femicide

I learned a new word yesterday: femicide. It was used in telling the story of the thousands of women of all ages who have been and even now are being brutally raped in the conflict in the Congo over the last ten years. Women - girls, mothers, grandmothers - repeatedly raped. Then rejected by their families and husbands who often move to a new area and take a new wife, these broken women and confused children struggle to cope. Eventually the fragile remains of families break apart and the society is dismantled.

The term femicide was not used to discuss the death of women so much as the utter crushing of women's hope, spirit, initiative, and a terrible disintegration of a sense of self having any kind of value. And the complete eradication of any possible normal life in the future.

Let me state up front that I recognize life is not easy for men. Men have battles on every front, and often experience soul crushing moments. That said, I fiercely aver that women in every culture, even ours, live with a level of femicide that men can hardly grasp. There are many ways to kill a woman.

Dominate her with a towering male physique, especially if it is looming over her, or in her space, or if it is accompanied by yelling or not letting her leave a room. Develop a personal system of grading women, known or unknown, and evaluate them on a private 'sexy scale.' Treat her ideas with disdain. Send around pictures of grossly obese women in bikinis just for laughs (got one of these today).

Okay - none of those is rape. But as a woman let me say (my new opinionated self) that being dominated by male size or opinion or sexuality or personality is crushing to a woman. I don't have to listen to the women around me (but I do) to know this - I have experienced it.

I will also say that I know men who, while they appreciate the beauty of the body, and have healthy sexual urges still seek to know women as people of worth. These men are in my home and family and friendship circle. As a woman I need these men to fight for me. To not assume that my life is equal and free just because it is 2008. To be a woman is to be at risk. Sorry if you don't like that - it is my reality.

flotsam

The beach was cold. Once in a while the sun shone mercifully. The wind was almost always vicious. But we could not resist the pull of the ocean tides and so my daughter and I walked a long way every day and found marvelous signs of life: a 3 foot blue shark, dead; a scotch bonnet shell; many blue and pink man of war (we pondered whether a plurality of man of war are men of war? or man of wars? settling on a simple man of war as in two deer); and quivering sea slugs we threw back into the surf.

And there were other signs of life. The two legged kind of life - trucks driving up and down the beach, bottles and litter and tide torn underpants and plastic bubble wrap and balloons and more. I felt deeply discouraged by the evident selfishness and carelessness of my fellow humans.

We are burying the earth's crust in litter. Plastic, tin, and all kinds of crap. I walked into a Dollar Store and left in disgust. We need discount stores. But almost nothing in the Outer Banks Dollar Store is worth having. Tacky trashy petroleum based trinkets for sale so cheap we can afford to fill our carts and after one use toss them out. If the store had been filled with milk and cheese, hearty breads and fruit, maybe shoes made from recycled tires ... anything worth having, needed, useful - then it would be a store of value. As it is, a Dollar Store as I saw it on the beach front is mostly a purveyor of enticingly colorful, immediately disposable, non-degradable crap.

I guess, really, Macy's is the same - only it offers enticing crap for the upper class. What are we doing? I remember shopping with my father in law in the 1970's. He was a great Canadian socialist and environmentalist, always championing simplicity, a man before his time. He would buy a package of batteries, for instance, and then calmly stand at the checkout counter pulling the packaging apart, until having peeled off the plastic and cardboard, he would hand it all to the cashier and say, "I just want to buy the batteries, not the rubbish." Always one to enjoy a good embarassing situation, I would laugh. And all the way home he would give me his rant on our garbage dumps. (He had a particular liking for me - I think he was amazed that his son could do so well - laughing.)

So ... I hang my head and confess that I am as much at fault as anyone. The chagrine I feel when my garbage cans get full doesn't change the reality that I contribute much to the existence of a burgeoning dump site. Recycling and using cloth bags for shopping makes a small impact. But as I walked the beach with my daughter and her daughters I wondered if the day will come when my people would be unable to find a pristine place to sit and wonder at the beauty of this glorious blue planet.

I don't want to be reduced to moralizing or awfulizing. Driving home from the beach my two granddaughters sang us the entire High School Musical One and Two. I suggested they might one day be on American Idol. Kyra, ten, was clear with her answer. "Oh, not me, Mimi. I love to sing but my life is dedicated to animals. I don't have time for American Idol." Touche.

further on lock downs

I grew up in Southern Ontario, Hamilton. I remember, now, how when we were kids there would be air raid sirens and we were taught to get under our desks. This was the early sixties, some fifteen or so years "after the war" (read in John Cleese accent).

