The St. Jerome Award for Crotchety Catholics

This post from the Carolina Cannonball inspired the creation of the St. Jerome Award for Crotchety Catholics. It celebrates the fact that it is possible to be holy and crotchety at the same time, which is one of the reasons I chose St. Jerome for my patron saint (that, and he was a scholar). So you can call me Hermione. I'll be on the lookout for more award winners, and if you see a likely candidate, please email me!

Better than Expected!

I finished The City of Ember a little while ago, and I was very pleased with the book as a whole. Even my disappointment with the cult of the "Believers" was redeemed. Though their actions suggested a certain flavor of Evangelical Christianity, their faith was misdirected. In quite a nice passage, a "something better" was suggested:

Doon watched until the moth disappeared. He knew he had seen something marvelous. What was the power that turned the worm into a moth? It was greater than any power the Builders had had, he was sure of that. The power that ran the city of Ember was feeble by comparison--and about to run out.

The wonderful surprise (that I hope will not be a spoiler), is that the book is heavily influenced by Plato. That it was a surprise is a testimony to the talent of the author. Now to find out if the sequel is as oddly engrossing and fascinating. Best read in a while!

Sunday Mass and the Catholic Toddler

BabyCatholic (my daughter, who is 15 1/2 months) writes. . .

Every week there a couple of days when Daddy and Brother are both home all day. At the end of this time, towards evening, they take me to a place where they splash in water, but they won't let me play in it. And there are no duckies. They sing, but only let me sing at certain times. They especially won't let me yell and talk when they're on their knees. A man is talking up front, but he won't notice me when I try to get his attention. There are books in front of us that I can't play with. And if I try to take one of the thin pages out of the books, boy do they get upset! Tonight, all I was trying to do was get off the padded step-thing on the floor and get out onto the aisle to explore a little and say 'hi' to all the people who were looking at me, but would they let me? No. So of course I had to scream! What's a baby to do? Clearly Brother didn't train these parents well enough!

My mother used to say that when faced with the decision of whether or not to have me baptized as an infant, she decided against it because she would have had to promise to bring me to church every Sunday, and she just didn't feel like she could do that with a baby. In a similar gesture, my grandmother stopped attending Mass when she had three young children at home. And, to add another generation to this saga, I (we, actually) have had our share of challenges, though we do not give up so easily!

BabyCatholic is at the age when she is still very, very cute when smiling (most of the time) and quiet, or chattering happily. But she is at the stage when people feel compelled to shoot those "can't you shut that kid up?" looks when she lets out a pterodactyl scream (one of her nicknames is Banshee) or otherwise asserts her independence. (Incidently, we are not really born with Free Will. We acquire it between the ages of 10 and 20 months.)

The "shut that kid up" look comes most often from parishoners who do not particularly mind when the 20-somethings discuss their after-Mass plans during Communion, or when the well-to-do family of 8 comes in after the Gloria and takes the front pew, no matter who happens to be occupying it. Many of these generous, non-judgmental souls have grown or semi-grown children of their own. However, for some reason, the priests also seem to take mild- to moderate offense if the Eucharistic prayer is interrupted by a shriek or if there is an audible rip from the direction of the baby with the hymnal. I'm sorry, Father, but didn't you notice that she was quiet during the Consecration? There has to be a special place in heaven for parents who wrestle with babies in Mass.

I do wonder whether there is more that could be done to make parents of young children--particularly young children of the squirmy ages--feel more welcome at Mass. My options all involve either vexing clergy and laity alike, or separating my family. One parish we have been attending lately will likely be our new parish home because they offer a 5:30 P.M. Mass (the only time locally that does not conflict with a baby meal time) and a nursery. The first time I used the nursery was three weeks ago today. I pretty much stormed out with SquirmyCatholic (you know who I mean!) during the first reading, deposited her with two friendly women, and returned for the Gospel. The entire time I was looking back to make sure they were not bringing her to me crying. Much as I enjoyed the opportunity to focus on the Mass, I felt that there was something missing. Perhaps because there was. It feels somehow wrong to split up the family during Mass. I remember when she first noticed the statues of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Conception. She pointed to Jesus and said, "hi! . . . hi! . . . hi!" This evening, she tried to investigate the contents of our mouths after Communion. There's something special in these moments, if only because her innocence redirects our attention to certain elements of the Sacred.

The Orthodox Roman Catholic has beautiful, evocative words to say about Sacred Silence. I have experienced the silent, reverent beauty of the Tridentine Mass--before I had my second child! For me to do my part to provide for the Sacred Silence in the Masses I attend, someone must be exiled--my baby, or perhaps myself. I could, perhaps sit in the windowed second-story room constructed as an afterthought in the renovations of the student parish we had, until recently, attended regularly. The view is. . . Wait, what view? The room can not accommodate more than 2 adults with a child each. In the parish that generously provides a nursery, the "crying baby room" is actually the Narthex. From The Catholic Encyclopedia:

"In early Christian architecture a portion of the church at the west end, separated from the nave by a low wall or screen and reserved for the catechumens, energumens, and penitents who were not admitted amongst the congregation."

