Blood sports

The partisan divide afflicting Capitol politics has spilled out onto the Washington Mall, where Congressional staff members' springtime frolic of softball games after work is degenerating into ideological hardball. Complaints that easygoing Democratic players prefer "softball welfare" and that hard-sliding Republicans are into "class warfare" precipitated a schism. More than 100 teams have broken away to form a league of their own led by a Republican commissioner, abandoning 80 other teams to fend for themselves on the greensward.
The sticking point, according to The Wall Street Journal, is the championship playoff system long run by a Democratic commissioner — a bleeding heart approach, in the view of Republican batters. It forces the teams with the strongest records to risk playing one another in the opening challenges, rather than letting them feast first on the weaker teams, as in the great American way of professional sports. New York Times, April 28

I have a confession to make.

I am a Democrat..hang on, that's not the confession! I am a Democrat who likes to play softball with Republicans. Actually, I don't play softball. I have no aptitude for team sports. Tennis, anybody?

Let me be perfectly clear. If I did play softball, my Republican friends are the first ones I'd invite to be on my team. Almost all of the Republicans I know, (which doesn't include members of Congress or the present administration), have a strong respect for rules. They not only talk about personal responsibility, but usually display it. Rarely has a Republican buddy owned up to not paying a parking ticket or taking office supplies home.

My Republican friends are also unlikely to make sartorial faux pas like wearing loud checked shirts and Indian print skirts to work or to bring up controversial political subjects at cocktail parties. I think. I could be wrong about that, because I have not been invited to a lot of cocktail parties recently. Perhaps it's the way I dress. By and large, they also live in lovely homes, and I like to visit them there, when I am invited.

In other words, with the exception of some strong disagreements on social issues, my pals on the right are people I am proud and honored to call friends. When I read about a hardball/ softball war raging in Washington, I have to wonder whether Congressional staffers have any idea what normal people (OK, semi-normal) like me really care about.

By and large, we get along with each other. We want to see bipartisan collaboration and creativity in addressing issues like global warming, jobs for the poor, and international crises in Iran, the Sudan and other hot spots. Silly displays of hostility reflect a level of peevishness and immaturity that is not only vexing, but scary. Apparently the aliens in DC have forgotten the most basic rule of sportsmanship-play fair. After that, let the best pitchers and runners determine who wins. Or is that baseball?

Is fashion so over?

You could not call my son Colin a fashionista. He flatly refuses to wear anything with long sleeves unless he's got to attend a funeral, go to church on Sunday morning, or make a de rigeur appearance in Philadelphia high society once or twice a year. When he does wear long sleeves, they are casually draped over a t-shirt with some exotic Japanese comic book characters inscribed on the front. He is, however, starting to notice girls, so all of this may change. When interrogated last week by his elder sister, Colin 'fessed up as to how he liked a girl in his second grade class named Julia. "She's got pretty hair and pretty eyes but....let's not go into the details" he said with all of the life skills of someone who has a sibling. At eight years old, let's hope there aren't too many more details. Still, any tender feelings he's got for Julia have not affected his obviousness to certain standards of dress. Tonight, as we cruised through some blogs, checking out the ones written in English, Colin and I came upon one entitled "The Sartorialist." Viewing the pictures of men, women and children posed in stylish rainment on the streets of that ultimate stampeding ground of high fashion, New York City, Colin hooted with laughter. "This is all about...clothes?" he said with amused incredulity. We might as well have been viewing a site devoted to teaching Venusians how to grow turnips. For children his age clothes are purely functional. Even my daughter, who will be eleven next week, constructs an outfit as an exercise in creativity and flair rather than as an imitation of something she has seen on television or on the body of some other girl. The fact that she has to wear a uniform during the week helps curb her access to fashion, but not by much. When I was younger, I would slavishly read the New York Times articles on fashion. It wasn't that I thought I could afford to buy the Ralph Lauren jacket or would someday have the body for that Gucci dress. But as a middle class New Yorker I had the sense that to be educated I needed to know what I was missing. In other words, knowing what was hot among the socialite set, who was wearing what, and who would be wearing what, meant something valuable. Yet among my middle and upper middle class friends today, I see almost no interest in trends. It's not that they go out of the house looking trashy-far from it. But my women friends, by and large, have found a sense of style that expresses who they are inside, and not whom anyone else thinks they should be. Men are another story (aren't they always?) I've known some would-be metrosexuals, who combine the preppy look with fashionable cars and designer dogs, but I cannot think of one male friend who admits to following the trends in suits or shirts or even socks. As for me, I love buying clothes. I find it hard to resist good quality velvet jackets, or slinky silk skirts. The only fashion dictum I follow is whether it looks good on me or not. Somewhere along the way I simply shed the need to be on top of what was trendy. Colin, who cannot believe that anyone would spend precious time perusing photos of pretty people in lovely clothes under any circumstances, resents the fact that I have taken over his closet with my colorful summer frocks, lacy blouses and off-price designer skirts. But if he wants part of the space back, he's got to become a more adventurous shopper. Somehow, I think I'm safe, at least for the moment. Does anybody care to voice an opinion on whether fashion, as we knew it when we were kids, only matters now to the ultra rich and those hired to cover them? Does anybody out there keep up with the latest trends? If so, did you notice anything that we can all afford to buy (though if we can all buy it, why would we want it)? Can a fellow explain what goes on in a guy's brain when he steps into the men's department of a JC Penneys or the higher plane of Nieman Marcus? Does he have a plan of attack? Does he break out into a cold sweat? Does he look at what other men are buying? Start with those, gentlemen, and we'll try you out on some other, harder questions later, like: why don't men bring a good book with them when their wives go shopping instead of sitting amidst racks of cheesy nightgowns looking like they are frogs slowly being cooked in a pot of hot water?

