Apparently this is a holiday. I had no idea that was the case. I’ve been busy all morning.

If you’re wondering where all your time went, there’s some interesting research from the Center for Women and Work that basically says:

a two-parent household with two children puts in 200 more hours of work today than they would have in 1979.

200 hours! That’s a lot of time not spent not-working. You think it’s worth it? You think you have a choice? I wonder.

Sometimes I bemoan the publication of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s On Death and Dying, which is not to say it’s not a great book. In it, she describes different ways of processing death and this has been taken way too far. (You can read more about this in Beware the Five Stages of Grief.)

Her work has been interpreted so that now people believe there is a logical linear procession of grief and that’s fucking ridiculous. Her work was done with terminally ill patients—and it was about grieving their own deaths. This is different from grieving the death of someone else.

The problem with these misinterpretations is that they end up in the hands of lay practitioners who then tell the bereaved that they’re not doing the grief thang right. Wait! Are you in denial still…because at this point, you should be in the anger stage. Wait! You’re back in denial? But you already went through that stage. You should be in acceptance, damnit. Accept it! It happens all the time.

Read Amitai Etzioni’s experience with grief after the sudden death of his wife and later of his son in Good Grief

In my eulogy I divulged that I believe in a God who brings meaning to the world, but that my belief has been severely tested. I missed seeing God in the killing fields of Cambodia, and he seems too busy to show up in Darfur, or to shine his face on either the Sunnis or the Shiites in Iraq. With a rising voice, I asked: how could God allow a son to be taken from his aging, ailing father? A devoted husband to be torn from the arms of his loving wife in the middle of the night? How could he allow a 2-year-old to be left searching for his father in vain, or deny an infant the chance to see the father even once?

After I shared a copy of my eulogy with a philosopher friend in Washington, he took me for a walk in the woods. “You must know,” he lectured, “that God is not a micromanager. He does not dish out specific goods or condone specific evils. He leaves these acts — and the choices involved — to us. If the good and bad were given to us, we would not be choosing, moral creatures.”

I’ve been following the Seven Up! series for a long time. It’s a documentary series on the lives of fourteen British people, filmed every seven years starting at age seven. The original children were chosen from different social classes in London with the theory that the class system in Britain is so engrained that careers are somewhat pre-destined.

And that is what is of most interest me in 49 Up! the film I saw yesterday. I’m not convinced that the class structure is entirely responsible for career choices, but it is fascinating to see how people shifted and grew in their careers over a long period of time. There is nothing else like this film. It’s reality TV that’s actually real (and it’s a film).

and it was a poncho or muu-muu or large iconic talisman like the one above and you became incensed that I didn’t wear it, I offer Peace Bang’s insight on why female ministers shouldn’t dress like less attractive sisters to Stevie Nicks:

My point, sweet readers, is that when female pastors insist on donning the muu-muu’s and other loose, shapeless garments, enormous pendants that look like a transponder to the Mother Ship, comfy, squishy shoes that put a man in mind of his grandmother in her waning years, and all in such colors as suggest a modern dance teacher rather than a professional, she communicates something to the men in the congregation. In my opinion, the message she subtly communicates goes something like this:

“I have just come from a Wombyn’s Spirituality Retreat where I referred to God exclusively as Mother/Creator/Spinner/Weaver, where I led small-groups on How Patriarchy Has Ruined The World, and where I shared and cared with every woman there in a deep and intimate way that you could never understand or be part of. And, I talked specifically about YOU with your wife. We discussed how you never listen to her and how you just want to watch football, have quick sex and fall right asleep.”

Read the entire post here.

Toby Johnson has published an illuminating essay on spirituality, identity, and gayness in Genre. It is republished in the Gay Spirituality and Culture Blog:

The term “spirituality” has come to be used these days to refer to the concerns and sentiments that previously have been called “religious.” People who used to think of themselves as deeply religious now often call themselves spiritual instead. This is certainly true among gay people. Many of us were deeply religious as youth. A disproportionately large number entered the seminary or studied for the ministry. Often it was our budding homosexuality itself which inspired such religiousness. We knew vaguely that we weren’t normal, that we were special, that we wanted something different from life from our parents, that we weren’t drawn to the usual life of marriage and family. We knew we were “called.”

Read the entire essay here.

I have perhaps the largest math book collection in the county and am trying to pair it down. But it’s not as easy to get rid of a book as you might think. The local teachers don’t want them (don’t approve of the publishers), the local libraries don’t want them (they find them useless), and the local charities don’t want them (who would want to buy them?).

