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What does it mean to be American? This is a question perhaps better pondered from beyond America’s borders than from inside them. The mantras of our common story tell us some: the opportunities, the plenty, the melting pot. But this is a flexible definition, and what it means to be American — the way we look at ourselves and the ways we are perceived by others — is not static.
The election of Barack Obama as President of the United States was an event that shook the globe, causing people from around the world to reevaluate this question. On the international political scene, this seems to have benefited us, gaining us some traction in terms of popularity and renewed influence, as well as a general sense of benevolence toward what was seen as the correct choice. And we, as Americans, seem to like this latest version of ourselves reflected in this historical decision.
However, another portentous result transpired November 4, 2008. While one political tide continued its turn that started during the Midterms two years ago, a competing undertow dragged us back out to sea. Three states, most infamously California, voted to add same-sex marriage bans to their books, bringing the total of states with similar legislation to thirty. While America with one hand demonstrated itself to be surprisingly broadminded — getting back to the business of being American, many seemed to think — with the other hand it showed that there are still American citizens who are not welcome to the equal treatment that our national ethos would have us believe. Read more…
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Kimmi
Therapy Thursdays
My good friend, and yoga teacher, Sarah Court, was recently featured in a New York Times article by Abby Ellin called The Enlightened Path, With A Rubber Duck. Sarah is a serious and passionate yoga teacher who knows how to laugh and play and poke fun a little. Check out her Yoga Thug videos as proof. Today, she’s ON THE COUCH WITH KIMMI:
Every October, churches around the world celebrate the feast day of St. Francis of Assissi, patron saint of animals and environment. You can imagine what this looks like in New York City. I had been waiting all year for it.
Two reasons why this feast delighted me: Read more…
Bob Herbert has a fantastic column in the New York Times today in which he reminds us of the tremendous accomplishments of “liberal” America. Women’s rights? Check. Advocates for special needs children like Trig? Check. Safer food, cleaner air, better schools? Check, check and check.
Our country is far from perfect on these issues but the progress we’ve made is often due to liberals who were willing to sacrifice for ideals that are now being taken taken for granted (at best) and co-opted for political gain (at worst) by the Republican party.
Sometimes it is easy to think of liberals as living in la-la land and to forget all that liberals have given America.
Herbert’s column reminded me of one of my first classes in graduate school. I came to Harvard to study issues related to access and persistence in higher education for low-income students (how to help more poor kids enroll and succeed in college). When I got there, I felt like I was the last liberal standing.
I just emerged from a weeklong meditation retreat with my brothers. Less than 72 hours later, I found myself leaning on a bar stool, sipping a gin & tonic and discussing Catholicism with two of my favorite colleagues. I revealed, much to their surprise, that my freshman year of college had been spent at the University of Notre Dame– that is, until I chose to leave. I couldn’t reconcile the proud Irish alcoholism of my peers with their fear of sex (not of the act but of the ramifications of doing the deed before marriage). You’ll get wasted to sickness EVERY night but you think sex at age 19 is a definitive sin? Good grief. I’m so grateful that my gut encouraged me to flee before getting yanked into three more years of the same. If not, the influence of the place would have inevitably pushed me towards either resigned conformity or a full-scale potentially ugly rebellion. I was not anti-religion–quite devout in my own spiritual way–but what that environment had produced in my peers scared me. So I traded that collective for
Good Friday in the Christian tradition is a somber day- Jesus has been crucified. Right now in Latin America, all Roman Catholics are off from work. Many Catholics around the world are fasting. Others are gearing up for jellybeans. It is a holy day. It also happens to be the morning after the first day of spring (i.e. the vernal equinox). It’s a strange overlap-these two days falling within 24 hours of each other. Usually spring comes first and then Easter follows a couple warmer weeks later. Yesterday as I waited for a street light to change, a man with a brown dog grunted at me “It’s just so strange, cold-ass weather and Easter coming so soon.” So, I am reminded that things don’t always line up with our expectations. And somehow, in a stretch, this connects to inappropriate men on the subway.
