Mollywogger - the_spotless_mind

A question for adopters

noreply@blogspirit.com (Mollywogger) — Thu, 5 May 2005 13:05:00 -0500

So I was wrong. I ovulated on the 2nd, not the first. So, if I am indeed pregnant, the babe will not be eligible for citizenship in the Land of Avalon, and shall not be named Morgaine of the Faeries. Phooey.

I hereby also announce that my husband will no longer be referred to as “The Handsome Linguist” – he will, from this point forward, be referred to as “The Handsome-Ass Linguist,” so that I can shorted his name to Hal. Which is actually a real name. And it reminds me of the dad in Malcolm in the Middle, who’s funny. Hal it is.

So last night Hal and I moseyed over to the “Spring Fling Pizza Party!” that our apartment complex holds each spring in an effort to make us meet each other and become best friends and schedule bocce ball games with each other and eat popcorn and watch movies together all night long. We only go because there is free food involved.

Anyway, it was mostly insufferable, as usual, with polite inquiries such as, “Oh yes, how many cats do you have?” and comments like, “Good pizza.” Then a couple showed up with their darling little son. The mother was white (and pregnant) and father was Asian, while their little son was African-American, so we weren’t surprised when she told us that he had been adopted a year ago. She made a comment like, “Adoption was tough, but definitely worth it.”

Of course, since I read many blogs where adoptions are in the works, I said, “Yeah, and I suppose it took a while too.”

“Oh, not really,” she replied. “We finished and submitted our application on a Monday and got our call to pick him up the Wednesday of the following week.”

My eyes must have gone a little wacky, so she quickly explained that they had adopted their son through a domestic Minority Infant Adoption program, where the average wait for a baby was about 2 months. She continued, “The application took some time though, I mean like, a few hours. And then there was a background check and home study, and that took a few weeks too.”

So this couple went through the whole adoption process and got a healthy, two-month-old boy in less than a month. After reading about the agonizing wait that some bloggers are going through with their international adoptions, I couldn’t believe domestic adoption could be that easy. It made me wonder: for those of you undergoing international adoption, why did you choose that over domestic?

Molly Goes Back to Writing Term Papers, or, In which I extensively quote Diana Eck

noreply@blogspirit.com (Mollywogger) — Wed, 30 Mar 2005 10:51:07 -0600

Well, Easter just passed us by, so once again Jesus has begun making guest appearances on blogs. ~~I can’t come up with anything interesting to write about myself~~ Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so here are my thoughts on faith, humble though they may be:

I was raised a very normal mainline Christian by a very normal mainline family. As faith wasn’t nearly as important to me as, say, the hot guy who was in my confirmation class at the time (BEN PEDERSON OH MY GOD), and since people who are 13 years old don’t tend to have a great capacity for abstract thought, I never thought much about faith until I got to college (incidentally, I’ve always found it a pity [and slightly ridiculous] that most mainline Protestant Churches essentially quit Christian education once a student has been confirmed at about 14 or 15. Frankly, I was a total flake at that age, and pretty much all I gained from confirmation was the ability to list all of the books of the Bible from memory. Immensely helpful during difficult moral dilemmas, I assure you).

Of course, college hits you like a load of horse shit and brings with it all of the big ticket questions: Was Jesus really the son of God? Is Christianity the only way? Are non-Christians going to hell? Is homosexuality a sin? Should the Bible be read literally? Etc., etc., etc. I spent a good three years of my life debating, arguing over, writing on, breaking up with boyfriends over, and more or less absorbed with those questions. I even majored in religion due to my interest in the great debate.

Then, my senior year, I read a book that struck me in such a way that I still turn to it regularly when I’m confused. Ladies, and gentlemen, meet Diana L. Eck, author of “Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras” (link on the left-hand side of the page).

Dr. Eck is a professor of comparative religion and Indian studies at Harvard University (and, incidentally, my brother-in-law who goes to Harvard Divinity School almost hit her with his car in Harvard Square the other day. May have had to hurt him if he harmed her ability to write more books.) She was raised Methodist and still attends a Methodist Church, and was involved in the interfaith dialogue program of the World Council of Churches for fifteen years.

Let me state here, for prosperity’s sake, that I’m not sure whether I’d call myself a Christian. Perhaps a “cultural Christian” in the sense that there are those who call themselves cultural Jews – perhaps not. I’m not sure what I believe at this point, but I’m going to expound a bit on the version of Christianity that seems most authentic to me.

The biggest problem for me regarding religion is the stumbling block created by Western cultures in using the term “belief.” When one says, “I believe you left your coat at home,” or “I believe in God,” it has come to mean an intellectual assent or, even, a fact. This has not always been true, as Dr. Eck states. Let the quoting begin!

“Credo is the word with which the great creeds of early Christendom begin. ‘I believe . . .’ we say. The Latin credo means literally ‘I give my heart.’ The word believe is a problematic one today, in part because it has gradually changed its meaning from being the language of certainty so deep that I could give my heart to it, to the language of uncertainty so shallow that only the ‘credulous’ would rely on it.”

