I’ll admit that my writing discipline came at the unfortunate expense of any discipline I might have applied to my schoolwork, I’m still glad I learned at an early age how essential it is to visit one’s muse daily.

After I got saved and began volunteering full-time at The Cult, I abandoned my writing discipline. I still wrote - announcements for the church bulletin, clever marketing taglines for our advertising, even my pastor’s sermons when he was too lazy tired busy to do it himself - but I abandoned my muse. At the time I believed that my life had no room for anything that existed solely for the purpose of beauty. Everything had to have a divine purpose.

Thankfully, I found something that enabled me to be creative and holy: prayer. I prayed every day and in every way, and in that communion with God I found purpose AND beauty. For Christmas 1999, a friend gave me a small, spiral-bound notebook - purple, with little sheep doodled on the front - and I discovered prayer journaling. My relationship with God seemed to be unraveling at the time - mostly because my pastor accused me of being treacherous and sinful - so I clung to prayer as a way to save me, and that little notebook was a life raft. Everything I thought and felt was formed into words, altars marking my journey. Over the years that followed, I made a practice of journaling daily, and found that those hours I spent in solitude with God and my words were essential to my well-being. This is how I managed to stay sane through confusion of The Cult, and a large part of why I still love God despite the abuse I suffered. Somehow, in the bombed-out wasteland of my soul, something small and beautiful managed to take seed and grow.

After my time in The Cult ended, I still journaled, trying to make sense of all I had experienced, and separate the good lessons from the bad. I began toying with the idea of writing fiction and poetry again, but my creative voice was rusty from disuse. In October of 2004, I made the leap from paper to pixels by creating a LiveJournal. I intended it to be a place where I could hide out, where I could voice my fears and hurt under the cloak of a false identity. Each word was a release, a prayer. I wanted someone to hear me and respond, but instead of committing my thoughts to God, I was revealing them to people across the globe. At the time, it seemed God had shut up, or maybe he never existed at all, so blogging became an escape from my failed marriage and dying friendships and crisis of faith.

Over time, with the help of “virtual strangers” and many thousands of words, I healed. I stopped hiding behind a false name and started forming new friendships, on and offline. I forgave the people who had wronged me, and more importantly, I forgave myself. I realized that I didn’t know how to quit God, and so I began - cautiously - trusting him again. I also noticed a definitive change in my blogging. In the middle of the mundane and the frivolity (Hi, I went to work today, or Hi, I bought a pretty new dress today!) there was conviction. Passion. I began WRITING. One thing that helped me make that transition was National Novel Writing Month; another was LJ Idol. Both inspired me to push beyond my comfort zone in style and subject, and in the process of participating in each I saw my writing flourish and grow. And every time I posted something that came from the deepest part of my soul - whether it was a story, a poem, an essay, or a capslocked bitchfest - I felt a satisfaction that was perplexingly akin to the dreamy high I’d feel after an hour of prayer. After digging deep within myself to pull out the perfect words, I was simultaneously jazzed and mellow. I felt like wisdom was my sister and enlightenment was my homeboy. I was buzzed, and I knew I’d come back tomorrow, for MORE.

I learned, again, anew, how to meditate with words. This is why I write.

And as with prayer, writing is never only about me. Some people never share their words, but I am not one of those people. In the way that I used to reach out and take someone’s hand, saying, “Let’s pray,” I now reach out and say, “Listen, tell.” I open a window to my heart and mind, and desperately want to see through someone else’s window, too. So this is why my words are no longer bound in a notebook, because I want to start a conversation with whoever will hear and respond. This is why I blog.

There’s a lot of advice out there for beginning writers, and one that you’ll hear over & over is that every writer should make it their goal to crank out X words per day. I’ve heard as little as 250 (one double-spaced page) and up to 1000; I have a friend whose daily output is about 2000. During NaNoWriMo, I tried for the requisite 1667 words every day to hit 50K by the end of the month, but on some days I cranked out 5000 in an effort to catch up. (And at the end of those writing sessions, letmetellyou, I was exhausted but jubilant - I had something like a runner’s high going on. Bliss, I tell you. And when I went to bed, I slept GOOD.)

Now that I’m working on my memoir, I haven’t given myself a hard-and-fast daily requirement, but in the back of my mind, what I’m hoping for is 1000 - 1500 words five days a week. (I will cut myself some slack, though, when I write some quality stuff for my blog, but if I’m just tossing out a “hey how are you here’s what I’m doing” post, I still expect some “real” writing.) I just want to be DONE with draft one, because although I’m enjoying telling the story, I know it’s so raw and unformed it needs HELP. I want to get to the revising - how masochistic is THAT?

