Archive for the ‘Sublime’ Category

Sex by the Book

Thursday, March 20th, 2008

There aren’t that many countries any more that are willing to send you to jail and keep you there for having sex (I have not done an official count of this, though I promise that I will do so tomorrow). America, however, is one of them. Particularly in the American South and Southeast, having consensual sex is a crime punishable by jail time – in some cases serious jail time. I have a friend who married a registered sex offender from Texas. Were we freaked? Not really. His offense was having a 16-year-old girlfriend when he was 18-years-old, and the consensual sex they engaged in got him thrown in jail for a few years.

Consensual sex laws vary by state, and nearly all of them are set at somewhere between the ages of 16 and 18. Teenagers accused of having consensual sex before the age established by the state have been punished in many places other than Texas. But Texas is particularly notorious for such prosecutions. Then again, Texas just likes throwing people in jail. And of course, killing them once they are there.

Interestingly, many states have different ages of consent depending on whether you are male or female. In Delaware, Idaho, Massachusetts, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming, you can have legal sex at 16 if you are female, but not until 18 if you are male. Presumably this is so those faster-maturing girls don’t leave their 2-years-older boyfriends squirming for too long. In the state of Montana a female can have consensual sex with a male when she is 16 years old, but not with another female until she’s 18. I can’t come up with an explanation for that one. In New Hampshire both males and females must wait until they are 16 years old to have consensual sex, unless they want to get married, in which case they can do so as young as 13 years old as long as they have parental permission. Oh wait – males have to be 14.

States don’t just legislate how old you have to be to have sex, some of them still regulate whether or not one can have gay or lesbian sex. In most of our lifetimes it was illegal for a black person and a white person to have sex (though only really enforced if the white half of that equation happened to be a woman). Prostitution (Eliot Spitzer being a rather noteworthy exception) is generally illegal for the selling party – 99 times out of 100 a woman. What is our country doing spending so much time and money legislating sex? Aren’t our lawmakers busy enough with our completely ineffective and grossly expensive drug war?

But I digress. What got me on this tangent? The intersection of our national sexual fixation with our national religion. I was reading a newspaper article about two 20-somethings who broke into (i.e., broke the latch on the door of) a little used church in MacClenny, Florida for the purpose of having sex in a sanctified space. They are still cooling their heels in jail a day later. They are being charged with damage to property, criminal mischief, and burglary. From what I can tell they didn’t steal anything, they broke the lock on the door, and they left their underwear laying around in the church. Stupid? Yes. Should they have to go in front of a judge and answer for their breach of a law? Yes. Dangerous? Perhaps only to their reputations. An offense worthy of keeping two young people in jail? Oh come on.

What’s got folks all upset is that these two young people wanted to have sex in a church (actually, in classic Eve fashion, the newspapers from that part of the country have laid the blame firmly at the 24-year-old woman’s feet – the poor 28-year-old guy was found “hiding in a crawl space under the church.” Well, Adam wasn’t that bright either, but at least he didn’t get the whole damn human race thrown out of the garden. Though if you think about it, if the price we pay is childbirth, I think they can start leaving chicks like this young lady alone already. The local television station, Channel 4 in Baker County, ran their headline news story under the banner Unholy Act.

If they had broken the lock on someone’s barn, someone’s garage, even someone’s little-used country house (and they weren’t in Texas), nobody would be in jail right now. But they broke the lock on sacred space. And not just anybody’s sacred space. Christian sacred space. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’d be willing to wager that a young couple breaking the lock on someone’s private tarot parlor, someone’s yoga studio, or near someone’s Buddhist altar to have sex wouldn’t be partaking of jail meals either. Still wrong. But not likely a jail-able offense.

Am I anti-Christian? Definitely not. I am pro-whatever-it-is-you-do-to-love-your-fellow-man-and-make-a-better-world-for-all-of-us. I don’t sit around worrying about the state of anybody else’s soul, but that’s only a prerequisite for some sects of Christianity anyway. No, my issue is three-fold.

  • As an American citizen I have an issue with using the law to enforce something as serious as jail-time for an infraction that, had it occurred in any other architectural structure, would likely not lead to jail time.
  • As a human being, I have an issue with society being so quick to treat sexuality and sexual behavior as fundamentally wrong – even “un-godlike.” Why would God give us something so incredibly awesome as sex if it wasn’t inherently good? And don’t tell me it’s for the purpose of having children, because I have three of those at home. If that were the reason then God is the most profound tease in the history of the Universe.
  • Finally, when will humanity tire of blaming women for all this sex? Clearly men don’t enjoy it, never engage in it, and are never the ones to come up with the idea for having it. Except, of course, when they do. The news media’s blaming of Crystal Rowland continued, when on their news broadcast they also said that Matthew Pearce’s family had been in to speak with him and he “wanted to apologize for his actions. He had been drinking that day and he really didn’t know what was going on.” No word from the Rowland camp, nor do I think it likely that there will be.