From Wikipedia:

"The narthex of a church is the entrance or lobby area, located at end of the nave, at the far end from the church's main altar. Traditionally the narthex was a part of the church building, but was not considered part of the church proper. It was either an indoor area separated from the nave by a screen or rail, or an external structure such as a porch."

This provides a good indication of the location, I think. Basically, it's the foyer--the first level, where one partakes of Holy Water in preparation for entry into the church proper (or the Church proper, as the Baptismal font is also located in this area in this particular church!) Noisy children and their unfortunate parents are treated as "catechumens, energumens, and penitents who were not admitted amongst the congregation"--not quite worthy of admittance. We either sit together in the isolation booth, or we split our family, which, unified and fruitful, born of a Sacramental Marriage, is supposed to provide an example to others within the Church.

This evening, the pastor was rehashing a Pro-Life homily that he has given almost verbatim at least two other times in our memory. Unhappily, I was left with the message, "We're Pro-Life, but we don't want them crying in church." In all fairness, I don't believe this is what he would have wished.

What do we want from children's literature?

Recently, courtesy of my search for suitable and stimulating reading material for my son and a great blog/conversation on Little House on the Prairie by DarwinCatholic, I have been considering and reconsidering the topic of children's literature. I say "reconsidering" because children's lit has long been an interest of mine. It is the one and only subject on which I am published--well, that and ecocriticism, but it's the same article.

It is inevitable that children's literature should try to teach. After all, it is difficult to find work of literature in which the author (who after all, does not exist in poststructuralist literary criticism) does not seem to have something that she or he is communicating to the audience. Even if the work seems to be "just a story" (whatever that means), there is some "exigence" (rhetorical term I taught to my students this past week meaning some reason that the writer wrote that story and not something else).

Having said this, in spite of my lifelong love of the Chronicles of Narnia that began when I was 10 and culminated in my M.A. thesis (and the above-mentioned article), I, like Neil Gaiman, who expressed the sentiment at the Mythcon 35 conference, which I attended in 2004, felt utterly betrayed in high school when I realized the religious subtext. Yes, I am one of the three or so readers who did not catch on to this on the first, second, third or fourth read. I can't say when I caught on, but I think it was the fuzzy white lamb who turns to Aslan at the end of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader that did it for me. In my defense, I did not read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (the most Christological) as often as the others because I found the story to be less interesting than many of the other books, and did not acquire a copy of The Magician's Nephew, with the Creation story, until after I had read the rest twice, as the (Baptist school!) library where I first encountered the Chronicles had lost their copy. When I did read MN, I was taken by the symmetry of the series--the discovery of who "the Professor" of LWW really was--rather than by the Creationism.

I lost interest in Harry Potter when it became clear that book 3 was, in the first three chapters, more concerned with establishing its anti-capital- and corporal-punishment slant (not to mention the house-elf slavery sub-plot) than its main storyline, at least initially.

Yet, I find myself concerned, while reading The City of Ember, that the author's only mention of religion is mockery--brief mockery, and mockery of a kind of extreme Evangelicalism, but mockery nonetheless. I find myself thinking that there is enough of this kind of mockery to be found in everyday life, and asking whether in need intrude upon the most compelling early adolescent book I have encountered in many a year.

I have not made it a habit of studying new releases in children's literature. I have been busy studying--or avoiding studying--early 20th century Brit Lit (the whole "life's work" thing). But since my son is going to a school with a library this year and a screwy reading program that awards "points" for reading, and since he is in the "tweens" as far as book-level and book-content, I have been paying more attention. I have no interest in the more or less "realistic" pre-teen fiction. I didn't even read it when my friends were busy with The Babysitter's Club series. Since HarryPottermania, the standard formula for children's fantasy goes something like this:

1. Young person has difficult family/school situation.
2. Young person discovers something extroardinary about him or herself, some extroardinary creature, or an otherworldly realm.
3. Young person is faced with a crisis that pertains directly to the ethereal plot device mentioned in #2.
4. Having discovered the fantasy element, young person puts it to good use, growing and learning about him- or herself in the process, resolving the issue satisfactorily, usually heroically.
5. Young person's life returns to normal, and s/he is able to resolve difficult real-life issues due to the intervention of the deus ex machina.

It's amazing how many variations there are on this now. The formula is effective, if done well (though Tolkien thought the fantasy lessened by the entering-the-secondary-world-through-our-world motif). But to do it well in the wake of the acknowledged masters is difficult. And I hate to say it, but dragons are getting old.

