Workshop Poem #1 for Class

Bromance

“They’re like brothers,” she noted,

her eyes crinkling 

and her dimple floating to the surface.

Her smile was like that of a mother,

watching her giggling babies

rolling on the floor. 

I merely listened.

We sat with our legs crossed,

observing our friends

from a bench behind the pool table.

The two had abandoned their game

and began fighting to the left,

wrestling and snapping like puppies

over God-knows-what.

Actually, I knew:

it was probably over billiards.

One accused the other of “cheap shots”

and with a grin, pushed and pulled

at the other’s clothes.

They tussled into a corner.

I looked away.

I had to look away. I had only her,

and her words were neurons firing

bullets in my head.

What was being brothers like?

Their own exclusive relationship, I guessed. 

I could hear muffled yelps from the alcove

but I couldn’t see them anymore.

Instead, I gazed at the leftover pool balls,

islands that washed up against the walls

and against each other.

I stood up and threw them 

across the green sea,

and they clicked into their caves

where their roommates were waiting.

“Yeah, they are like brothers,” I responded.

One ball was left on the side of the table. 

“Brothers,” my thoughts repeated. 

I pushed it to a corner

and heard it clink. At least pool balls

always had room for one more.

-----

Weddings, Children, and Consumption

"The way that young Protestant couples plan their weddings bodes very ill for the kind of family they are hoping to become. You watch what a wedding is often about these days — it is about displaying one’s wealth to those one is eager to impress. If you think instead about the scriptural wedding itself, about being the open banquet that one hopes one’s marriage will be, I think weddings would look a lot different than they do. I think they would be on a Sunday morning service where everyone is invited. I think they would look more like a potluck than the kind of catered extravagances toward which even the middle class is climbing. I think the image of the banquet where the blind and the lame are invited, and those who cannot repay us, that image would be one in which to start a marriage."

~Amy Laura Hall

Definitely some good thoughts.  I hope to someday have this kind of wedding.
And I kinda wish all weddings were so open like this!  I love attending them, and I think the above paints such an incredible picture.  So counter-cultural.  That's what Christians are supposed to be, right (at least especially in this very good sense of this example)?


My other favorite part from this interview:

"TOJ: Is it wrong then to even have the approach that I shouldn’t have as many kids because then I could then be more hospitable toward those children who need good parents, who need resources…?

ALH: So are you asking should you use contraception and adopt children? Or use contraception so you could give more money to your church and tithe?

TOJ: Well I guess I am asking both of those things, but those both seem somewhat a-moral now that they have been articulated…

ALH: (laughs) Well its not that those questions are obscene, but even as you ask such questions to be troubled by them, I think is to be asking the right sorts of questions. When you ask as you also simultaneously think, “ah is that the right question to ask”… that’s the right question to ask. To ask whether or not that is the right question to ask is already doing so much more than most young couples are doing when they are thinking about having children. What they’re thinking about when they are having children is crafted not by their faith but by the book, What to Expect When You’re Expecting. They’re going to stick with all the rules in What To Expect To When You’re Expecting, because What To Expect When You’re Expecting tells you that if you adhere to these rules you will have a child of the promise. That’s why their little tiny section at the back of the book about the unexpected, or unanticipated child with disabilities comes as such a jarring little section. Up until that point you have been reading that if you do all of these things right, you will not have the “dreaded” child, the child that is unexpected.

So what you usually have couples doing is buying these books and trying to anticipate all that they can do so that they can have a beautiful and flourishing child by all the definitions that we perceive in our society to describe a beautiful and flourishing child. That will continue your beautiful image of your flourishing beautiful family. And so even to ask questions about what images one has in view for having children goes a long way towards being more faithful. Just asking questions, why, why do you want to have kids? What do we have children for? A Mennonite colleague asked that right to my face at a conference — that we need to ask what are children for. He explained to the group that, in the Mennonite tradition, children are born for martyrdom. (And at that point I was thinking, that’s why you’re a Mennonite and I’m not.) But, to even say that, to witness that in the Mennonite tradition you have children so that they can bring witness in a cruciform way to Christ’s love, that’s a whole different set of questions than the questions mainline Evangelicals usually ask.

TOJ: The question of, “what are children for”, is this idea to have a perfect child, and to have the child in a very controlled way, to give this child everything that he or she needs and to give the child every advantage possible… is there kind of an approach to children in this country that seems Savior-esque, with this objectification does there also come a kind of idolatry of children?