Perhaps you are a young man, strong in build, in love with your country, your faith and your community. This week and last you walk alongside monks who gather in protest. You link arms with your friends. You are fighting for something bigger than yourself. Your mother, at home, might be worrying about you, out on those streets. You on the other hand are vying for a future. Somewhere in India, the Dalai Lama says that he cannot stop your protesting, that it is time for the mother country to uncurl its talons. Your effort will get some international media attention. Maybe people in a distant land will care that you are suppressed. You are one of the many in this world. Now that your oppressor country will host the 2008 summer Olympics, the world might pay attention. Now that the north side of Mount Everest will be barred and shut to mountaineers this season, the world is watching.
Not quite Mario Andretti, as I’ve been called before, I drove to St. Louis thoughtfully yesterday. I was successful in escaping Iowa City’s impending snow storm and in rescuing Courtney from her hotel room, showing her around my hometown on a rainy day, and feeding her tons of family-created deliciousness at London Tea Room and Nino’s– while also catching her inspiring book talk at SLU. When public radio ceased to fuel this drive, I listened to the Oprah and Friends show on my mom’s portable satellite radio. After hearing Oprah explain her creation of the term “shlumpadinka” and why we should all buy an expensive trenchcoat and white jeans, I was about ready to switch to the indie station. Then, she gave an intro to her Soul Series.
Dr. Larry Dossey wrote Healing Words: The Power of Prayer and the Practice of Medicine in the nineties, and Oprah professed that it has proved prophetic– that scientific study after scientific study has shown that prayer can be the path to healing. My first thought was: you’ve got to be kidding me. I just don’t know how to swallow this idea that a higher power is waiting around for us to ask favors. I do believe in the power of positive thinking, so I assume that happy thoughts are the underlying reason for any demonstrated efficacy of prayer. Then I realize that Dr. Dossey is talking about third-party prayers. Double-blind prayers. Halfway across the universe prayers.
We had friends in town this weekend, and on Sunday morning, we ended up at Maria’s Taco Xpress, a local joint that’s owned by an eccentric taco Goddess named Maria Corbalon. On Sunday mornings, the outdoor patio (that’s decorated like a garage sale crossed with your grandmother’s attic) transforms into Hippie Sunday Church, where folks of all religious traditions come out for some damn fine tacos and raucous singing and dancing.
I was so taken by this overwhelming spectacle that I forgot to record any video, especially of the wild McMercy Family Band performing Neko Case’s “John Saw That Number,” one of my favorites of hers. The spindly, brown-braided woman on the upright bass thumped and whacked it with her whole body, and reminded me of a person straight off the frontier. The percussionist rattled a Nalgene bottle with uncooked popcorn in it.
Because themes tend to converge in life, I’ve got the desert on the brain. Two nights ago I turned the last page of a novel about the Afghanistan desert; I’m halfway through a non-fiction book on the Arab/Jew relations in Jaffa; and I’ve currently plopped myself on the carpet of the Salt Lake City Utah Airport where I swear, from the slim crack of the deplaning ramp, the scent of dry desert infused my clothes.
My thinking crystallized with the excellent article by Richard Rodriguez in the latest issue of Harpers Magazine. He nailed it. “Searching for God in the Holy Land” reminds us that religion for Christians, Jews and Muslims was born in the desert. Desert religions. In such an inhospitable place we are forced to confront our own mortality. Perhaps we are opened and then hardened by the vastness. In one snap sentence, a monk near Bethlehem tells Rodriguez, “The desert creates warriors.” So Rodriguez wonders, what if these founding religions has instead grown up in the wet green jungle? Would our modern day Crusades be tempered? Or might they be non-existent?
We use the desert as a testing ground. We test our own human hardiness. We also test nuclear bombs. We are also privy to the sweet slivers of life that emerge from contrast– like the pink bloom of a cactus or the rage of a purple thunderstorm.
