Pushing Back

    

                                                                                                 -by Seth 

    Checking the mail is always fun and exciting. I grew up within walking distance of the local post office which meant no rural delivery for us, so this whole "having my very own mailbox right at the end of the road" thing is still kind of new. And before the fiasco that is healthcare it was enjoyable. Now it generally means some new and banal waste of tree pulp and money to either tell me something I already know or reverse some decision made the week prior. The latest was a nursery card from hell for Ilya:

      A creepy, but I guess within in realm of "baby appropriate" outside opened to reveal an aggressive immunization schedule along with a message from the powers that be to "get those shots!".  Not a suggestion, not a piece of objective information I could take or leave, but an ultimatum. A demand. And I was done. There's no more ignoring this attitude of complete superiority and dismissal of parental control (not to mention intelligence). If it's ever to stop we have to be the ones to stop it. 

     So instead of burning the card, which is generally my first impulse with junk mail (it's not vindictive, it's just the easiest way of dealing with the loads and loads of paper), I decided to send it back with the following letter:

     Dear Mr. Albert,

     I recently received this card - I am returning it to you as it is not only inapplicable to my life, it is offensive. I am not one to take umbrage at every little slight, so please understand my full meaning in saying this. While I appreciate you concern for my child, it is in no way your responsibility to dictate my healthcare decisions.

     There is a disturbing trend of professionals, such as yourself, feeling the need to act in loco parentis both to parents and simultaneously, through them, to their children. I will not tolerate that. Whether your guidance is good or bad is irrelevant, the problem lies in considering yourself more capable of making medical decisions for people you've never met than the parents who are raising them. This is grossly misguided.

     I am perfectly capable of discerning, among other things, which vaccines to get when, and if I need your advice I will ask for it. Until then please refrain from further patronizing attempts to "educate" me. 

                                                                                       sincerely-

                                                                                    Seth P. Goepel

   Most likely it will enter the trash unread (probably unopened) but that's not important. Because there's the chance it will be seen and maybe even provoke a reaction. And if we don't start pushing back at the little things - the attitudes, the casual implications - then we can't expect life to start improving. And now it's your turn.

  

A House Divided

A guest post by Seth:

I’m all for strong statements. They make a great impression, they’re eye-catching, they’re a great way to start college admissions essays. With the gumption to back them up, bold declarative statements are a political speech writer’s dream. Well handled, a strong position is akin to a rallying battle-cry, calling the masses to make a decision and choose a side. Only once the lines are drawn can the onslaught begin, because a rallying cry is not a charge, not a command to advance. It is not unheard of for a rousing speech to sway ones antagonists as well as riling the spirits of those already in agreement. Of course, this refers to good rhetoric, liberally applied and valiantly delivered. Such is not the case with Butters.

Butters is a well-known Catholic apologist whose name is completely something else. But since he is merely a case-study in an epidemic, charity would demand he be granted some anonymity, even if it is only as effective as those black rectangles placed over patients eyes in pictures of disease and anatomical abnormalities.

Butters recently saw fit to publicly share an article whose topic was vaccinations but whose subject seemed to be anger at those more affluent than the author. The article itself is negligible; poorly reasoned and even more poorly written it is simply another example of how far internet emotionalism has destroyed not only logic but basic sentence-structure. I assume it will have no lasting effect. More to the point is Butters’ statement preceding the link: “Anti-vaxxers are dangerous people who kill children. As a grandfather of two little girls, I give their quackery no quarter. None.”As far as strong statements go, that one gets full marks for aggression. Follow-through and charity are another story altogether…

Maybe Butters was having a bad day. Maybe every little thing made his blood boil and rational thoughts were hard to come by at the time. We’ve all been there and know what it’s like. But the immediacy of the internet is a pitfall not easily avoided in such circumstances; back when thoughts were written down, edited, reviewed and only then broadcast for public consumption, there was at least some hope that the slimy mud of vitriol would wear off, revealing the hard stone of keen insight (or the even denser muddy clump of idiocy) beneath. In our “need to know” “it’s my right” “just push the button” society, we bypass all that and get this. An ill-advised, angry spiel from someone who should know better. And by that I only partially mean “a Catholic apologist.” I mostly mean “an adult.”