So there we were, dozens of little kids in various hand me down clothes (before the days of Gap for Kids and double incomes) and home hair cuts, crouching under our desks, some terrorized, some grinning. But all safe, for of course, our desks protected us from the possible A Bomb that might fall. Having been given this kind of education, I now regularly enact forlorn practices to protect myself and those I love.

When a wild storm is blowing I stay inside ... often peering out of the glass window that could actually implode and be the death of me. When I am afraid I am being followed by a potential rapist murder I walk purposefully and carry my car keys in my hand, which, on second thought being a Prius owner would only be able to make blunt red marks on his skin. And in some way I actually believe the security process at airports will keep the assassins off my plane.

The truth is, I think, safety is an illusion. There is no safe place ... there is only a feeling of safety, which is not to be underestimated in value. We make each other feel secure by making and keeping promises. By staying close by. By being predictable at least to the point of trustworthyness.

I tell Steve (husband) that when things are going badly, all I need is for him to smile at me. If he can smile I have the courage to go bravely into the future whatever it is we are facing.

a resolution

As I sat in the dark by the side of the road, window down and raining splatting in, with the exhuberant lights of the cruiser behind me illuminating the car like it was day, I made a resolution. No. Not a resolution to drive slower. That would be to lie to myself. But a resolution to express my opinions.

There, in the spotlight of the law of Rodanthe, (sounds sort of Star Wars esque, doesn't it?) I decided that my blog is boring, even to me, because, although I have many opinions, I am quite careful not to say anything too opinionated because the environment in which I live and breath is very controlling.

So... from this day forth my blog may be different. (It was a sort of near death experience that changed my life forever.)

For instance, let me speak of this (I am starting slow and low). My granddaughters just illustrated to me how they roll forward in a ball with their heads on the floor, against the wall of the school hallway when there is a tornado warning. Fair enough. Then they told me about their lock-down drills, where half the class goes to the bathroom and is locked in and half the class goes to a storage closet and this is practiced in preparation for danger in the school.

Now I will not waste my time railing against the ills of our time which are obvious to anyone with a brain. I will not lament the culture my dear girls are living in, a culture that seems normal to them. The loss of innocence. At years eight and ten.

No, I commend the school for not using hope as a method (which I for one took a while learning.) If this is the world we live in, then let's be smart. And ready. At the seminary where I work we are woefully unprepared for anything remotely violent. We are, I think, reasonably ready to handle a pointed theological contest ... without putting anyone's eye out. But that is it.

A lot of things have changed and I don't pick up hitchhikers, don't do parking lots at large shopping malls after dark if I am alone, don't invite the delivery man to sit on the porch on a hot summer day and have an iced tea.

And I am sad that this is the way it has to be. But we had better find a new way to build community alongside the protective habits. Find ways to make our personal world hospitable, soft and inviting. After all, if our protections against the outside evil serves to isolate us and keep us from being open with one another we will have lost.

When the grade two class is crammed in the school bathroom in lockdown practice, I take great joy in hearing how they laugh and play. This, says Megan, is "Not serious enough!" I think she would like the teacher to make them all be solemn as befits the occasion. Or maybe she just wants to test me and see if I think this is serious, telling me about it.

But I think they might want to have a stash of candy in the bathroom behind a glass door with a little hammer that says, "Break in case of emergency." Then part of the lock down could be a little party - a silver lining of sorts.

on what it takes to have fun

Steve at the beach in Ontario as a kid.


We are going to the beach next week - yes, friends - all week at the beach! A beach house, miles of sand, that rhythmic ocean sound, meals cooked on the BB with good drinks, a balcony for sunrise coffee, and most of all, my girls .... and of course, Curtis and Steve. No offence :-) ... not taken I am sure.

So to get to the beach, I am first driving to Pittsburgh to participate in a series of twelve lectures on human formation, along with my cohort of fellow students under the mentoring of Susan Muto. That finished, I will drive five hours to Virginia Beach to pick up Steve from the airport and then together we will drive south into the night to arrive at the beach house sometime in the wee morning hours. We will bicker about choice of music, we will laugh and talk about the kids, we will probably talk about our future. If the travel gods are with us we will find a little restaurant with fresh seafood somewhere along the coast. If the travel gods are not with us we will eat at a Cracker Barrel and regret it.