I only known the American desert. Read more…
I’ve never read the Bible. No, I don’t mean I’ve never adhered to the ten commandments or studied the Bible in depth. I mean I’ve never read more than an excerpt in a theology book. So the fact that I have–off and on–played with the idea of studying religious ethics and going to divinity school might be a bit of a surprise to some people…
Kimmi knows, so she bought me A.J. Jacobs’ new book, The Year of Living Biblically, in which this agnositc-Jew-in-culture, intellectual, Esquire journalist tries to lives as close to the Bible’s laws as possible for a full year (Old Testament for 9 months, new for 3, to be exact). One of them being, of course, that he doesn’t shave (see the pic to the right). I just finished it and I have to say that though the stuntiness (I’m inventing words; it’s not a sin) of the book gets a little old after awhile, some of the reflections are really fascinating.
As I return to work after the long weekend, I’m re-reading Dr. Christiane Northrup’s book Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom. I discovered this provocative quote from the Bible in her final chapter:
If you bring forth what is within you,
What you bring forth will save you.
If you do not bring forth what is within you,
What you do not bring forth will destroy you.
—Jesus, from The Gospel According to Thomas
Dr. Northrup introduces the quote in the context of women healing their own past pain (individual and ancestral) and how this leads to the healing of the world.
What do you think about this passage, and its assertion?
“Oh my god, do I have a Crucial Minutiae for you!” My friend called me from her double suite in an upscale hotel in Washington, D.C. She’s there for a conference, and can you imagine who else is staying there? After her description of the hotel’s hipster bar, I could only think of Hollywood actors and visiting royals. “You’ll never guess,” she said. “The Dalai Lama! I’m staying in the same hotel as the Dalai Lama!”
You already knew, didn’t you? I gave it away with the picture. What a great smile.
But that wasn’t enough for a Crucial entry. No, we needed this juicy bit of minutiae: Not only did the flurry of red robes make for a striking contrast to the swanky hotel foyer, but my friend reports that she saw one of the monks– who looked a lot like the Dalai Lama– on his Blackberry!
It’s the Jewish New Year, and I just got back from morning services at The Shul Of New York, a congregation that takes the concept of One God very seriously. Most synagogues are exclusive. You not only have to be Jewish, you have to be the right kind of Jewish. At The Shul of New York, everyone is welcome.
Rabbi Burt stood in the heart of The Orensanz Foundation on the Lower East Side, raised his arms in welcome, and rattled off a list, “Jewish, non-Jewish, spiritual, secular, black, white, gay, straight. We are all connected. We are all under One God.” Then the Shul band, led by Adam Feder, accompanied by one of the Villa-Lobos Brothers, three virtuoso violinists from Veracruz, Mexico, started to play. Soon, the oldest synagogue in New York was filled with the sweet sounds of guitar, violin and drums.
I started to cry. Normally, I would try to choke back my tears, wipe my face, dab the corners of my eyes to stop my mascara from running, but today, I let my face be wet.
I am a great lover of infomercials. I love the conventions—the shot where they make really easy things (straining pasta, clasping a necklace) seem like rolling a 500-ton rock up Mount Everest, the promise of extra goods “in this limited time, special offer,” etc. But then my boyfriend told me that I had to watch this infomercial for Reverend Peter Popoff’s Miracle Spring Water. Here is a taste:
A friend gave me an African Violet for my birthday years ago.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Don’t you like it?”
I liked it just fine. The truth was I was afraid I’d kill it.
See, aside from my “Feed Me, Seymour!” plant, which is taking over my living room now, I have not had great success in keeping things alive. I have killed five goldfish, a red-bellied frog and two Ficus trees.
Yes, I am free to babysit your cat.
Well, one can pray.
Still, it seems fitting that Hellfire Falwell would fall while the top three Republican candidates are a Mormon, a pro-choicer, and worse, John McCain. Where will the Evangelical vote go? Or will the rapture take us before 09?
The GOP has been synonymous with GOD ever since Ronald Reagan flip-flopped on abortion to earn the approval of Falwell and his preposterously named ‘Moral Majority’. Bush the First then followed with his own flip-flop on abortion to secure the same demographic, and then Bush the Second was born again himself, and instructed by Jesus to stack his cabinet with graduates from televangelist Pat Robertson’s 3rd tier law school. In fact, no Republican since Nixon has won a presidential election without Falwell.
It is hard to imagine that the same man who found time to denounce the Teletubbies for their explicit homosexual content could also anoint kings in the world’s most powerful nation.