School stories are trite. Fantasies are becoming poorly- and overly done. I don't approve of books that preach, unless one knows what is being preached to one. And yet cheap jabs at religion are objectionable, too. The classics are a bit above his reading level, though Treasure Island is on the agenda. I will be working on getting him to read the Little House Books, because they have a rare quality about them--honesty. And perhaps that is what I am seeking, really. Even C. S. Lewis, I came to realize, is not quite genuine in his fiction. He comes close, but he doesn't quite believe in his characters or his world. He does have fun with it, though, and there's something to be said for that! If Little House on the Prairie is teaching anything, it is doing so because the ideas communicated were so well-ingrained in the author as to be second nature--they couldn't not be there. Religion is not self-conscious; it is not intrusive; it is just a way of life. And isn't that how it should be, really?

I haven't yet decided what makes The City of Ember so compelling, but it is. I'm not entirely sure what it's trying to communicate. There is self-reliance, with the realization that one does need help sometimes. The children are mature, but still act like children. The fantasy world is fantastic, but has an air of reality. Society is dark and has dystopic elements, but it is not a dystopia. It's even got that healthy fatalism that is so entirely missing from entertainment media these days. (The same healthy fatalism inherent in Return of the King or the poems of W. H. Auden, though non-Christian existentialist fatalism--a fatalism makes it unsuitable for my son, unfortunately.) It would be perfect (so far) if not for the "Believers."

Feminism, Family, and Femmes Politiques

I was referred by a friend to an article on "Feminism and Politics." While I usually like to avoid political posts, this one intersects somewhat with my musings on motherhood and work from a while back. Here's an interesting side note--when I read the "I'm a Woman" song that the author reprints with reference to a perfume ad, I was reminded of Miss Piggy. Seriously. There's a Muppet show sketch with Miss Piggy and some has-been brunette (offhand, I forget who!) with whom Piggy was competing for Kermit. Hardly an emblem of the woman's movement, even for the sake of argument!! This is also kind of funny given the reference in the quote to bacon.

What questions does this article raise for me? I'm not sure. Perhaps what it says about what we want to believe women are, or do, or whatever. The point seems to be that, while ostensibly, all choices for women are equally valid, in the political arena, this is not the case. This is no new news. Certain "choices" are definitely represented as being "rights" more often than others. However, I'm not entirely sure when the correct choice for professional women became to have a family and a career. Or, indeed, to have a family before a career, which really seems to be what the women in question represent. Rather, career first, family later has seemed the way to go, which is why unplanned pregnancies, and especially unplanned pregnancies before a certain age are deemed damaging and burdensome. Or did I misunderstand something all this time? I don't think so. So is feminism rethinking itself (again)? Is it in crisis? Is it obsolete? Or is it just imperfectly represented for political expedience?

Or am I, in concert with the author of the article, merely focusing too hard on meaningless offhand remarks that likely meant very little except for image-building purposes? Probably. And I can even make a literacy-orality reference. In our era of recording technology, remarks uttered in a specific context, that otherwise would have evaporated after being spoken, whose context could not have been recreated after the utterance was spoken, are preserved. We can hold those who spoke the words responsible for their offhand remarks as if they had been written. We can, of course, alter the context through selective editing, but then written words can be taken out of context also. However, the fact remains that we have the words, and the lives of the women who are holding themselves up as our role models. Would they have represented themselves the same 10 years ago? 20? And does this say more about what the women of the country want to hear, or what message these women want to convey?

Lest anyone consider too conservatively the assertion that "[m]ore young women at elite colleges are planning to stay home with their children," it should be mentioned that doing just that is becoming a status marker among young women, at least in certain parts of the country. The idea seems to be, why work if you don't have to? An extension of why should I take an elective if I don't have to? or why should I pay for my own car/apartment/college/etc. if my parents are willing to do so? I'd like to follow-up on that survey and see how many of those who decide to "stay home with their children" have them in child care before the age of one year for one reason or another that is not economically-based. Is this the rise of the family, or of a voluntarily leisured class (instead of involuntarily chained to the home, or voluntarily working)? Who knows?

I apologize if your self-righteousness meter is off the charts, here. The article raises a number of questions, and I have related them with a hearty measure of cynicism. I will not say, with the author of the Post Chronicle quote, "O.K. now, ladies, stop the cat-fight!" I think that what is at stake here is larger than bi-partisan sisterhood. I think it has to do with how each and every one of us views family in general and motherhood (or mothering) in particular, how our politicians think we feel about these issues, and how our media thinks we ought to feel. Now, who can tell me which is which?

Canonization and "the Canon"

While doing some research on Virginia Woolf for the dissertation recently, I ran across the following quote. It comes from Plain and Ordinary Things: Reading Women in the Writing Classroom by Deborah Anne Dooley. Discussing Welty's story "A Worn Path," Dooley writes, "In her rewriting of the Christian myth, Welty's heroine sings a story that no nation will make its epic, no literary high priest will canonize" (Dooley 90). What struck me was the final phrase: "no literary high priest will canonize." For all the discussion in English departments about the "canon," in spite of the fact that I am familiar with the concept of canonization of saints, I had never considered the relationship between the two words. How did this slip the notice of those who have sought to do away with the canon and combat the forces of patriarchy in the academy?

