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Tue 02/12/2008
So Much for the Mall
Mood:
 a-ok
Topic: Aliens
The night before my exciting Saturday with the foreign exchange students, attending museums, I had some one-on-one time with the student from Tanzania. After supper, I asked her to choose from several options as we explored the largest U. S. city she's ever visited. She decided on the mall. When we arrived, I noted with dismay that we only had 55 minutes before closing. "We can see a lot, though, in that time," I assured her. Walking into the large Younkers store, she looked with awe at the large selection of women's clothing. The look on her face was something like I've seen on my own children's faces when first seeing a cartoon character. A mixture of delight and amusement. My husband later reminded me of my own reaction, after being in Africa for almost 4 years, upon walking into the lingerie dept. of Macy's. It was the first time I'd ever seen women's panties hanging like dresses on multiple racks. Being the verbally impulsive person that I am, I loudly declared, much to the chagrin of my husband and children (all more reticent than I): "Oh, my Lord! I've never seen so many drawers in all my life!" I'm not sure they noticed a clerk turning to identify the source of the Southern accent, but I busted out laughing at HER strange expression. I led my guest through the store and into the hallways of the mall. "What's this?" she asked, with eyes wider than before. "It's the mall," I replied. Confusion spread across the young face of this "alien." "What is a mall?" she asked. It was 8:20, fifteen minutes after we'd walked into the mall. We'd taken a fast stroll around, entered a second store that she chose and even made a trip to the rest room, when she asked in a very matter-of-fact voice: "Can we go home now?" I smiled. She'd accomplished her mission, seen all she needed to see, and put into perspective the strange phenomenon of shopping for frivolous items--the very thing that keeps our economy going. At the risk of taking us away from some essentials that we may not even realize we are missing, as we get caught up in the bright lights. As we were exiting the same store we'd entered 15 minutes earlier, the student saw something that really appealed to her. I followed her lead. It was a simple, white, long-sleeve shirt that could have been just as much in style in 1960 as it is today. A nice one indeed, very useful and practical. Except for the price that horrified her--$59. She shook her head in amusement. This visit stood in sharp contrast to the following day when we couldn't seem to find enough time to do all that interested the students as we explored the museums that were not nearly as crowded as the mall.
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 8:16 AM CST
Updated: Tue 02/12/2008 12:42 PM CST
Mon 02/11/2008
Over the weekend, I had a great opportunity. Two exchange students in this area--one from Tanzania (in E. Africa) and the other from Japan--were my guests for a day. I took them to visit two large museums. What a delight to see their reactions, to hear their questions and comments! What an opportunity for me to reflect on some of the things that I take for granted as universally understood. Certainly, my own cross-cultural experiences helped. Yet, I know so little about the rest of the world. Never have I had the chance to see three cultures, each so distinctively diverse from the other, come together. Often we stopped and talked about broad principles. At other times, I entertained the questions and comments about rather mundane objects. Like the fake carrots in the model store....the Japanese student commented that these can still be found in Japan. She had seen only baby carrots so far in America, so had assumed that the "real" carrots weren't even available. Sometimes these high school students seemed like old women to me, in their maturity. At other times, like when their eyes shone to match the smiles on their faces, they talked with delightful anticipation about their upcoming proms this year (something they would never have known about or experienced in their home countries). As a writer, I am as interested in the words next to the works of artistry in a museum as I am of the pieces themselves. Today, I want to leave you with one of the statements expressed in the Native American displays: No culture is ever stagnant. Each is constantly changing and evolving, though the changes may not be evident to those who are living through them. I thought to myself that this is true of us as individuals. Some of the changes that I see in my world disturb me. Some delight me. I have no desire to go back to the simpler days, though it's nice to visit them. Very quickly, I want to come back to the present. For only in the present can I hope to influence the future. Only in the present can I help to shape history that will change my world. The same can be said of my own personal history. I wouldn't take anything for my journey, but I'd love to change a myriad of the details in the past. All of those fall into the first sentence of the Serenity Prayer: "Accept the things I cannot change" Learn from them and use them to teach others.