The sword of righteousness

I would rather not pay him much heed. Frankly, I cannot bear to see such hatred. But Zacarias Moussaoui is once again front page news. Now that the closing arguments are ending, the jury is debating whether he should be put to death for his complicity in the plot that ended in the firestorm at the World Trade Center, the deaths of innocents at the Pentagon, and the loss of all passengers on Flight 93 when it crashed in Pennsylvania, probably on its way to Washington. Nobody much likes Mr. Moussaoui. Even his defense lawyer seemed to indicate that he thought of him as a lower form of life. The prosecuting attorney said that there "was no place on earth" for someone like him, a man who rejoiced in the death of the almost 3,000 victims and the suffering of their relatives. On the other hand, said Moussaoui's defense attorney, putting him to death would make him the martyr that he wished to be. The decision is "more about us than it is about him" he said. If I were a betting woman, I would wager that the jury goes for the death penalty. Perhaps members might see that as some kind of recompense to the relatives of the victims. Possibly they may agree with the prosecutor that he is simply too awful to live. Although I hope I am not right, my guess is that few will wonder what the decision to put a man to death means about them. What is the connection between Zacarias Moussaoui and the recent flap over the Gospel of Judas? It is this. Two thousand years after it was written, scholars and other sympathizers have risen to the defense of the Gnostics. For anyone who has had their head in a bag the past couple of weeks, Gnostics are those (and there have been many Gnostic sects throughout the centuries) who suscribed to the idea that there was were levels of truth not available to everybody. Why do they receive such sympathy? Partly because they lost, and losers are more interesting than "winners." But they continue to fascinate too because they were eradicated, not only from congregations but from much of the historical record. As Christianity became the state religion, as it acquired institutional power, the impulse to enforce orthodoxy became too great too resist (perhaps memories of Roman persecution were short). Over time, Christians, even when we have righteousness or truth on our side, have had a tendency to enforce it with means that are coercive instead of merciful and irrational instead of exemplary. Oftentimes we were intolerant of diversity when, if we truly trusted that God was in charge, we would have let error fade away on its own. It is scary how fast we can begin to think of ourselves as agents of the forces of light instead of servants saved by faith through grace. In hindsight, the pious weren't always too careful about who we chopped up, burned or tormented. But throughout the history of civilization, the wheat has been mixed with the tares. In the light of our history, I am reticent to be too quick to think that by putting one man to death we will eradicate that for which he stands. I also do wonder what it says about me, and about you. In assuming I am taking a stand against evil by killing a man like Moussaoui, I may be, in fact, become more like him. God is the only true and absolute good, the only One who is capable of deciding an appropriate punishment for the crimes to which Moussaoui has confessed. Is it not up to Him to make the final judgment? No one I know would argue that Moussaoui is a martyr. Many of those I know had friends or relatives, or friends of friends in the Twin Towers that unforgettable morning. But in our understandable zeal to rid ourselves of him and his hatred, we reinforce an unfortunate tendency to arrogate to ourselves that which is God's alone. In the process, the medicine we administer may, in fact, become that which slowly and subtly works its poison on us.

Naked and unashamed

Have I gotten your attention now? A warning to any of my more staid readers, not to mention those of you who think that I have no personal or professional reasons to know anything about this subject: this post contains sexual content. Now don't get your hopes up. It doesn't have anything too explicit. I'll leave that to the experts. Have I lost any of you? 'Didn't think so. For all kinds of good reasons (like not wanting Dick Cheney or even Michael Chertoff to scan my browser records) I avoid websites with a lot of explicit sexual content. But there are times when the bawdy and weird can be found without a whole lot of looking.