I confess to being rather attached to the more-or-less traditional canon, supplemented by those works of demonstrable worth, or at least moderate compelling content, that have been rediscovered by valiant scholars on their way to tenure (the "valiant" is meant to be only slightly tongue-in-cheek, as I respect any sincere efforts to promote a favored or admired text). After all, can one study the English Romantics without discussing Blake, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats? Perhaps. But the definition of "Romanticism" (in English) would be severely lacking without reference to these names. Start with Germany, and the situation is quite different. Romanticism is an international movement, so it is a fitting example. Only once you have established the context that others were working in reference to--or against--is it possible to understand the excluded or the dissenters. So much for my reason for wanting to uphold the traditional canon. I should also mention that many who talk about getting rid of the canon merely mean the supplementing of a new set of texts for the old--not dissolving the canon, but overthrowing it. The canon is in a constant state of flux, incidently. Not an English major I know has had to read Hemmingway for decades, and D. H. Lawrence and E. M. Forster are similarly scarce.

However, in the discussions of "the canon" or the "literary canon," which are less about what to value than what to teach, no one has mentioned the root of the word--or the word of which "canon" is the root.

From WordNet, "canon" refers to

• a rule or especially body of rules or principles generally established as valid and fundamental in a field or art or philosophy; "the neoclassical canon"; "canons of polite society"
• a priest who is a member of a cathedral chapter
• canyon: a ravine formed by a river in an area with little rainfall
• a contrapuntal piece of music in which a melody in one part is imitated exactly in other parts
• a complete list of saints that have been recognized by the Roman Catholic Church
• a collection of books accepted as holy scripture especially the books of the Bible recognized by any Christian church as genuine and inspired

So, in our secular academics, we adopt this religiously charged term. Our canon is our collection of sacred texts. When we hold authors up as "courseworthy," we are granting them sainthood. They are our aid to worship, our models for the holy literary life, those who demonstrate the fullness of grace, those who occupy the blessed realm--which further begs the question, is the classroom really the blessed realm for academics?

But before I have too much fun with this, let me mention a short story by E. M. Forster, "The Celestial Omnibus" (PDF available here). In this story, a boy takes an omnibus "to heaven," which is populated by various literary figures. He gets along well with all of them, preferring the "homey" figures to the more exalted, like Dante. When he brings an unbelieving literary friend to the heaven, he is scolded for his bad taste. The boy triumphs while the literary "snob" falls. With all of the things Forster does in this story, he also manages to tap into the real implication of the literary "canon." Brilliant!

Audiobooks, Books & Literacy

My thoughts have dried up somewhat over the past few days--perhaps in contrast to the wet weather. I have started a few thoughts, but did not finish. This at least may prevent me from being too hard on my composition students this semester, who will be writing blogs as part of their daily/homework grades. To fill in the gaps, a few collections of words. . .

Today, to test out our new DSL connection (yay! no more dialup!), my husband was looking through the iTunes Latino audiobooks store. I found several of the top 10 downloads rather inspiring:

2) Don Quijote
4) Pablo Neruda reading his own work
5) The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery
6) The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
8) The Illiad
9) 1001 Arabian Nights

The English language top 10 in the U.S. iTunes store are not so inspiring:

1) Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents' Dinner
2) How to Make People Like You by Nicholas Boothman
3) The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama
4) The Audacity of Hope by Barak Obama
5) Plum Lovin' by Janet Evanovich
6) The Funny Thing is by Ellen Degeneres
7) The Secret by Rhonda Byrne
8) Rich Dad, Poor Dad:What the Rich Teach their Kids about Money - That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!
9) How to Not Suck at Sales
10) This American Life: A Very Special David Sedaris Christmas

I suppose both lists may have one element in common: they may demonstrate that those who are downloading them have some kind of impulse toward self-improvement, though I would venture that the term would be defined differently in each case. However, in the case of one of the lists, pure aesthetic enjoyment could as easily be a motive for listening. How few on the second list are fiction! I am struck in particular by number 8. I would like to see the book titled, What Those Who Have Had to Live Without Money Can Teach Those Who Have Had Too Much of It. When it is published, I hope to be notified.

It strikes me that audiobook downloads are a marker of something that is not quite literacy, but is related. Listening to an audiobook requires a different level of time commitment than reading. It may be accomplished during a commute, a road-trip, a cross-country drive. . . My family has developed a ritual for road-trips. Listening to Tolkien. With weeks in between, we listen more or less sequentially to all of the books of The Lord of the Rings, which my husband and I have read multiple times each. At times, I may select a "moment" of Middle Earth and start from there.