So. Miss Crystal Rowland and Mr. Matthew Pearce are a horny young couple with bad enough judgment to consider a minor breaking and entering charge a reasonable risk for a sexual dalliance. Not my choice of evening entertainment, but I’ve never considered shoplifting or dine-n-dash either. Nonetheless, could some of my North Central Florida readers please make up a couple of homemade picket signs and suggest to the Honorable Sheriff Gerald Gonzalez that he let those young folks go free?

    (c) 2008. Andrea M. Hill

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Truth: Specialty of the Humble

Sunday, February 10th, 2008

Most men indeed, as well as most sects in religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that wherever others differ from them, it is so far error.

—Ben Franklin, Autobiographical Writings (last speech)

It is a complicated world in which we live. We require conviction about certain things in order to center ourselves and make our way. Yet those same convictions sometimes blind us to a greater truth or understanding about life, love, and God.

 

Most of us do not understand the history of our religions, the social contexts in which our religions were developed, and the ways in which all sacred texts have been manipulated by various kings, religious leaders, emperors, and tribal chieftans to support their personal political agendas. We understand the religious history that was taught to us by our parents, their parents, and their parents’ parents, and we accept this verbal history as the truth.

 

It’s no small surprise that true biblical scholars – not divinity students, but scholars of the bible and its history – go through a crisis of faith at some point in their studies. They learn how fallible the socially accepted religious texts are. Those who continue to have faith do so because they choose to believe, in spite of all the human error and meddling. What a powerful faith theirs is, to choose not from denial, but from a place of light (truth) and spiritual hope.

 

We hide behind our beliefs, afraid to challenge or question them. Psychologically that makes sense. If we suspect our spouse is cheating on us sexually, we go through a phase of not wanting to know. The truth can be difficult and painful because it may cause change. Some people choose to never confront the truth of their spouse’s infidelity, and live instead in a state of denial and suppressed pain.

 

If we have chosen not to confront the infidelity, then woe to the well-meaning (or not-so-well-meaning) friend who points it out to us. Their recognition of the truth means that we must deal with it, and if we have used denial to create a false reality, we don’t appreciate someone else shining a light on it.

 

All of us hide behind denial to some extent. It’s a complicated world that presents us with too many contradictions. One person’s acceptance of nudity is another person’s violation of modesty. One family’s arranged marriage for the strengthening of family ties and responsibilities is another person’s violation of marriage as an institution dependent on love. One person’s pacifism is another person’s weakness. One person’s polygamy is another person’s violation of the sanctity of marriage. One person’s martyrdom is a violation of another’s sense of God’s peace.

 

Cultural norms and mores simplify life. Merely 200 years ago nearly every human being lived within a community which enjoyed the simplicity of entirely shared values. Well, that’s not quite true. For instance, in most western cultures 200 years ago, if a married woman was miserable – whether she was beaten , taken for granted, or anywhere in between – she could not leave her marriage. She couldn’t own land, hold a job, or vote. So whether she shared the norms and mores or not was irrelevant – she had to pretend to in order to maintain what little place she had in society. Slavery has been part of the world since time immemorial, continuing today. Still, most communities 200 years ago benefited from general sharing of cultural values.

 

As the world has become more integrated, we experience challenges to our beliefs and values. The Archbishop of Canterbury recently advanced an argument that England should consider Sharia law for the purposes of negotiating marital and civilian disputes. The world immediately split over his statement – some suggesting that social cohesion is not possible when multiple legal systems are contending for primacy, and others arguing that it’s about time western culture recognized that the Muslims within their cultures require Sharia law to function. Who is right? As the Archbishop of Canterbury has learned, even raising the question of how to accommodate religious views and rights within a secular society can have grave implications for one’s career.

 

State by painful State the US has been debating whether or not gay couples should have the same rights under the law as married couples. Proponents of the bills argue that gay couples should not have to worry about whether or not they will be able to visit their loved one in a hospital, make medical decisions when necessary, or maintain their joint property after a loved one’s death. Opponents of the bills argue that gay marriage mocks the sanctity of heterosexual marriage and that the fabric of society will be permanently torn if gay unions are legally recognized. Who is right?