Take craigslist, for example. Somebody sent me there for job postings, and while I was hanging out I decided to look at the personal ads. My oh my, haven't they changed since I last read the back of the book Philadelphia Magazine ads advertising Doris Day lookalikes and courtly widowers. Did you know that in the Bay Area there are men seeking voluptuous females, guys lusting after bi or bi-curious evening companions, fellows panting for stoner chicks (not the word, but this is a GP-rated blog) and gentlemen who are into foot massage?

I didn't even look at the casual encounters part of the website. I like not knowing what I'm missing sometimes.

You don't have to go as far as the ubiquitous craigslist to find some pretty far out personalities. Just open up the New York Times "Modern Love" essay on Sundays, and prepare to be amazed, amused and sometimes incredulous. How did the woman torn between two lovers maintain a bi-coastal relationship with her fiance when she was carrying the child of the fellow from New York? Just the commute would have made me crazy. How about the gay couple who adopted the child of a homeless teenager? Today's story is written by a stripper (a Williams College grad) who fronts for a rock band and is so busy with her career, her chiropractor and her vet that she doesn't have time to have sex ( it baffles me that she thought going on a couples therapy talk show would be the answer, but I'm not a stripper rock chick).

I'm not naive enough to be amazed that there are people of "diverse" tastes in love and sex out there. I am puzzled, however, by the seemingly routine nature of the kind of soul-baring (not to mention the other kinds) that appear with such regularity in newspapers and online. I would hate to think that I am so stodgy that there's been another sexual revolution and, once again, I've missed it completely (last time, at least, I had the excuse of being too young). Sexual diversity has become less a matter of "Jerry Springer" shockjock talk and more something to be discussed over coffee and bagels along with the latest Washington cabinet reshuffle or rise in mortgage rates.

Which makes me ponder why, in all of my years of counseling parishioners, and late night chats with girlfriends, I've never had the opportunity to meet a certified foot fetishist or a woman juggling two men on different coasts. I've started to look at the men I see jogging in the park or the women in the beauty salon in a whole different way. Could the guys with the golden retrievers beside them be the ones exchanging sonnets in smokey boiteries with gorgeous foreign women while their wives are shuttling the kids to the next football game? Are the ladies getting their nails painted toddler pink getting ready to parade around in seamed stockings for male admirers while their significant others are filing overdue tax returns for boss's daughter-in -law? I have no idea. The explosion of sexual revelations is another sign that many upstanding citizens, probably even school bus drivers and carpool moms, live private lives that would astonish their neighbors if they only knew. Or maybe the rest of the folks on my street do know...and its only me who has once again missed out on all the really hot gossip .

The power of a peacock

Driving down Little Conestoga Road toward Route 100 this evening after Sian's ballet rehearsal, I almost ran over a peacock. Male...you know, the showy ones with the iridescent feathers. They say all that color and cockiness is an evolutionary adaptation on the part of the male of the species, but that's hard to believe. This fellow, tail lofting over the tarmac, didn't seem to give a hoot about the SUVs and mini-vans whose owners had slowed down to let him take his half out of the middle. It is possible to imagine that two decades ago Little Conestoga might have been the kind of bucolic place where you could see dairy farmers leading cows to the barn or sheep crossing the road. No more. Thronged with the blandness of new subdivisions, it has little remnant of its rural past. The chickens pecking by the roadside of one of the few farms left on that stretch of road seem like an artifact of a time both elusively close and already long gone. When Sian and I saw the peacock, we, too, moderated our pace to a respectful crawl. As we drove on, Sian looked back and viewed it parading behind our car, apparently oblivious to the peril of wandering unescorted on a busy street at dusk. Once we were on the busy highway, Sian said: "A peacock...it wasn't supposed to be there." Then she laughed...caught up on the delight of an unscripted moment of dislocation. Part of the reason I made the decision to move out here, a right and a left and another right beyond Little Conestoga, was to allow my kids the opportunity to have those precious times. They chase deer in the backyard, the varmints, as though the they were domesticated pups. Colin and Sian greet the rabbits in our yard as though they were members of the family. Wildflowers and groundhogs and flowering cherry trees are part of the backdrop of our local environment. All children deserve to have times in which they are taken completely and pleasantly by surprise. We all do. Sadly, so many children don't have the chance to experience what Sian and Colin and their friends do when they open the front door in the morning to wait for the school bus, or bike down the street to play with the family around the corner. Yet that doesn't mean that sick kids or disadvantaged kids or kids in war torn countries are shorn of wonder. In holding a new car, playing soccer with a friend, sharing an ice cream cone with a buddy or a giggling with a friend before lights out, children find ways to create their own grace and joy. Wonder is the birthright of every child. We adults simply have the challenge of keeping our eyes open so that we aren't preoccupied and miss the comet or the peacock when they come. Then we have the privilege of slowing down, which we so rarely do, and allowing ourselves a moment to savor, and gape, and grin in delight.