I remember what it used to take to prepare to leave the kids for a trip, commonly to South America. After at least a month of writing lists, setting up child care, arranging for the cat, the house, school, emergencies, food, lessons, and incoming grandparents, we would spend a whole frantic week working the plan until we found ourselves on the way to the airport, exhausted, sad kids left behind, and often a very bad headache. I would lament, "I wonder if it is worth it to do all this to get away." And it always was.

Packing is still a problem for me because I don't know how I will feel on a particular day and thus I don't know what I will want to wear. I never take the right clothes. The weather is not what I think it will be. I eat too much and the pants I brought don't fit. When I manage to pack like a veteran traveler and take minimum clothes I hate everything by the end of the trip. I would almost rather go nude. If I take a lot, I don't use most of it and have been known to just give stuff away so I don't have to haul it around.

Last year in Oxford England Steve and I took, accidentally, four suitcases. Such a load is slightly defensible because we had three separate events/ locations, each requiring different wear. The problem came when we decided to take the train/ coach to our major stops, and the luggage became like a visible curse. (Picture two people pushing and dragging large luggage down the metro...) So North American to haul our material belongings around with us. I was vaguely ashamed of us. Still it was worth it.

Today I am almost ready except for Walter, our cat. She had been missing for three days and I held out a forlorn hope that she might actually have left us. Alas, she is back, looking pretty pleased with herself, and not at all hungry. This however means I have a new detail to attend to. Who will take care of Walter?

Is it worth it to go to all this fuss? Absolutely. In five days I will be reclining while The Girls make me laugh, Steve and Curtis will be fishing in the ocean, steaks sizzling on the BB, and all will be well with the world.

my day

I love my job. Sort of. I don't love actually going to work. I think the perfect job would be one that you could hold and yet not actually have to go to the office except to pick up the pay check ... which upon second thought, the perfect job would not need an office at all!~

But as reflect on today I realize that life is rich and fragile even though I go to the office. By 8 this morning I was in a conversation about unfaithfulness and brokenheartedness with a woman who knows both experiences too well. The day ended with a devastating disclosure of unfaithfulness of another kind. Trailing alongside and around these bookends was some stimulating conversation, problem solving, and thoughtful listening. And one piece of Dove dark chocolate.

In the middle of the afternoon my lovely assistant and I walked to the bank in the sunshine and on the way back bought two egg rolls from the Great Wall (not the real Great Wall you understand) and shared a greasy treat and some big laughs. Stolen time. Not really stolen, it was a well deserved break. And the bank is only three minutes away.

When I came home there was a realtor next door showing the house our friends are anxious to sell, and Steve was outside in shirt tails and socks, smiling, happy to see me. We played a game of scrabble which he won, while we talked about Bunny's first day of chemo and who Steve gave my lilies to. For a reward, as the winner of scrabble, he got to do the dishes. I headed off to Jazzercise but unfortunately stopped to lay on the couch for just a moment and alas, did not get up in time to get to the Jazz class. Eventually I got cold and had a hot bath and put on my pj's. It seemed to be the right thing to do. All that and it is now only 7:32.

A pretty nice day really. My paper for Epiphany is almost done, and I am making a list of things to take to the beach next week.

I guess what I am saying, besides the fact that I have not one profound thing to write on this blog, is that I love my job. Sort of. And I love my life.

american beauty

Okay - I can get the image up but I can't rotate it ... technical daftness. But let me say, it is worth turning your computer to get a full view of this feminine pulcritude (probably spelled wrong but I don't know how to use the spell check on this either). This little beauty is Flora Elliott, most recent Elliott woman on the planet and full of my genes. Clearly.

Now, I put this picture on my blog because I adore this child and will spare no expense showing her the love of Mimi. But also, to illustrate what a healthy, thriving human child looks like. I know, we grow out of our baby fat, but I think skin and bones is overrated. If I can help my little women love their healthy bodies, celebrate being able to run and jump and love with their bodies, then I will have accomplished something rare.

Women, we are half the population at least. Don't you think we could get together and do something about our crippling body image issues? Maybe it's time for another bra burning - well, maybe not. How about burning our control top panty hose? That would make a good fire.