So tell me, writerly folks, what’s your daily word goal?

ETA: Oh, on a semi-related subject - I’ve got a post percolating about why I blog. A friend recently said that she didn’t consider blogging to be “real” writing, and I’ve been turning that over in my head ever since. I don’t know when - or really how - my approach to blogging changed, but I find that now it’s less diary and more discipline. Stay tuned.

I’m ashamed to say that I’ve never read anything by Virginia Woolf. I have read the biography her nephew Quentin Bell wrote (and I have to applaud him for being so brutally honest about his parents’ eccentricities). I’ve seen The Hours more times than I can count, and read the book once. I’ve even read Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and seen the movie. (Dear Elizabeth Taylor: I LOVE YOU.) So I suppose you could say I’m a Virginia Woolf fangirl - I mean, she fascinates me - except I haven’t read anything she’s written. This is wrong.

Still, there is one truth that Virginia wrote about that I believe wholeheartedly: every woman needs a room of her own. When I was a child, my mother would sit at the dining room table to write letters and pay bills with the living room television blaring in the background. My brother and I would cluster around her, crowd her, whining for something to eat, one of us complaining that the other had done something unjust, rifling through her papers, upsetting her balance. Sometimes she would just scold us for disturbing her, other times she would be undone by her frustration. And who could blame her? She wanted just a small space to conduct her affairs, and we (as children do) assumed our affairs were more important.

My mother often said that she felt she had nothing that belonged to her and her alone. She guarded her and my father’s bedroom jealously, and would not let any of us kids enter without permission. Now that I am an adult, I can think of many reasons why she may have done so, and all of them make me shudder - but I don’t think her protectiveness of her sleeping quarters had anything to do with naughty things hiding in the dresser drawers. I think it had everything to do with the fact that she’d surrendered her entire life and domicile to these creatures called children, whose sticky hands touched every surface and whose demands filled her every waking (and sleeping!) hour. She wanted one place to be sacred, but even her bedroom was not hers alone. She shared it with my father, and when us kids where lonely and scared and upset, she shared it with us, too.

My husband and I have bought a house with three bedrooms and a den. One of the bedrooms is where we sleep, one is for guests. The den is “man land” where my husband’s computer and stereo live. And one room is MINE. I love my room. I love that it is full of things that are important to me - my journals, my artwork, family photographs and letters from friends, watermarked and crinkled with age. I love that this room is filled with light, and most of all, I love that when my husband comes to speak to me while I’m in my room, he stops at the door and waits until I invite him in. He respects that this is my space, and that it is sacred.

A woman who is (like myself) very traditional in her gender roles spends dozens of hours every week in every room in the house. My hands are at work in the kitchen and the laundry room and the bedrooms and the bathroom. And although I work in those spaces, although I chose the paint color and pictures on the walls, they are not my spaces. Only in MY room did I not think for a moment what my husband or any visitors might think of the contents. Only in MY room did I ask myself, “What do you want, Emily?” Many women spend every waking (and sleeping!) moment thinking about what their partner/children/boss/mother/siblings/community/country needs. Only in MY room do I feel completely empowered to think about MY needs.

As a child, I did not understand it when my mother said, “I feel like I have nothing that’s mine.” I thought that she meant she regretted having children, that we stood in the way of her happiness and freedom. I know now that she meant she only longed for something that was hers alone, because in ownership we know ourselves. Often, women relinquish everything that is theirs - even their bodies, their names - or it is taken from them. Their responsibilities overflow every boundary and threaten even their sense of self: If I am not a wife, who am I? If I am not a mother, who am I? If I do not care for my children, or my siblings, or my elderly parents, or my narcissistic boss, am I still a person? Do I still have worth? I know I was someone once, but who?

In that moment of knowing, yet wondering, we feel a need. I must have something that’s mine. Mine alone, and no one else’s. Not because we are selfish. We would shed our own skin to clothe our loved ones! Rather, because we need to know that we are more than generosity, more than beauty, more than function. We need to know that we exist as a person.

When we say “mine,” we are saying, “I.”

I’ll be the first person to admit that I can be 1) slow on the uptake and 2) slightly self-centered. (But in a totally adorable way, of course.) Sometimes it doesn’t OCCUR to me that someone might be hurt/sad/angry/depressed until they say something about it, and then I think, “Dammit! I totally should have seen that coming, and attempted to drown their sadness with cookies and hugs.”