 

In 1955 Robert Green Ingersoll said:

“Whenever a man believes that he has the exact truth from God, there is in that man no spirit of compromise. He has not the modesty born of the imperfections of human nature; he has the arrogance of theological certainty and the tyranny born of ignorant assurance. Believing himself to be the slave of god, he imitates his master, and of all tyrants, the worst is a slave in power.”

 

There is room for all of us, whether believers or non-believers, to recognize a certain personal responsibility in Ingersoll’s challenge. The challenge is this:

 

We cannot simultaneously uphold our own fundamental rightness and offer genuine respect to human beings who believe differently than us. The two positions are mutually exclusive. We can condescendingly agree to accept that the other person has a different opinion, but that is not the same as valuing that person equally to ourselves.

 

If we wish to take no risks with our salvation, our only hope is to choose to see the Godliness in every other human being, and to strive to understand how their Godliness leads them to believe differently than we do. We cannot condemn another person without condemning ourselves. We cannot judge another person without likewise turning our judgment on ourselves. If we are among those who believe in God, how egotistical it is to believe that God requires our judgment of His other children to make His world whole? Don’t we think He can handle that aspect Himself?

 

If we are not worried about salvation because we don’t believe in God or a hereafter, our only hope in life is to learn as much as we can from every other human being we encounter, because this one life is the only one we’ve got and the only way to live it to the fullest would be to allow its fullness to live in us.

 

One sure path to the truth is to be willing to view our own beliefs with as much skepticism as we view the beliefs of others. An even surer path to the truth is to challenge all of our systems, our laws, and our social structures to uplift and uphold the dignity and supreme worth of every human being. In every choice we make, if we would stop to consider the worth and dignity of those involved – and not just our own views of how the world should work – I believe that we would consistently make better choices.

 

In 1902 William James lamented that out of fanaticism “crusades have been preached and massacres instigated for no other reason than to remove a fancied slight upon the God.” History does not provide an example of it, but can’t you imagine a world where all people are seekers of truth and clear thinking? It would be impossible to wage a war, starve a child, beat a woman, or cheat a friend if the only enculturation we knew was to shine the light of equality and love on every person we met.

 

No one of us is more special than any other. But we could be incredibly special together if we put our minds – and not our blindered beliefs – to the task.

 

(c) 2008. Andrea M. Hill

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Platitudes 1:1

Sunday, November 11th, 2007

There are so many truisms we accept without evaluation. Things our parents taught us, things the minister said, things that were drilled into our heads at Sunday school, over dinner, or in the classroom. Many of these lessons were important teachings on the path to becoming an ethical adult. But not all of them. Some were based on pop (read – unproven) psychology, fear, and the need for social conformance over authentic living.

I encountered one of these banalities yesterday. A woman, at one time my friend, possesses keen intelligence and creativity, and is capable of friendship and tender-heartedness. But like the little girl with the little curl in the middle of her forehead, this woman is also capable of hateful behavior, manipulation, and attack. It has been clear for years, both when she was my friend and afterward — when the disappointments and risks of being her friend became too great — that her problem was one of self-loathing. Yesterday, when encountering her for the first time in a great while, a powerful truism demanded its day in court.

Some time in the 1970s pop culture began teaching us that we cannot love others until we love ourselves. One of the largest industries in the world – the self-help publishing and media industry – has been built almost entirely on this premise. The commandments of this movement are clear. Thou shalt learn to love the way you look. Thou shalt learn to love the way you act. Thou shalt learn to love the clothing you pick. Thou shalt learn to love your lovableness.

One commandment that is missing from that lot is thou shalt learn to love the way you think. The love-yourself-first movement includes “thou shalt learn to think loving thoughts about yourself,” but not thou shalt learn to love the way you think.

Popular culture got it wrong. If we spend our lives trying to learn to love ourselves first, we may never end up loving – categorically loving – anyone. Real loving is the commitment to contribute to another person’s spiritual growth. Did I say religious? I almost never say religious, unless I’m dissecting it. I said spiritual. Commitment to contributing to another person’s earnest seeking to live a life in right relationship to others is love. Commitment to contributing to another person’s ethical or moral state, their state of values and beliefs as opposed to external action (though one certainly follows from the other), is love. Will learning to love ourselves first assist us in achieving the love of others?