Having read the book, I am able to listen to the book; I can not listen to a book I have not read. My first experience of audiobooks was disorienting, at best. Traveling to a conference with a friend and her husband, I listened with them to mysteries--something set in the South and involving lawyers, Grisham perhaps. I admit that this is not my taste in books, but I was literally spatially disoriented. I could not imagine being able to locate a sentence--even a scene!--in a book that was only heard and not read. I believe that the experience is one of "secondary orality," as I understand Walter Ong's term--scripted orality, speech that can be replayed. I confess to be utterly dependent on language made visible.

My other thoughts are also book-related--one disturbing, one pleasing. The first is a Christian teen book titled something like One God, Many Churches. In the future, I will try to avoid titles which, in 'hip' language, try to explain denominational differences. For me, for now, the offending phrase is the equation of "Sacraments" with "rituals."

I have been reading a book I discovered while looking for reading material for my 4th grade son. It is perhaps a bit dark for him, but I am enjoying it--The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau, an odd science fiction that reminds me, vaguely, of the "feel" of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. The city in the book--a city in darkness whose lights are failing--reminds me of one Calvino may have written. It feels real, somehow surreal. I look forward to reading more, which is unusual of late! (at any rate, for fiction)

Words Written, Sounds Heard

It is incredible the thoughts that seem worthy of writing when you know you have a venue for them.

This occurred to me the other day as I was driving and a car near me honked, I believe to let the car in front know that the light had changed. Of course, it could have been to tell the idiot in the car to pay attention. The result would have been the same--a beep or two on the car's horn. What made me consider this is my recognition of the complete inability to know whether the honk was intended as a gentle reminder or an impatient, irate admonition (at least, if the recipient of the honk could not see the facial expression or flailing arms). I must have been in a good mood, or I would have assumed that the gesture was meant to cause offense. Of course, it is easier to think of these things objectively if one is not on the receiving end.

Although the car honk is non-verbal, the issue is one of tone, as it is in written communication--notably, email. Arrangement of words alone is usually inadequate to convey the sense in which the meaning was meant. This comes across in the user profile of The Ironic Catholic, who writes, as illustration of her definition of irony, " I.e.:This is a joke, people." The words themselves do not necessarily communicate the tone of voice in which the sentence would be delivered, but since we are used to hearing this phrase, the ", people" provides sufficient indicator. Ignoring that context on the side of the page, one might take this humorous post literally--and did, until one realized the spoof in the middle of an email to me about the post. Hence, net culture has developed the smilies, and variations on the smilies, to indicate mood, or tags like "(ha, ha)" to indicate jokes. Or we fail to do either, and are misinterpreted.

I assume that I was misinterpreted by the blogger who deleted my comment on this post (link removed). Who knows? I was being sincere, but could not necessarily indicate it. Political posts get so nasty so fast; I usually avoid them completely. Even agreement can be taken as mockery.

The ability to change what you have said, or what someone else has said in response to you, rather contradicts my idea at the beginning of this post that thoughts have to be "worthy" of being written--an idea that can be traced to our cultural impression that writing has a privileged position, and that something, once written, is permanently fixed. With the blog, however, you can delete me, I can delete you, I can delete something that feels particularly vulnerable if I choose to do so. But does that really feel honest? Or genuine? Or do these things really matter, since blogs are, after all, "virtual"?

After the fact, I decided that I would assume "technology failure" from the deleted comment and not give the link. Further calling the permanence of writing into question. . .

Yoga & Spirituality

This is a conversion story, of sorts. Or, more accurately, it is part of a conversion story. Sorry about that. Consider yourself warned.

Yoga taught me about prayer. Not about New Age spirituality, but about real, honest, Christian prayer. You see, I didn't really know much about prayer, really. Or spiritual prayer, anyway. I was taught "Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep" as a child, but I was always a little uncomfortable about the whole dying-in-my-sleep-as-a-child connotation. And I knew the Lord's Prayer/Our Father. My sister says she remembers our grandmother teaching her to pray the Rosary. I had no such experience, but I was less taken with shiny things. When I was older, I was always uncomfortable with the praying-in-a-group thing, with one person speaking for everyone. While it removed the responsibility from the individual, it nevertheless puts the individual on the spot in an odd sort of way--perhaps the pressure of conformity, since you couldn't really walk away from those situations. I knew that prayer was personal, individual; I just didn't really know how to do it.

I was plagued with fears as a young child--fourth grade or so. I was too aware of stories of weird deaths, crime, etc., and these fears found their way into nightmares. My most heartfelt prayers as a child--the only kind that went beyond the "bless so-and-so" variety, involved an end to these nightmares. These prayers persisted through many of my younger years--and they worked. I later rationalized away their success. During these same years, when I was attending a Baptist church sporadically, I also would lie on my back sometimes in broad daylight imagining that deceased relatives whom I had never known looked down on me from heaven, and I imagined myself talking to them, expressing my own love and thankfulness for their watchfulness. In my naiveté, I was reaching towards the idea of the Communion of Saints and the practice of meditation. These were not things that came to me from any of the churches I attended--Lutheran, Baptist, First Assembly of God (who did, however, use the Sign of the Cross!). So what does all of this near-prayer-experience have to do with yoga?