So I’ve been hunting around on-line to find places to take these puppies. But they aren’t going away without a cost–at least a shipping cost.

I could send them to Africa or maybe to RecycleBooks.org. Any other ideas?

Pain

Suffering

Relief

Via Make Magazine’s Blog.

I could say more about modern life, modern medicine, and modern suffering, but really this says it all.

It’s Friday, so it’s time for a quiz.

Here’s a quiz on Forgiveness, inspired by Myf’s post from this week.

Who’d a thunk it. I’m actually merciful. At least to people who cut me off in traffic. Not necessarily to people who hurt my pet.

Feel free to post your results here.

Dear Ms Theologian

I want to use a short prayer at the beginning of a meeting at work. Do you have any suggestions?

–Illinois

Dear Illinois:

Hmm…

Ms. Theologian wonders if the prayers she posted for work have been taken in a way that she did not intend. She intends people to use the prayers silently on their own at the desks, in the bathroom stall, in the supply cabinet. She did not intend to encourage group prayer, which she thinks belongs in churches, temples, and other places of worship.

Ms. Theologian has worked for two types of religious organizations: those in which she belonged to the religion (Unitarian Universalist) and those in which she was the outsider (Catholic and Puebloan). All used a fair amount of group prayer and all organizations made her highly uncomfortable when they did.

If prayer is communication with the divine presence in your life, it seems to Ms. Theologian that a group prayer should be a voluntary group communication. Is that possible to do with Ms. Theologian shuffling her feet at the back of the room wondering if perhaps the sexist language is contributing to her uncomfortableness? Or perhaps if there will be reprecussions if she excuses herself? Or if she can use this time to pray on her own in a way in which she is comfortable? Group prayers at work make assumptions about what each of us believes even within the same denomination. They are frequently not voluntary. Ms. Theologian believes they are best avoided.

As you can see there is a range of opinions on prayer at work with some key examples here.

Prayerfully and individually,

Ms. Theologian

Dear Ms. Theologian:

-Trying not to hurt and offend

Dear Trying:

Ms. Theologian thinks it is terribly important that your coworker’s loss is honored in some way. After some back and forth emailing with you, it seems that we’ve resolved that the departmental assistant, who handles the details in cases of bereavement, will make an inquiry and give a gift or card on behalf of the department. (But not necessarily flowers or a plant or something that is going to wither and die. That doesn’t seem like much of a gift.)

The other reason that one person coordinating a departmental effort is important is that while the departmental gift is specific to the coworker, it is also important that someone keeps track of the process to make sure that everyone is treated fairly. You might be surprised by how many people feel slighted when someone gets flowers from the department at the death of her mother, but someone else does not.

Now this addresses somewhat how the organization should behave, but it doesn’t address your question about whether you should do something. Ms. Theologian does think that a card sent to her home in a few weeks or a few months with a personal note is appropriate. She thinks that a few words in person at a later date might be meaningful if you meet in the elevator or stairwell. Her loss touched you deeply. You are in a specific position to know what her loss might mean to her. This doesn’t mean that you do know what it means—grief is strangely individual and made up of all sorts of collected smaller griefs that we carry with us. But Ms. Theologian thinks a gesture is appropriate, but perhaps not immediately when the pain is so raw. The best way to decide on the gesture is to put yourself in her shoes and see what it is you might need then.

Ms. Theologian is interested in other responses as she is sort of flustered by the question. Other ideas?

-Ms. Theologian

P.S. To write to Ms. Theologian, send an email with your workplace question to ms dot theologian at gmail dot com.

A very cool homemade halloween costume from the Evil Mad Scientist from Make Magazine and other homemade ideas here (with creepy organ music).

Dear Ms. Theologian:

What do you make of the recent increase in school violence?

–Staying homes with the kids today

Dear Staying Home:

Now, Ms. Theologian lives in a bubble that she has deliberately constructed in order to prevent her from being continuously upset by violence, sexism, and degradation. She doesn’t watch TV, she doesn’t see too many recent movies, she avoids anything with rape in it. Basically, her world is self-censored and she’s unapologetic about it because she thinks there’s a lot of total crap produced by the entertainment industry.* So, yes, Ms. Theologian thinks staying home with the kiddies is an excellent plan for today.