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 7:22 AM CST
Sun 02/10/2008
Changing Your Own Power Priorities
Topic: Making Changes
Since I have it within my own power to make some changes in my world, I need to think carefully about what changes I can make. Focusing on what we can change is an important part of praying the serenity prayer. Each of us can change the amount of power we give to other individuals in our lives, especially those close to home. Some may need to have more power and attention, some less. In some homes, children do not get enough power. That's neglect. In others, they get way too much so that they cannot even develop the security that comes with knowing that an adult is in charge. Without a good balance, much anxiety is felt by all concerned. At times in my life, I've given others too much control or power. I've failed to take charge of my own life as much as I needed to in order to be good to myself. Organizations and institutions can have way too much control over us if we do not have our power priorities straight. So can spouses. Keeping what others think in perspective, giving others' thoughts and rules consideration, is important. Good boundaries, however, require that we remember that we are responsible for ourselves first of all. Even in parenting. The airlines teach us that we must put on our own "oxygen masks" before we can provide "oxygen" to anyone, even to a small child. So the spiritual principle for me is quite a paradox. I must continue focusing on the "selfish" exercise of protecting my own well-being, treating it truly as the "temple" that it was built to be, the temple that houses my soul and allows it to work for the good of others. Only with such a focus can I avoid giving undue power, or destructive power, to others. That's a job that becomes easier to achieve only when it is done consistently. Only then, can I meet the needs of others or try to change my world. Having a healthy soul requires it.
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 12:01 AM CST
Updated: Tue 02/12/2008 8:24 AM CST
Fri 02/08/2008
Without Procrastinating
Topic: Making Changes
"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world."
- Anne Frank
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 12:01 AM CST
Thu 02/07/2008
When Power Breaks the Rules
Topic: Power
George Washington is characterized, according to Wienek, as being a rule-keeper to the letter of the law. No exceptions. Yet there IS a glaring exception, though he would claim that he simply bent the rules. In 1789, when he was elected as the first President of the United States, the capital of the new nation was established in Philadelphia. Suddenly Washington had a problem. He was a slave-holder, and Pennsylvania had a law saying that any slave who came into the state could only remain a slave for six months!! Apparently, the first President was much less concerned about the spirit of the law than the law itself. He found a way to be a rule-keeper. A way to technically be one, that is. Every six months, he transported slaves back and forth across state lines, from Mt. Vernon to Philadelphia, exchanging one slave for another so that the six-month period of grace started over and over again, to his advantage. His plan of deception didn't go unnoticed with the slaves, of course. The chief cook ran away after feigning his loyalty to his master, thereby imposing consequences as he gained his freedom. This is not unlike what I saw in conversations with people in power in American Baptist Churches USA. In subtle ways, sometimes ways not so subtle, the concern was in finding ways to bend the rules in order to keep abusers in power. And in the pulpit. The same, I'm certain, goes for every other faith group. Too much evidence comes to me in one story after another. Maybe somebody will find ways to expose the conniving in a revisionist history book someday. When enough people find the documents to prove what is in the collective memory of those who have tried to make sense of things that cannot be proven clearly in a court of law. Stories like Washington's. Stories that need no statistics to validate the fact that the Hypocritic Laws are alive and well. Behind closed doors.
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 12:01 AM CST
Updated: Thu 04/24/2008 9:54 AM CDT
Wed 02/06/2008
It's Never OK
Topic: Making Decisions
It is vitally important that all of us live by rules that are based on good judgment. Judgment for the greater good. I'm frequently surprised at how survivors of clergy sexual abuse sometimes are prone to discard rules of civility, apparently reasoning that since "God's representative" broke the rules, then it's okay to do some rule-breaking in order to bring attention to the problems of abuse. Not that this is a universal or even a common way of thinking. It just amazes me whenever I see someone manipulating statistics, for example, in order to make a point. I see this as counter-productive, for no scientific mind or professional is going to fail to see through such manipulation. It may surprise you to know that the same occurs with breast cancer. You've seen the 1 in 8 figures? Nobody bothers to tell you that this statistic is based on a life expectancy of 93. Yes, if every woman lived to be 93, there would be a 1 in 8 chance of getting the disease. That number was thrown around over a decade ago, just as it is today. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the life expectancy for women in 1995 was about 78. These scare tactics have been successful in raising money and alarm, but undue alarm. Breast cancer is a problem, I can certainly tell you as a victim of the horrific disease. I want attention called to the problem as much as anyone. Yet does this justify the misrepresentation of facts? As an author, I've had some instances of copyright violation committed by people who were either survivors or professionals in the role of advocacy. The LAST place I'd expect to find such a boundary violation is in the survivor population. Yet it's there. Perhaps some would think I should not care. After all, the reasoning goes, you should be glad your work is being used. That's not the point! Boundary crossing is cheating, no matter how it's done. One can be cheated of time, money, reputation, or just an ability to make decisions that should be at the discretion of the one who was cheated. May we never cease to monitor our own behavior and conscience. It's never okay to cross boundaries, especially legal ones.