As an amateur and occasional yoga practitioner, I like guided practices. The yoga DVD is not my preferred means of acquiring such guidance, but with a toddler, it will do, since I have found some that are not too offensive--you know, not MTV yoga. So as I was entering into final relaxation (Savasana or Corpse Pose), when the yoga instructor tells the viewer/practitioner that this is a time to focus the mind inwards. We spend most of our time focusing our minds outwards, and, seemingly, this is the time to correct that, to restore the balance. However, what struck me is that this is not my experience of yoga, or of the world. Rather, it is my experience that many of us spend time focused rather intensely inwards--on our own hopes, fears, desires, etc. This was clearly one of my obstacles with prayer (the "bless the people I know & take care of me" prayers), and still, admittedly, is. Perhaps this is not the inwards-focusing she meant, but it is internal. When we direct our energies outwards, isn't it to satisfy some inner selfishness--some goal that we have, some desire, something we need to accomplish because of a drive deep within (even a shallow one)? Anyway, in the final relaxation stage, during which the body--exhausted from the effort of the workout--is still and heavy, the person is guided to relax further, both physically and mentally, by consciously relaxing muscles, being conscious of breath, envisioning relaxing spaces.

It must be that with yoga, the mind is caught off-guard, and feels no need to rationalize and reject the spiritual experience. When practicing yoga, I can say, "It's only exercise; I'm only exercising; I'm relaxing; there's nothing spiritual here; I'm not vulnerable to anything outside of myself." At least, that's the only way I can account for my submission to it--that, and it feels really good. (See my earlier post on exercise.) Rereading even my own description here, it sounds very New Age spirituality, but recently I was quite perplexed at finding Catholic sources representing yoga very negatively, albeit the context was in reference to an ex-nun who became an ex-nun to pursue this very New Age spirituality, and in fact teaches yoga.

My experience with "live" yoga was not very spiritual. It was a modestly priced class-by-class fitness option at the rec center of a public university. No one was seeking enlightenment. Most were seeking tighter abs and a Spring Break bikini body, and soon found that they were in the wrong class. Because there is a Christian tinge to this large state school, the yoga instructor sometimes reassured the class that this was not a religious thing. But it could have been, and in those moments of relaxation at the end of the hour, I felt it. It could perhaps have been a bad thing to experience something spiritual in such a secular setting, and I may have been drawn into eastern mysticism or religion-of-self. At the time, however, I was moving hard & fast in the direction of Catholicism. As I lay on the yoga mat, I reached outwards. In an RCIA (the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults) class session, we were asked to visualize a place where we felt absolutely comfortable and at home. I felt uncomfortable, self-conscious, silly even. My mind was closed. However, when told by the yoga instructor to visualize a place where I felt absolutely at peace, comfortable, relaxed, I tended to have alternate images--neither a real place: the first was what I knew to be a mountain or tall hill with tall, soft, sun-kissed grasses waving against me as I lay looking at the blue sky, hemmed in by taller mountains or hills; the second was an hexagonal-shaped room of a wood-framed house with three wall-sized windows overlooking a pine forest at night in a downpour of rain. Floors were wood, furniture was sparse. It feels odd putting these images into print. I didn't connect--or contrast--the two experiences at the time.

What I noticed more than anything, however, was that after the relaxation, when the instructor would say "Namaste," what I wanted more than anything else was to make the Sign of the Cross--as if a prayer had ended for me. I must have felt that yoga was not an end in itself; looking back, I recognize it as a beginning.

Shopping at a Christian bookstore for a rosary at about this time, I was surprised to have the woman who unlocked the case for me describe Catholicism as intensely spiritual--it caught me offguard and perhaps frightened me a little. . . I was looking for the rational, not the irrational in religion. But gradually, I have come to accept that the two can coexist. And I don't even have to be sweaty to see it.

Housewife, Peasant woman, or Academic mom?

The current generation of working women is still rebelling against the housewife-image perfected by the Donna Reed and June Cleaver generation. I firmly believe this to be true. Feminism was founded on a rejection of the domestic standards upheld by the women who are no longer our mothers, but perhaps now our grandmothers. However, having lost touch with the actual experience of that familial life, are we rebelling against an idea that is hollow--the TV sitcom version of the dutiful wife/mother--or is there any remaining offense to be had?