ALH: Yeah, it’s a pretty surreal, Gnostic idolatry though. You get this image of a kind of disembodied child that you want. Look at the Ann Geddes pictures, an image of a child as pumpkin, or a child as flower: the baby as the commodity you get to consume or pluck and put in your vase, VERSUS, the kind of images you have with Norman Rockwell. Almost all of his images of children are children with skinned knees, are of the chaos of kids — I think about the one with the boys running and trying to pull up their pants, they’ve been swimming in the water hole with their dog. The images of children that he depicts are children with other children, who are showing signs of mess, which children inevitably are. Versus, with Ann Geddes, her images are so popular, I mean all sorts of well meaning lovely church ladies on a regular basis put up Ann Geddes posters and calendars and use those images. And what they are is a kind of really dangerous idolatry, because you’re idolizing a kind of purely platonic form of “baby”, the “baby” one can fashion according to one’s own desires, the “baby” as consumable. And notice that those babies never have a sign of food on themselves; if you know anything about toddlers they are constantly covered in food. These pictures are children that do not consume; these are babies that we consume. And those icons of childhood are indicative of a dominant culture in America that sees children as a way to accessorize and fulfill one’s own life, rather than as interruptions into our own hopes, dreams and goals.

Children should ideally re-calibrate our lives and instead we are seeking children that we can calibrate in order to fit into our hopes and dreams. That is part of why you have pre-natal testing and selective abortions, even among Evangelical Christians, you have a real interest in sex selection and gender selection even among Evangelical Christians because they have an image of what their family will look like, of what their child will look like. And there is a whole arsenal of tools now in medicine to use to craft a child that will most fit. Very blessedly, the child who comes will never be a child that will adjust accordingly and be perfect in a way that you were hoping. Blessedly, even if we end up cloning someday, that child will resist merely being an image of what we want. And in that resistance I think there will be hope."  

(bolding mine)

It actually reminds me a bit of my Latin American Cinema class, in how we have talked about the body (along with cinema itself) is often portrayed as being something that is consumed by our eyes and not really given much second thought to.

That felt more elegant in my head.  lol.

Convicting article in regards to how I view children and babies.  Are they just cute objects that are there for me to look at and play with?  Generally, yes.  Talia comes to mind as the prime example, especially with all of her ridiculously adorable photos on Facebook.  Not to bash on those photos... but it's just a thought about how I am viewing what children are for.  Entertainment?

This branches out to how I view people in general.  Do I consume a bit too much of Darren Criss?  haha.  probably.  I don't want to say yes, because I still enjoy it and I still want to keep up with it.  sigh.  but I think one look at my tumblr dashboard would tell you that one entity dominates it (and it's definitely not God...).

Once again, what I'm learning recently.  Romans 1:24-25.  Being given over to all my desires, in any area of my life.

Thank God He doesn't give me everything that I want.

Oh Hello.

No, I don't really want to talk to you.  Sorry.

Knew this would happen.  Well, I thought it might not, I mean, 'cause of what you've said before... but hey, people prove me wrong all the time.

I'm at once pissed... and yet also relieved.  In a way, it's kind of like passing the buck.  Less burden on me, I suppose.

Not to say that I view you as a burden.

ok, well, to be honest, I do to an extent.

But really, you know, letting me know in person would've been nice.

The judgmental, short-tempered guy I become when I think about you probably does need a break from you... and/or we need to air things out--ok, I need to air things out... but I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be ready to listen to what I have to say right now.  And in my pissed state, I shouldn't be saying much anyway.

yupp.

oh Lord, I do need patience/help.  I realize I haven't been the greatest friend either.

Play

A poem for my poetry class that I'm writing a close reading on.  It's from our book,The Best American Poetry 2010, and it's by Denise Duhamel (I just went online and read a bunch more of her poems--great narrative poems... just like the kind I want to be able to do).