And Ms. Theologian realizes that the media portrays most of the bad news and she’s not actually convinced that schools are actually more violent than they were twenty years ago when she was a pup. She remembers knife fights in high school, a drive by once she graduated, and when she taught, she took away a shotgun from a student. **

But in reference to the Amish School Executions and Bailey Colorado molestations and shootings in which young women were targeted a sexual objects and then shot, she is full of grief because she sees three factors that will not change anytime in the near future that lead to this sort of incident:

1. Little to no affordable mental health services available and accessible to people in this country. All of the perps were greatly disturbed beforehand. No one successfully reached out to them.

2. Modeling of problem solving through violence both in real life and in movies. The only behavior we see modeled to solve problems both in real-life and in movies is to get a gun and blow someone’s head off. Or possibly bomb the shit out of someone.

3. Women as creatures solely for sexual stimulation. They tease, they taunt, they blow. And that’s what we see over and over.

That’s it. Three reasons. So what can you do with your kids? For that matter, what can you do with yourself?

Media Literacy.

It sounds so simple, but it’s not. Media literacy will change your relationship with the media. Teach your kids to think critically about the 6.5 hours (!) that most of them spend exposed to media every day. That means giving feedback to the media and that means spending your family’s money on projects you support and that are in concurrence with your values. Not crap. It’s not easy, but it’s very important.

Staying Home in Solidarity with You,

-Ms. Theologian

*And yes, I do know that when I’m away on business trips, Jim has a little film party of previously forbidden films at our house, but he always seems shell shocked when I return.

**Actually, I called the principal hysterically and she took the shot gun away. Her name was Sister Patrick Marie. And there have not been any more imposing images pressed into my psyche than a seventy-year-old nun in a habit carrying a shot gun across campus.

Resources:

Girls, Women, and Media Project

This is a month of fasting*. It’s Ramadan, a the ninth month of the calendar for Muslims and a time of fasting, and thousands of non-Muslims are joining the fast out of solidarity. For example, a Catholic Peace group, Pax Christi USA, is fasting during Ramadan, a Muslim holiday, in solidarity and to denounce the Pope’s quotation of a Byzantine emperor’s less than positive remarks about Islam. (Honestly, what was the Pope thinking?)

Now how you fast varies by religion and by community, as you can see in this handy chart of fasting in major religions. Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement in Judaism, was yesterday and involved 25 hours of fasting. Ramadan involves fasting from sun up to sun down for a month. Ramadan is the month in which the Qur’an was revealed to Mohammad.

*I turn into a raving lunatic when my blood sugar drops so I’ve been “asked” not to fast.

Yom Kippur is a day of reflection, fasting, and prayers and the most important holy day of the Jewish calendar.

It is a day to ask forgiveness for promises made to God. And for twenty-six hours, one abstains from physical activity, including eating, drinking, bathing, and what’s termed “marital relations.”

Resources:
Yom Kippur in a Nutshell on Chabad
High Holy Days
Judaism 101: Understanding Yom Kippur

The Al-Chet, Yom Kippur Confession

For the mistakes we committed before You under duress and willingly.

For the mistakes we committed before You through having a hard heart.

For the mistakes we committed before you through things we blurted out with our lips.

For the mistake we committed before You through harsh speech.

For the mistakes we committed before You through wronging a friend.

For the mistakes we committed before You by degrading parents and teachers.

For the mistakes we committed before You by exercising power.

For the mistakes we committed before You against those who know, and those who do not know.

For the mistakes we have committed before You through bribery.

For the mistake we have committed before You through denial and false promises.

For the mistake we have committed before You through negative speech.

For the mistakes we have committed before You with food and drink.

For the mistakes we committed before You by being arrogant.

For the mistakes we committed before You with a strong forehead (brazenness).

For the mistakes we committed before You in throwing off the yoke (i.e. refusing to accept responsibility).

For the mistakes we committed before You through jealousy (lit: ‘a begrudging eye’).

For the mistakes we committed before You through baseless hatred.

For the mistakes we committed before You in extending the hand.

For the mistakes we committed before You through confusion of the heart.

from Beliefnet’s Prayer of the Day

Learn more about today, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement and of fasting by reading the discussion of Fasting by Choice on the Virtual Talmud and Judaism 101.

Note that in the prayer above that most of the sins committed are sins of treating people badly.

This ritual is One.
The food is One.
We who offer the food are One.
The fire of hunger is also One.
All action is One.
We who understand this are One.

–traditional hindu blessing from World Prayers
–image from Food Not Bombs