Consider this. . . The woman of the 40's and 50's was an updated "angel of the house," if you will. She was the ruler of the domestic sphere, until her husband returned from work to find his steak and mashed potatoes on the table. She cooked and cleaned, shopped on a budget, raised children, and perhaps not much else. Who knows anymore? She was the apple of the eye of product developers and advertising agencies. More commercials and products were geared to this woman than to any single consumer today. Well, no. Children are the number one target today, and what does that say about who runs the household? But you take my point. We look at her full skirts and her plastic smile and listen to the Stones' "Mother's Little Helper" to understand all that was wrong with our perfect image of her. Of course, my generation doesn't really have an image of her that is separate from the criticism. She is not my grandmother, though they were contemporaries and share some of the same problems. And so I, also, reject this image, as I have been taught.

During (and perhaps immediately after) my younger child was born in the autumn of 2005, my dissertation adviser (and friend and confidant) had a running joke about me--that I was one of those "peasant women" who give birth in the field, then strap the baby to their backs and keep working. Strictly speaking, this is not true, though it was great for a chuckle. I emphatically did not want to, or, more accurately perhaps, feel that I should have to work in the months immediately after my baby was born. It turns out that I did not merely stay at home and bond with my baby, but that's another tale. . . I have colleagues who were in the classroom within weeks of giving birth. I freely admit that I could not have done this! Instead, I waited through October, November, and December, took on a less-demanding-than-teaching assistantship, and eased back into teaching in the summer and fall. I also took a class on professionalism in the fall.

I have heard and read many discussions recently about childcare, from a friend who is confused & vexed, a blogger whose husband became distressed after she recovered somewhat from first-time daycare blues, from a committed stay-at-home blogger mom lamenting "outsourced motherhood."

[An aside: my 15-month-old just dialed a play phone, help it to her ear, and said "bye bye" before the recorded voice!! Cute!!]

My own experience with childcare is limited. My husband & I did not put our son in any form of child care until he was 3; rather, we "swapped" child care duties literally between graduate classes. Until after kindergarten, which he attended part time, one of us was with him for most of the day. Last August I sincerely tried to place my baby in a church mother's-day-out program one day a week, but after two days of observation/trial, I simply could not. I just do not trust others with my baby--both for emotional and hygienic reasons. We both became very ill after that day of observation, which did nothing for my resolve or self-confidence.

[Just changed a diaper and had my daughter take 3 steps to me!]

Working-woman daycare culture is clearly not for me. However, while I have arranged the past 2 semesters so that I could stay with my daughter during the day and teach in the evenings, when she could be with Daddy, I can not identify myself as a "stay-at-home mom." I criticize both camps, perhaps too freely. That's not my purpose here, however.

It is ingrained in my consciousness that a mother needs to take care of herself while taking care of her children, insofar as it is possible to do both. In spite of extremely difficult situations, including a stretch as a single mother of me and a marriage that was even worse than the first, my mother managed to raise 6 children to believe that taking care of children is valuable, and that one can accomplish a great deal while doing so.

We have a rather unhealthy dichotomy in our contemporary conception of motherhood--a word that good feminists would avoid because it connotes an identity rather than an act--"working mother" is set in opposition to "stay-at-home mom." These terms are interesting in themselves, as "mother" lends more of an air of seriousness to the former situation than the less formal "mom." Hmmmm. . . Of course, working part-time in order to parent also connotes certain personal and financial sacrifices for family. I am aware of a married couple who divorced due to their conflict over whose career was more important. No children without compromise! For me, academia, perhaps grad school in particular! offers a reasonable compromise between these competing versions of motherhood. And dual academic careers are ideal.

But I wanted to think again about the 1940s housewife and the "peasant woman." We base our rejection of "traditional" motherhood on the former, but include the latter in our conceptualization of oppressed women of previous generations who had no choice but to bear children, etc. We differ because we have autonomy, can choose careers, can choose to mother, the possibilities are endless! But are our choices presented fairly? Are we always sacrificing something that the other choice offers? Two roads diverged, and all that. . . I choose to multitask--to work with a baby at my feet (not on my back!). I take care of her; she is mine; I am mine.

Exercise and the Academic

I have come to a realization recently that, having put into writing, I can not longer take back or deny, even to myself (barring catastrophic server failure--my how the "rules" of literacy are changed in the online environment!); namely, that exercise does increase intellectual productivity. I will revisit this post in my months of sloth later this semester, when I am lamenting all of the things I have to do, seemingly lacking the energy to do them. Exercise is something that I enjoy when I do it regularly, but that, in times of sloth, I look back on with fear and loathing. Why? I'm not sure. Perhaps what I remember is the sweatiness, not the faint pleasure and self-satisfaction that comes from slightly sore muscles or the pleasure of the warm bath afterwards (preferably with bubbles). Or I dwell on the seeming impossibility of making time to visit the rec center, the embarrassment of taking out fitness tapes in the living room, the worry that the yoga mat will get trampled by dirty feet. . . So having overcome all of these things, primarily because of Target's display of fitness items in the dollar (in this case, $2.50) spot in the front of the store, and having warmed up to the idea of exercise by playing a few rounds of Dance, Dance Revolution Mario Mix (I only do the Mario version), I have found that I actually do domestic tasks and perform intellectual acts in the same day. Trust me, this is a profound difference for me. I am actively working on the dissertation and preparing for the course I will be teaching starting next Tuesday, and I have even mustered the will to visit the library rather than having the items delivered to me electronically or via my very accommodating husband, who works there and pampers me by dutifully responding to any random Library of Congress call numbers I happen to send him during the day. I can only attribute these things to exercise, which I know gives physical energy, but which I've never found to deliver mental energy.