Play

I am on the outside now like my childless aunt

the one we all hated because my uncle doted on her

she didn't like children you could tell

and wore silk dresses that had to be dry-cleaned

how extravagant said my mother she's spoiled said the other aunts

who were busy in their polyester blends busy with their kids

I have a memory of this aunt eating bonbons

as I swung on a tire hung from a tree branch in her yard

my aunt didn't offer us any candy and that was just bad manners

even as a kindergartener I knew that

but now I have become that aunt

my sister-in-law wants my husband

to move in with her to take care of her children

and what do I know about suffering and divorces

and restraining orders what do I know about staying up all night

with a daughter with a fever

when I called about the $300 worth of extra cell phone charges

the woman at T-mobile said honey I hate to be the one to tell you

but there’s a number and she read my sister-in-law’s number

all the calls are to and from your husband’s cell

sometimes they’re on a couple of hours

they talked when I was at work

the woman said I’m sorry thinking my husband was having an affair

but the affair was with his sister and it wasn’t an affair really

it was therapy and my husband was the therapist

even though he isn’t a therapist

our niece wrote a one-act play in which a man is being abused

by his wife who is a witch a demon

and the man’s kindly sister is trying to help him escape

I know you are being abused as I was once too the heroine says

my sister-in-law thought her brother was abused because he vacuumed once

I guess she thought he was doting on me

my husband thought he was abused because I asked him to cook dinner

when he didn’t have a job for over a year

I understand why my aunt never fought back

because once you are labeled as someone terrible

there is nothing much you can do to change your reputation

there is no way to prove your kindness

if you are nice everyone will think you are phony trying to trick them

and if you are cold well it just confirms their theory

sometimes my husband disappears from this story

only to come back to say please don’t call my sister

the other woman

it grosses me out

OK I won’t

our niece got an A for her play

portraying me as ugly and cruel

and the teacher thought it was so realistic

her theater class even did a staged reading of it

a loud eighth-grade girl playing a shrill me

a small eighth-grade boy cowering as my husband

sometimes my uncle disappears from this story

only to come back

with a giant stuffed animal for me

and a kiss on the cheek for my aunt

when I stole two of her chocolates

and poked holes into the rest left in the box

she knew enough not to complain

and kept her squashed candies to herself.

getting on the tumbs.

I created a tumblr:  quotidianthoughts.tumblr.com

Like Karen, I don't know what's gonna overlap and what's going down on either blog.  I enjoy having all my massive text posts on this blog, since tumblr seems picture-heavy, but I do prefer tumblr's interface more.  It doesn't have as many crazy text changes and random line breaks like blogspot does.  And it does allow for me to reblog Wesley Hill easier.  xD  

Plus, now i no longer have to type in the first few letters of every sophomore's tumblr account--I can just look at my dashboard!

Anyway, if you look on my tumblr now, you'll find the following jewel of embarrassment:

"I'm just tired of being a unicorn, Dad."

weakness

Came out to my ninth graders the second week of Sunday School (9/18).  I think they were ok with it.  They still talk to me at least and wave back when I smile and wave at them.  =)

Came out to various families of youth, some 100ish people for the Youth Family dinner (10/1)... the most number of people in a group that I'd come out to and the least prepared I'd been.  I didn't even think of coming out until the youth workers began sharing about themselves.  For one, I wasn't sure if it was appropriate to share this in front of a multitude of traditional Asian parents.  As I was praying about whether or not to come out (I was one of the last youth workers to share about myself), another youth worker, Connie, spoke about stepping out of one's comfort zone for God.  I was either thinking of 2 Cor. 12:9, or that prompted my thinking of it.
"But He said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me."

"Then give me strength, God, give me your strength, and give me courage, if you want me to come out."

After I finished sharing, I couldn't concentrate very well on what David C. was saying.  My hands were still mildly shaking and I went to get some lemonade and then tea.  I sat back down and thought, "This won't get easier, huh?"  I always hope I'll get better and more at ease with coming out.
When David was done, some parents came up to me and told me how much they appreciated me speaking--Henry telling me how encouraging it was was especially poignant when I consider how much his family has been through.  For those parents who didn't, with whom I would make eye contact with as we passed each other in the halls, I would think, "What do they think of me?  I wonder how they see me now.  Were they offended?  Disturbed?"

Hm.  regardless, the Body of Christ is not what it should be.  and if speaking out is one way of making it more like what it should be, then I will do so.  Changing the church from the inside is definitely exciting.

I can only imagine, though, how much more difficult this will be when I go back home and come out to my home church.  The scandal and questions that will ensue.  My long history that will be scrutinized.  I wish I could take someone from here with me for support.  But this is my own cross.  "For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities.  For when I am weak, then I am strong."  for the sake of Christ.  To show His power and my gratitude for everything that He's done for me.  It's the least I could do.