Good stuff. She continues:

“[Faith] does not mean that I intellectually subscribe to the following list of statements, but that I give my heart to this reality. Believe, indeed, comes to us from the Old Englih belove, making clear that this too is meant to be heart language.”

In my favorite passage, Eck compares choosing a faith to choosing a mate:

“[The language of faith] is, as Bishop Krister Stendahl puts it, ‘love language,’ analogous to the language we use when we say to someone we love, ‘You’re the only one in the world for me.’ It does not mean, ‘I have systematically surveyed everyone in the world and have chosen you.’ It means, simply and powerfully, ‘I love you.’”

Sometimes it’s right to just commit to something or someone. I love my husband and I do believe that we somehow found each other so that we could be together and learn from each other, but I will admit that geography played a vital role and that I was not able to “systematically survey everyone in the world” before I married him. It was about making a commitment, just as faith is.

She goes on to apply the idea of “love language” to a particular line in the Gospel and how it is frequently misused (yup, it’s long, but worth it):

“The Gospel of John contains another of the best-known verses of the entire New Testament, John 3:16: ‘For God so loved the world that He gave his only Son, that whoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.’ The point of this verse is surely the plenitude of God’s love. For God so loved the world that this greatest of gifts was given. Love is the great word of the Gospels and the one plumb line of Christian life. There are many Christians, however, who take this affirmation, turn it inside out, and make it a condemnation of everyone who does not believe in Christ. In doing so, they turn the second part of the verse into a non sequitur: For God so loved the world that He gave his only Son, that whoever does not believe in him will perish and suffer eternal damnation. This is not what the Bible says, and I was every Christian who has been tortured by this kind of theological abuse to know that . . .”

I can’t quote Eck’s entire book here, as I’m sure that both she and Beacon Press would object, but I would if I could. She says so much more about Christianity in comparing it with Hinduism and how Hindus see God and other religions. I highly recommend it to everyone.

As for me, I’m not sure where I am right now. I am saddened by the fact that modern Christians are so intent on alienating those of other religions or those living what they see as “non-Christian” lifestyles, but I do understand that if no one stands up and says, “Wait a goddamned minute here! This is not right!”, then things will not change. I’ll keep you posted.

Now go read that book!

Shoveling Snow with Buddha

noreply@blogspirit.com (Mollywogger) — Thu, 6 Jan 2005 10:15:00 -0600

I recently posted this poem as a comment on grrl's blog, but I thought it was fitting for the season so I'm posting it here as well:

Shoveling Snow with Buddha
by Billy Collins

In the usual iconography of the temple or the local Wok
you would never see him doing such a thing,
tossing the dry snow over a mountain
of his bare, round shoulder,his hair
tied in a knot,a model of concentration.

Sitting is more his speed, if that is the word
for what he does, or does not do.

Even the season is wrong for him.
In all his manifestations, is it not warm or slightly humid?
Is this not implied by his serene expression,
that smile so wide it wraps itself around the waist of the universe?

But here we are, working our way down the driveway,
one shovelful at a time.
We toss the light powder into the clear air.
We feel the cold mist on our faces.
And with every heave we disappear
and become lost to each other
in these sudden clouds of our own making,these fountain-bursts of snow.

This is so much better than a sermon in church,
I say out loud, but Buddha keeps on shoveling.
This is the true religion, the religion of snow,
and sunlight and winter geese barking in the sky,
I say, but he is too busy to hear me.

He has thrown himself into shoveling snow
as if it were the purpose of existence,
as if the sign of a perfect life were a clear driveway
you could back the car down easily
and drive off into the vanities of the world
with a broken heater fan and a song on the radio.

All morning long we work side by side,
me with my commentary
and he inside his generous pocket of silence,
until the hour is nearly noon
and the snow is piled high all around us;
then, I hear him speak.

After this, he asks,
can we go inside and play cards?

Certainly, I reply, and I will heat some milk
and bring cups of hot chocolate to the table
while you shuffle the deck,
and our boots stand dripping by the door.

Aaah, says the Buddha, lifting his eyes
and leaning for a moment on his shovel
before he drives the thin blade again
deep into the glittering white snow.

---From "Picnic, Lightning"

Sunrise, Sunset . . .

noreply@blogspirit.com (Mollywogger) — Fri, 10 Dec 2004 12:15:00 -0600

Hello from the United States of Canada. It's 4:15, the sun has set, and the week is gone.

A few observations:

WHY IS IT DARK AT 4:15?!

Watching my husband watch TV is the funniest thing I've ever seen. He mirrors all of the actors' facial expressions, eyebrows and all. You should have seen him during "Joey" last night.

How come our cats continue to eat toilet paper? What is so delicious about toilet paper?

We're finishing all of our holiday shopping TONIGHT. This has never happened before.

Could Johnny Depp be hotter? Seriously, could he?