So I was thinking, what does this do to our image of the sedentary academic? You know, that outdated image that (for me anyway) still holds some charm--the "ivory tower" image, where the white male professor in tweeds collects dust among his books while writing his books. It occurs to me that the film (and play) Educating Rita exploits and subverts this image by portraying Frank, the professor, as depressed and frequently, a slobbering drunk. A lovable, crotchety, burned-out husk of a man, played brilliantly by Michael Cain. I also admit to having in mind the figure of J. R. R. Tolkien, who was incredibly prolific with his fantasy, enjoyed plenty of social intercourse with the Inklings, and also published the occasional scholarly work while reading, taking notes, teaching, learning ancient Scandinavian languages and the like. He had the tweed thing going on, and could be envisioned spending hours in a musty, dusty room. It does occur to me, however, that he loved to walk--to hike, more specifically, and that Professor Ransom in Lewis's Space trilogy--an active guy who goes on Australian-esque "walkabouts"--was in fact based on Tolkien. This specific example can perhaps be considered with the general walkability of college campuses built before--or largely in scorn of--automobiles. I have always wanted to attend such a college: brick buildings, large (undiseased) trees of various sorts, pavements (not concrete), ponds, etc. Alas! for state school aesthetics. In the past, or perhaps still in other places (with more walkable climates!), academics were, indeed, active. All this by way of trying to motivate myself to get some exercise each day. Whew!

Some other intellectual stimulants: warm baths and Republic of Tea Blackberry Sage Tea. That second one is especially important. They market it as a "Tea of Wisdom"--believe them. It does something to the brain--stimulates thought, cures headaches--beyond the power of ordinary caffeine. It is also a mood-altering drug with no counter indications.

Tea and baths; I am a hobbit indeed. Let's not even talk about mushrooms! So to end in a hobbitish fashion:

"Sing hey! for the bath at close of day
that washes the weary mud away!
A loon is he that will not sing:
O! Water Hot is a noble thing!"

Epiphany!

My epiphany is not Joycean, though I am, in a broad sense of the term, a literary Modernist. It was not an epiphany that inspired me to create this blog; truthfully, it has been a long time coming. I have gradually been drawn out of my net-phobia by friends who have successful and compelling blogs like Mommy, Ph.D. and Stuff as Dreams are Made on. Not that I'm promising the same, mind you! But here I am, jumping on the blog-wagon. Rather, I am writing on the day of the liturgical celebration of the Feast of the Epiphany. Had I started this blog yesterday, as I intended, I wouldn't have to be so legalistic about it! But I still feel justified in claiming today as Epiphany.

Being as it is an "introductory" blog, I feel that a bit of background isn't totally out of order, though I will try not to repeat myself on my profile. Epiphany has been special to me since I was a little girl in New Orleans. Although we weren't Catholic, the culture was, and still attached significance to January 6, the Feast of the Three Kings, or, alternately "Little Christmas" or Petit Noël--albeit small significance. As the beginning of the Mardi Gras season, Epiphany was also (more importantly!) the first day King Cakes could be sold! I mourn for the day the bakeries decided to sell King Cakes year 'round. It's not that I didn't want to eat them other times of the year, it just didn't seem right somehow.

Since I have become Catholic, Epiphany is more significant as the real, liturgical end of the Christmas season. This year, I really didn't get into the Christmas spirit until, well, Christmas. It crept up on me, somehow, and I wasn't feeling very festive. When Christmas ended, I wanted to buy Christmas music, I found myself humming Christmas carols. Now, it's officially time to throw out the tree and pack up the lights & ornaments until next year. And to go to the Mass that celebrates the racial inclusiveness of Christianity. As St. Paul said, the Messiah isn't just for Jews anymore (loose paraphrase). There's a profundity about that that I didn't appreciate until I became Catholic (a little over 2 years ago now). It's diminished somewhat by the toddler squirming on my lap, but still profound. Tonight, in particular, the question put to us was, so there's no Star to follow. . . So why (pourquoi "for what," if you will) are we gathered here? What, indeed. A very personal question. Perhaps I'll return to it sometime. I'm not sure we know each other well enough yet!

"The" Epiphany is the end of a journey, but a theological beginning; "an" epiphany, revisiting the Joyce reference for now, is typically the end of a story, but the beginning of the unknown that is beyond the borders of the story. So I begin my blog, if not exactly on Epiphany, at least by writing about Epiphany. Watch for my blogs to become less self-conscious; it's definitely something I'm striving for.