How about God AND the Girl?

Maybe its because I didn't have one date in three years at Princeton Seminary that I rolled my eyes when I noticed the premiere of a new reality show called "God or the Girl." Actually, this show is about the spiritual and emotional travails of four young men who are trying to decide whether or not to become Catholic priests. By the end of my time in graduate school, and for years afterwards, I was convinced that my clergy collar had the same effect on men as a silver cross is supposed to have on a vampire. If I had been the writer for a show on such a topic, I would have entitled it: "Why not the Girl, for Pete's sake?" But seriously, folks.Can we be optimistic about the product of a conversation in which three Jewish guys, vying with one another for the "craziest thing we could come up with," (as one of them told the National Catholic Register) decide to make a show about someone trying to figure out whether or not to go into the priesthood. It is reassuring to know that in addition to buying (I kid you not) 20 copies of Catholicism for Dummies, Darryl Silver and his colleagues also consulted many men already vowed to the celibate life.

Far, far be it from me to impugn the concept of a series that apparently pleased, or so says Silver, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops when they saw it screened. Could it be that some of them even wished that they had been given a chance, as a young man, to participate in such a show?

I must admit that "God or the Girl" did give me pause. Are decisions about religious vocation now seen as entertaining competition, kind of like a good Nascar race or the just-ended edition of college basketball's March Madness? What if these young men are expecting God to speak and He decides He's not going to show up on command? What, on the other hand, if He does and they don't like what they hear?

After giving the possible societal repercussions of "God or the Girl" serious thought for about five minutes, I decided that it probably didn't portend the end of religion in America. Maybe someone flipping the channels on a dull Sunday night will actually be inspired to think seriously about what it means to be countercultural in a trend-driven society. Possibly some watchers will admire the seriousness with which these young men make their decisions. Maybe the camerawork and location shots will be so enticing even indifferent viewers will stay tuned for all five weeks.

As an Episcopal woman in a Protestant seminary, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops could have used me as a vocational recruiter. After all, no sooner did a young, healthy Presbyterian show up anywhere near me, but he mysteriously turned into a monk. Just think what I could have done for the ecumenical movement, had they only known.

Yes, I know that most normal people would not break into a cold sweat at the sight of the word "bun." I'm not talking about buns, as in the kind made with yeast. Some of us aren't confident of our culinary talents, and so we like to avoid baking. Some of us are also carb-averse, so a bun, particularly ones brimful of currants and topped with lovely rings of sugary icing, represents a temptation we must avoid. I don't mind baking... twice a year or so when I can't find something at the Acme. It doesn't scare me one bit, no sir. I love carbs in almost any form, the more sugar on top the better. Nor am I alluding to "buns" as in "buns of steel." Exercise tapes have the same allure for me as do correspondence courses that suggest you can learn ancient Greek in five easy lessons. The kind of bun that frightens me is the ornamental one that rests gently, neatly, and sedately on a schoolgirls head. It's the kind of bun that my daughter Sian is supposed to have for her ballet class picture, along with "light make up" and a suitably girlish attitude. This isn't Sian's blog, so we won't talk about her spunky, independent, and eclectic way of expressing her feminine side. At any rate, it isn't her femininity that is being called into question when she arrives at rehearsal with her waves spilling out of a ponytail perched atop her head like a waterfall. It's my inability to impose order on her unruly strands that will reveal to her teachers, and other interested onlookers, what really goes on in our household. In the midst of trauma involving such traditionally "feminine" activities as sewing buttons, ironing dresses, and household chores, I have often reflected on my mother. When she and my father wed, she informed him that housecleaning was not one of her gifts, and that they would need to find someone to come in to do it. I wonder wistfully who mom, who was a phenomenal cook and baker, recruited to sew buttons and iron. Possibly my grandmother, who did know how to braid her hair into a bun and was enough of a saint to try to teach me to make hospital corners on my bed as a child (anybody know what hospital corners are anymore?) At any rate, I cannot really blame my ancestors. Nor can I attribute my clumsiness solely to being a left-handed rebel in a right-handed world. I can only hope that, tomorrow, if I grovel long enough, one of the mom's with the sylph-like daughter in the immaculately pressed costume will take pity on my shortcomings and give Sian that classic ballerina beauty look that she deserves...at least for one night!