Monday, February 27, 2006
Bachelor life
Since J and Caleb are visiting New Mexico (left Sunday, be back Wednesday evening, G-d willing. If you have a car and would like to help me pick them up from the airport, that would be cool. Call her answering machine), where we're hoping to be moving at the end of this school year, my cooking efforts and skills have kind of gone into hibernation-- it's not as much fun to cook if you're just cooking for yourself and not for a small delighted human who will say "Mmmmm!" in a happy sort of way while digging his entire fist into the middle of your scrambled eggs or quiche or tuna casserole or cheese sauce or whatever.
But on the bright side, I never dreamed that lasagna could be made so effectively in a muffin tin.
Since J and Caleb are visiting New Mexico (left Sunday, be back Wednesday evening, G-d willing. If you have a car and would like to help me pick them up from the airport, that would be cool. Call her answering machine), where we're hoping to be moving at the end of this school year, my cooking efforts and skills have kind of gone into hibernation-- it's not as much fun to cook if you're just cooking for yourself and not for a small delighted human who will say "Mmmmm!" in a happy sort of way while digging his entire fist into the middle of your scrambled eggs or quiche or tuna casserole or cheese sauce or whatever.
But on the bright side, I never dreamed that lasagna could be made so effectively in a muffin tin.
Monday, February 20, 2006
Not bitter. Just ex.
So I finally gave up on Catholicism yesterday.
If you don't want to marry me to my wife, do you really want to give me the Eucharist? Where do you decide where to draw the sacramental line?
If you can see justice as a fragmented cause, where standing up for vulnerable and marginalized groups like the homeless is desirable but standing up for vulnerable and marginalized groups like homos is a major, excommunication-worthy sin, what else are you fragmenting? What other wholes does your mindset have to take apart?
If you can say "Well, the Church is essentially a local phenomenon. Find a church that's mostly okay with your sexual orientation," disregarding the fact that for a church or its pastor to be vocally and openly supportive of the relationships of those homos not called to celibacy is to risk getting thrown out of the Church, who else are you not paying attention to? Who else is getting told to think small because big ain't happening, and who is being cut off from the body of Christ as a result? Can you justify requiring members to examine and change themselves when you yourself are unwilling even to look at the possibility that it could be the Church hierarchy that is in error?
The level of spiritual violence is appalling, and violence in the Church, honestly, should have begun and ended with Jesus Christ on the cross. If it's not enough for you to physically abuse my father daily, silence him about being raped by a priest, force my mom into a duck-and-cover mentality that kept her from leaving him at any point during 28 abusive years, and try to kick out flamer seminarians in the most misinformed and ineffective attempt to protect children I have ever seen, if you have to go the extra mile and say I'm damaging my son by being a loving part of his life, if you have to try to degrade and demean homos to try to prop up the rapidly- and rightfully-disintegrating rubric of a patriarchal nuclear family, if you have to hold one passage in Leviticus and one in Romans above the entire rest of the Gospel . . .
You go ahead, but don't expect me to tag along anymore. I've cut off my dad; I've cut off my mom; I've clearly got no problem with ending abusive relationships. And this is over.
So I finally gave up on Catholicism yesterday.
If you don't want to marry me to my wife, do you really want to give me the Eucharist? Where do you decide where to draw the sacramental line?
If you can see justice as a fragmented cause, where standing up for vulnerable and marginalized groups like the homeless is desirable but standing up for vulnerable and marginalized groups like homos is a major, excommunication-worthy sin, what else are you fragmenting? What other wholes does your mindset have to take apart?
If you can say "Well, the Church is essentially a local phenomenon. Find a church that's mostly okay with your sexual orientation," disregarding the fact that for a church or its pastor to be vocally and openly supportive of the relationships of those homos not called to celibacy is to risk getting thrown out of the Church, who else are you not paying attention to? Who else is getting told to think small because big ain't happening, and who is being cut off from the body of Christ as a result? Can you justify requiring members to examine and change themselves when you yourself are unwilling even to look at the possibility that it could be the Church hierarchy that is in error?
The level of spiritual violence is appalling, and violence in the Church, honestly, should have begun and ended with Jesus Christ on the cross. If it's not enough for you to physically abuse my father daily, silence him about being raped by a priest, force my mom into a duck-and-cover mentality that kept her from leaving him at any point during 28 abusive years, and try to kick out flamer seminarians in the most misinformed and ineffective attempt to protect children I have ever seen, if you have to go the extra mile and say I'm damaging my son by being a loving part of his life, if you have to try to degrade and demean homos to try to prop up the rapidly- and rightfully-disintegrating rubric of a patriarchal nuclear family, if you have to hold one passage in Leviticus and one in Romans above the entire rest of the Gospel . . .
You go ahead, but don't expect me to tag along anymore. I've cut off my dad; I've cut off my mom; I've clearly got no problem with ending abusive relationships. And this is over.
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