So I shouldn’t be surprised that it hadn’t occurred to me that Mother’s Day could be so emotionally loaded for some people. Well, sure, I knew that my friends who’d lost their moms had a hard time. And for the women who want to be mothers, but for some disappointing reason are not, Mother’s Day sucks. I knew a woman years ago who was estranged from her teenage daughter, and I always tried to honor her on Mother’s Day because I knew she would be feeling her daugther’s absence more keenly. But it wasn’t until this year, when several of my blog-buddies talked about how negative their relationships with their mothers were, that I realized there’s a whole other section of people who are emotionally screwed on Mother’s Day.

Unfortunately, Father’s Day isn’t much better. My ex-husband lost his father a few years ago, so Father’s Day sucks a bit for him. Those who have grown up without fathers, or who have a volatile relationship with their dads, feel left out and angry on that day. And though they’re not as vocal as moms or wannabe-moms are, I’m sure there are countless men out there who are hurting because they’re lost a child or were never able to have one.

I forget how lucky I am. My mom and dad aren’t perfect people, but since I have yet to meet any human being who IS perfect, I don’t fault them for that. I am just so darn lucky to have two people who care about me as much as my parents do, who sacrificed in so many ways to give me a safe, happy, healthy childhood and tons of opportunities as I entered adulthood. That kind of support is rare in today’s world, so those of us who were blessed enough to have it should be grateful every day.

We can also take a cue from a friend of mine who emailed each of her girlfriends yesterday to thank them for “mothering” her throughout the years. Sometimes when our biological family doesn’t fit the bill, we create a family of choice - people who don’t share our DNA and aren’t bound to us legally, but who nurture us as God intended family to do. Though nothing can fully erase the pain of a broken home or an abusive parent, knowing that someone (or many someones!) accepts and treasures us goes a long way to healing our hearts, and making it possible for us to pass that love on to someone else.

So today I want to thank my entire family - those of you who are “stuck” with me, and those who have chosen me - for being part of my life, and for giving me so much to be grateful for. And I want to open my arms to everyone who is hurting today, who feels lost and alone in this world, and say, “I accept you. I treasure you. Be well.”

This letter is going out in the mail today. Tell me, folks, wouldn’t you be a little upset, too?

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
702 SW 8th Street
Bentonville, Arkansas 72716-8611

To Whom It May Concern:

I shop at Store # XXXX in Virginia Beach on a weekly (sometimes daily!) basis. The frequency of my trips is only partly due to the convenient location of the store. In the hundreds of shopping trips I’ve made to Store # XXXX, I’ve never had an unpleasant experience. All of the associates there are friendly and helpful and the store is always clean and tidy. I appreciate the hard work that the employees do to make it easy for me to find what I need and check out quickly.

Wal-Mart’s low prices and hassle-free returns are another reason I shop there so often. There are times when I get home with my purchases and realize that the jeans don’t fit quite as well as I’d hoped or that the light bulbs I bought for the bathroom are the wrong wattage. I always return merchandise in the condition in which I received it, and I’m careful to save my receipts! So you can imagine my frustration when I was told today that Wal-Mart’s new policy (which was NOT posted at Customer Service or printed on the receipt, and which differs significantly from the policy posted on online) is to refuse any books returned more than 24 hours after purchase.

Thankfully, the CSM I spoke with accepted my return when I voiced a complaint, but I felt compelled to write to Wal-Mart’s Corporate Headquarters to call attention to how unfair (not to mention contradictory and unclear) this policy is. I love to read and I buy lots of books. Sometimes I get a book home and read a chapter or two and decide it’s just not for me, so I return it. I have NEVER had a store tell me they would not accept the return. I also purchase lots of books as gifts, and I’d hate to think of a friend being stuck with a book he or she didn’t care for because of such an unreasonable return policy!

I hope that you will reconsider this policy, or at least post a clear and complete return policy in all of your stores as a “buyer beware.” Now that I know that every novel I purchase at Wal-Mart is unreturnable, I’ll likely take my bookworm business elsewhere.

Thank you for your time and consideration,

Emily H. King

I included a printed copy of the policy from www.walmartstores.com (which I linked to above), to drive home the point. Yeah, I’m one of those letter-writing people. Just accept it, it’s part of my mental illness charm.