No. In fact, the opposite is true. Only when we learn to extend ourselves to others by loving them can we learn to love ourselves. We can achieve an understanding of our own worthiness only when we consistently see the worthiness of others. Each time we deny the worthiness of another human being – which is tantamount to refusing to love them – we deny the worthiness in ourselves. Perhaps we don’t recognize it as such, but there is knowledge, deep within each of us, that understands that no one person is more or less worthy of love than another. That which we deny another human is something that must be denied in ourselves. At the end of the day, only our wholeness matters.

For a long time I had felt hard-hearted toward my one-time friend. She abused my friendship and trust. She hurt me. But in a moment of insight, such a simple gift of awareness, I realized that she was locked in a prison of her own making. I ached for her. And in reaching out to her with love instead of a hard heart, I felt better than I had for a long time.

We can only love ourselves when we reach out in love to others.

(c) 2008. Andrea Hill.

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Could This Be My Karma?

Monday, October 22nd, 2007

We all have stuff we need to work on, and mine’s paying attention. Really paying attention when people are talking to me is kind of hard. My mind tries to dart off in a million directions, which makes me impatient with whatever is happening right now. And if it’s a conversation I really don’t want to have, then it’s just that much harder. I can’t tell you how much feedback I’ve gotten in my personal relationship about being present. And it’s fair feedback, because I’m not.

I have this horrible habit of typing while people are talking to me. I’m a fast typist (110 WPM with accuracy), and I’ve been typing since high school, so if someone comes in and starts talking to me I can look up at them, listen to them (OK, with half a brain, not a whole brain), and keep typing whatever it was I was typing at the time of their arrival. My previous assistant actually told me it made her sick to her stomach when I did it. That’s when I knew I had to stop.

Have you tried to be present, really present, all the time? It’s very difficult. I’m in my 40s, not hyper (at least externally), and reasonably socially skilled. Yet when I started trying to be present all the time, it nearly did me in. In fact, it was so reminiscent of my college-day failures at meditation that I nearly threw in the towel. I was acting more present, but I’m not sure I was being any more present. A while ago I stumbled on some CDs by a woman named Pema Chodron, and I finally got a glimpse into what it was I was trying to accomplish.

I studied comparative religions quite seriously when in college, but never before had I properly abstracted the reasons to meditate and the fundamental reasoning behind Buddhism (though I always considered myself a follower of Eastern philosophy — go figure). All of a sudden, in 3 CDs, it became unbelievably clear to me. The whole condition of life is learning to be present right now. And the reason for most of the unsatisfactory conditions of our lives is that we don’t learn to experience the present just for what it is.

When we feel sadness, we want to get rid of it. When we feel anger, we want to get over it. When we feel frightened, we want to get past it. And when we feel impatient, we want to get on with it. But what’s wrong with just feeling sad, or angry, or frightened, or impatient for a bit? The things we do to NOT feel those feelings is what causes so much of our discomfort in life! Feel angry about someone breaking up with us? All we can do is feel worse and worse as we try to figure out ways to get even with them. Feel sad because we’ve lost a good friend? All we can do is feel worse and worse as we feel worthless and guilty over things we should have done better, and then drink ourselves to the point of headache because we don’t want to feel that bad any longer.

The condition of life is one of sometime discomfort, and that the thing we need to do is learn to experience the discomfort, instead of trying to mask it or reject it. If we just let ourselves feel the discomfort and accept it for what it is, we don’t feel compelled to layer on more failures by doing artificial things to mask the discomfort. That way, we learn what needs to be learned from the situation without making additional mistakes. That, by the way, is the original purpose of meditation. If we learn to simply empty our minds of all the “content,” we can learn to be present in the given moment.

So, what does this have to do with work? Just this. There are so many situations we don’t want to deal with at work. An aggravating subordinate, a negative co-worker, an unreasonable boss — above all, relationships define our work experience. But if we’re present — truly present — in each moment, we just accept each interaction for what it is. Sound too zen for you? Well consider this — you have to have those interactions anyway! If you go into them truly accepting them for whatever they are — whether they’re going to be irritating or fine — chances are the interaction will go OK. It’s when we go in resisting, wishing we didn’t have to have them, that things tend to be bad. Either they go bad immediately between you and the other person, or they go bad for hours afterward in your head. Either way, they mess up your day.

So I’m trying to be more present. At home, at work, wherever. It’s scoring me a few extra points at home. And I imagine the people I work with appreciate it too.

(c) 2007. Andrea M. Hill

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