Instant feedback gives a look at the ensuing fallout from such a statement; the comment box is full to the brim with a hackneyed debate consisting of some well-thought out and some emotionally fragile statements from various viewpoints. Unfortunately, not enough time passed for Butters to collect his own thoughts and calculate what a Christ-like approach might be. Instead he flits to and fro, pruning his rapidly withering fig tree with increasingly duller shears. Some of his comments include: (in response to another commenter) “You are a dangerous person and you have the blood of every unvaccinated child killed by preventable disease on your hands. I don't let dangerous accomplices to murder on my wall”, “…I do run into ignorant dangerous people who have the blood of thousands of unvaccinated children on their hands” and “Anti-vaxxer [sic] are helping to kill children… I don't take kindly to people who threaten the lives of my grand-daughters. Call that "selfserving" if you like. And call it "vitriol" if you like when I tell you that those who threaten the lives of my grand-children have no place on my wall”. After this has gone on for awhile he comes up with this statement: “I said nothing about non-vaccinating parents being killers. Parents may have all sort of legit reason for not vaccinating their child. What I say is that people who spread anti-vax propaganda have blood on their hands because they teach people who *should* be vaccinating their children to leave them exposed to diseases that kill them”. A nicety that in a more refined setting might not come across as splitting hairs so much as making fine distinctions. But the article he shared that began the whole debate bears the singular title Rich, Educated and Stupid Parents are Driving the Vaccination Crisis (for the record I altered it slightly; words and punctuation remain unaltered but I did capitalize some more words so it actually looked like, you know, a title).

How can we expect to evangelize when this is how we treat each other? I had a history professor who began her class informing us that while she would try to present her material as plainly as possible everyone has biases, both the historians who recorded the information and herself, the best we could do is recognize that and work around it. By assuming anyone disagreeing with our biases is either blindly (and idiotically) ignorant or criminally dangerous we do a disservice to ourselves, those we hope to educate, and logic itself. 

To the Woman Who is Not a Mother: I Value Your Advice

Maybe you saw me at Mass the other day, looking annoyed, just trying to pray, while the little girl pointed  again and again to Christ on the Stained Glass. Maybe you wanted to tell me "look! See!" But you didn't want to be pushy.

Maybe my daughter crashed her Trader Joe's kid-cart into you yesterday and I snapped. Maybe you wanted to whisper: "patience" to me as I walked away with her, but kept silent.

Maybe you sat behind me and heard me wonder aloud about teaching her to trust God and not worry. Maybe you wanted to tell me how, maybe you've learned how from a mother, sister, friend, or father. Maybe you just wanted to share your wisdom, as a woman, as a person, as a Christian. But you kept your mouth shut and felt shut out, because you've no children of your own, and mothers are a touchy, exclusive group these days. We've told you so many times, in blogs, in articles, in day to day life that you're not qualified to speak here, not in our world, not on our issues. 

We want to hear from moms of 9, 12, or at least 4 kids! Seasoned mothers, not newbees, and especially not you. 

Well, we're wrong. 

You are qualified. In some cases, you're more qualified to speak than the mother who speaks as a mother to mothers..because you're speaking more purely as a person - neither mother nor young child; beyond the roles and 'sides' we give each other in conflicts, you can speak to and for the people involved, and there are always at least two people in every parenting struggle.

So speak up, please!

If you can remember your childhood, and the way you felt when your mother related to you as I relate to my daughter, remind me.

If you can empathize with that screaming baby, that defiant child, that searching teen..open up those feelings to me.