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 12:01 AM CST
Tue 02/05/2008
When Power Has No Limits
Topic: Power
The gems in Henry Wienek's book, An Imperfect God, are just filled with an understanding of what happens when power has no limits. Gems that every person fighting oppression needs to understand. By examining the plantation world, we put power under a magnifying glass. It serves as a warning about the need for checks and balances in government and politics, even the politics of institutions like the church where patriarchy amd power abuse is far from being history. From p. 560 of Wienek's book: "In the plantation world there were few restraints on what masters could do, and evil expanded to fill the opportunities available to it."......"Swollen with power, they could do anything." The legal loopholes plus the willingness of the privileged white population to look the other way guaranteed the status quo, without accountability expected. Even if the evil was recognized as evil.
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 12:22 PM CST
Mon 02/04/2008
So George Washington was caught over and over between his conscience and financial considerations that allowed him to keep “property” and power that he felt were essential for his survival. Of course, they were essential; but only essential for the survival of his way of life that came at the expense of other human beings. He was caught between his conscience and financial considerations. In an ethical double-bind. Repeatedly this “imperfect god,” as author Henry Wiencek describes Washington in his book An Imperfect God, wrestled with these issues. He struggled just as the younger John Laurens did. Yet Laurens chose the higher road of personal sacrifice for the greater good. Washington chose only to free his slaves in his will, after he no longer would have to make a personal sacrifice. He passed the buck. To the next generation. In his will, he placed a mandate that he hoped would be followed. What he lost, because of his unwillingness to turn lose of his human treasures on earth earlier, may have been greater than all that he gained from their service. He never saw the outcome of his decision. Death, as it does in every case, released the world from Washington's ability to ever again manipulate things in order to control anyone, including himself. For him, a person of power who had done many marvelous things for which he deserves honor, those results he missed seeing might have outweighed all of the loss of power. For that’s how deep spirituality works. It operates only when we are willing to go deeper into our souls and wrestle with old beliefs and behaviors that keep us locked out of growth and real joy. Preserving only what permits us to continue with the same process. Repeating that exercise over and over again.
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 12:01 AM CST
Updated: Sun 02/03/2008 2:03 PM CST
Sun 02/03/2008
Talk VS. Reality about Freedom
Topic: Power
“Our decisions are not made in a vacuum.” Those are some of the words that I did not understand in 1987, but tucked away to think about later. Much later, after Ron and I sorted out the best possible solutions to terrific ethical double-binds placed on us by the agency that employed us. Such was the case in 1779, as early American leaders struggled with the first proposal of the Emancipation Proclamation. The proposal that failed. That’s another part of history nobody seemed to know. Another part that got left out of our history books, leaving us all so ignorant. One of the big issues, even in the writing of the Constitution, was whether “liberty for all” would include the slaves. There were too many people in power who needed to keep things the way they were, for the preservation of their own personal power at home! In other words, too many slave holders. Like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Do you see the parallels between this era of American history and the struggle in the power base of the institutional church right now? Over the rights of oppressed people groups, including survivors of clergy sexual abuse? If not, look a little closer. Just think a little harder. Not much squinting required.
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 1:52 PM CST
Fri 02/01/2008
The Dilemma of Those Who March to a More Progressive Drummer
Topic: Making Changes
Most anyone reading this blog is likely to identify to a degree with John Laurens. Historians say he was an intensely idealistic young man for the Revolutionary War era. One of the facts that has been left out of traditional history books is that slaves were used in large numbers to fight in the War. Some enlisted with the promise of being freed for their sacrifice--promises that were seldom kept! John Laurens believed that slaves should be freed before they ever fought. His father, like many people of that day, said he believed that the slaves should be promised freedom that would be granted after the War, but not a moment sooner. The general thinking was that slaves could not be trusted to persevere, to finish the war efforts, if their freedom was not contingent on such devotion. So John abandoned that original plan, but not his passion. We might say that he lowered his expectations, but not his more idealistic dreams. Perhaps he just realized that his dreams were ahead of the time. All of this is what survivors and activists, fighting for any social cause, are forced to do because of legal constraints, society's resistance, or family pressures, etc. John moved on. He chose to apply his beliefs to the place where he held personal power. It cost him a lot to take a stand, but it seems he thought the stand was worth the sacrifice. We can only imagine how long it may have taken him to weigh the cost. The young man convinced his father to specify his individual inheritance in many fine slaves, rather than land or money. Of course, this gave him the privilege of freeing his slaves ultimately, refusing to consider or to treat them as property. This meant that John sacrificed a fortune. Some of you sacrifice your time to make a difference in regard to sexual and domestic violence. Some have the means to make financial sacrifices. And do. Others are willing to be ostracized in order to have a voice in resistant communities and institutions where the Good Old Boy/Girl System still exists. Thanks to all who can identify in any way with John Laurens, for whatever reason.
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 7:42 AM CST
Updated: Fri 02/01/2008 7:49 AM CST
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