If you see me carelessly neglecting the vocation I've been given, whether you long for it or not, whether you ever want to be in my shoes or not, please, call me on it. 

And don't be afraid to let me know that your theater job stole as much or more sleep than my newborn, so long as you pass on the skills you used to deal with it!

You have the right and the calling to be a voice for the good in my life, even as it relates to my parenting, and I need to hear from you. 

I need to hear from someone who isn't comparing her parenting to my own. From someone who isn't trying to affirm me in the hopes I'll affirm her mothering as well. We need advice and suggestions and direction from beyond the 'mommy wars'. And we need to be reminded that no, motherhood is not a 'high and lonely destiny,' it is a vocation within the church, a vocation that wants participation from the whole church - including you!

I know I can't speak for the whole of mothers..but I can tell you that if they don't want to at least hear and consider your advice, merely because you have no children of your own, and if they don't think you're able to speak to them about raising children in love and joy - then they're wrong.  They're insulating themselves from the wisdom of their sisters, and you should tell them that too.

Hatin' On Mother's Day

I don't like Mother's Day. 

I know..it sounds so mean to say it out loud! Or write it publicly, but really, I'm not a fan. 

At all.

That doesn't mean I don't like my mother, or being a mother, or seeing other mothers get flowers and attention. I'm not bitter or resentful, and I've got a husband who can pretty much rock any holiday - even the pathetic, Hallmarky ones - without trying. I'm also definitely not arguing, as so many Catholics do around St. Valentine's Day (though these same Catholics adore Mother's Day with a passion) that my motherhood should be celebrated everyday, shouldn't need a special day of overblown theatrics. I love that stuff, in general; setting aside special days to honor aspects of life: love, romance, motherhood..is an essential part of our humanity.

 I don't like Mother's Day because its fake.  It's a commercially created and socially enforced lie to women that her value comes primarily through her ability to birth; that her vocation as a mother is 'the hardest job in the world;' and that because of all this she is owed the veneration, affection, and affirmation of not only her family, but society at large. 

I hate feeling owed. I hate having my motherhood relegated to a "job" - it's banal, it's ugly, is de-relational. And above all that. I feel as though celebrating motherhood, in a society that celebrates no other aspect of womanhood and permits a mother to kill her children without a second thought, is sort of a joke. A sad, self-absorbed, depressing little joke. What aspect of motherhood does mother's day focus on anyway? Generally, it focuses on entitlement. "You deserve it..because your a mom." Lovely. And not at all the sort of attitude I want to indulge in, or pass down to my daughter.

Do I sound too harsh? I hope not..I want a celebration of motherhood, but one that celebrates motherhood in it's place among womanhood's other roles and blessings. I'd like to see Mother's Day drift and spread out into something almost pagan, something Marian, something holistic..we are not a Catholic culture, and I don't expect to change that, but within the Church, why can't we honor the many faces of the Theotokos: virgin, mother, consort/spouse, lamenting one, and wise old woman of Ephesus - Queen of Apostles..why can't we take on May Day again on the first, or the feast of her Queenship on the last of May..and use the day to honor the women in our lives who bear God to us - however they do so.

I'm not asking you to stop celebrating..really I'm not. But do try to celebrate well.

 Don't let your Mother's Day turn into a secular, self-congratulatory celebration of the world'sview of motherhood..instead celebrate the 'genius of women' - the little icon of the Mother of Christ we all have within ourselves. Celebrate the women who have mothered you as well as the women who have never borne children: the Paraskevas, the Theresas, the Magdelenes, and those still waiting to be born anew. The world tells us they have no value, that there is no point in honoring the woman-not-a-mother..she has no day, no cards, no flowers. But Christ tells us otherwise, and this Mother's Day, while I may go to brunch at the local cafe, and I'll definitely be calling my mother, I'll also be planning ways to honor the other women in my life, tucking their names up behind my Icons and honoring their lives as I'm able. Please join me?