I Saw You Standing There

I saw you standing there, putting on your helmet.  A silver BMW. 650 cc.  I approached you.  I was bold like that, even then.  I asked if it was yours, the motorcycle.  You blushed.  Why, yes! Yes it is.  The blush was not for me, the bold young woman, but for your lie.

The bike was your dad's, a man who lied easily, without even the blush.  The one who lied to your mother business trip after trip, denying the significance of late night dinners with young women.  You didn't lie as easily.  Your pale skin flushed each time, punctuating your blue eyes, dimples, while your blond hair swept over your forehead.

The blush, I thought, was your True Inner Self, that you were really Good, but corrupted by Nurture.  I would reveal this True Inner Self.  Because I would really understand him.  And rescue him.  He was truly a kind man.  He had a sweet nature.  It was unfortunate that he was divorced from a wife.  They married too young.  They were so different.  She had their two children and was with her parents.  Bad things happen to good people.

He was sweet. And kind.  And patient.  And I wasn't going to marry him, after all.  It didn't matter that he didn't have the same foundational beliefs about life and death as I did.

So I prayed for him, that he would become a Christian.  Doesn't that seem like the right thing for a Christian girl to do?  No, you see, I prayed so that my desire would be justified in His sight.  Because deep down inside, I knew it was not a good place to be.  Should we do something that we know isn't right and then ask for forgiveness?  That's manipulative, isn't it? Abusing someone's love?  Whether your earthly father or your Heavenly one, should you deliberately get into a bad situation knowing you can get him to fix it?  "Look, I want this (him,) and I want you to make it right."  God the Vending Machine.

The first time I went to his duplex, which he shared with a roommate, I saw a woman's things about.  At my questioning stare, he blushed.  Yes, they're her things.  Well, we're not divorced yet.  Well, we're living apart.  Well, I haven't called a lawyer yet.  No, we're not technically separated.  But she knows, she knows.  That blush.

"It is when a person walks at night that they stumble, for they have no light."

In the dark of night, my fingers coiled around the phone, I paused.  I asked, "Are you alone??" This time, I could almost hear him blush.  I saw more than heard the rustle of sheets.

Of course, his wife didn't know.  This woman didn't, either.

But I did know.  As the dawn approached, exhausted from crying, I stumbled into The Other Woman: me.  Me, the unblushing liar.  I could see myself  standing there, having been a part of all the lies.  But most painful of all, the denial of everything I Believed, and lying to myself.

Discussion Closed

Maybe I've had a rough week.  Or two.  Maybe how I'm feeling now is real and it's all the other times when I'm busy with busy-ness that I don't think properly.

I see a day when I won't be allowed to be a Christian.  In my lifetime.  Already, I am not allowed to believe what I believe.  Apparently, I, and my fellow conservative Christians, are prejudiced on the scale of the KKK for believing that marriage is for one man and one woman.  That is what I believe the Holy Bible teaches.  But then also, I see a dismissal of the Bible as some random book that Christians use to justify our hate.  Sure, that's been done in the past, the present and I'm sure will in the future.  For every and any Belief structure.  Ever.  Not just Christian.  But I am starting to see a dismissiveness about the Bible, that frankly I don't see about the Qur'an, the I-Ching, the Tripitaka.

Maybe because in our country, we have a Christian heritage, and there have been so many Christians in our paths that have disappointed or disgusted us.  Because we went to Catechism as children, we think we know what Christianity is about.  Or we see the radio or tv personality that spends a little too much time talking about homosexuals and not enough about the thousands of other topics we could grow in.  And I'm sorry for the spewing they have done.  The public shame and hatred.  So maybe it's the ole "familiarity breeds contempt."

Maybe we paint ourselves as closed-minded because we have a set of beliefs. And we paint ourselves as hypocritical because we can't follow our beliefs.  I know I can't follow what I know.  I can't even follow a diet.  Our worst offense, I think, is that we don't "accept all faiths."  (Although some Christians do.) I'm not even sure what that means.  If you are of a religion that doesn't believe Jesus is the Savior, how can you be accepting of Christianity?  If you're a Jew and you marry a Christian, how can you accept a religion that is waiting for the Messiah and one that already has one?  Unless of course, nobody really believes any of it.  Or.  You're constantly doing the figurative cocktail party version of religious dialogue.  You know,

"How's Ramadan going?"
"Oh fiiiin fine.  And your prayer wheels?"
"Oh great.  Couldn't be better.  Good seeing you!"
"Good seeing you, too."

I see a day coming when this country will join the approximately 40 countries where being Christian is not allowed.  Wait.  Let me be specific.  There are some countries where you are actually not allowed to be Christian or you'll be jailed, tortured and/or killed (Arabia, Iran, Mauritania.)  There are others where you can live there as a Christian, but puts severe restrictions (Algeria, Indonesia.)  You can have a Bible, but not in the native language.  You'd be jailed and/or killed.  And then there are countries where you are technically allowed to be a Christian, worship and talk about it but the persecution ranges from pressur to abandon it to attacks and killings (Nigeria, Laos, Uzbekistan, Turkey, Nepal.)

I don't think I'll ever be jailed or tortured for being a Christian here in the US, but I won't be allowed to maintain my religion without being ridiculed and labeled "hateful."  Oh wait.  That's already happening.

A Good Person

We all want our villains to look mean and nasty and our nice guys to, well, seem nice.

When I was in grad school, our class went for a summer studio in Spain.  One young woman met some American boys and went off to an island for the weekend.  (I think I've told this story before.)  Some of us less adventurous asked her if she wasn't scared?  Her answer, was "They were really nice and they were American!"

Do I have to spend any bloggy real estate to explain why that statement is completely stupid?

I thought not.

It reflects, though, what many of us think, that we can tell if someone is wicked or not.  A Good Person  doesn't do Bad Things.  If they do, they get put in the other column and become a Bad Person.

Except that they do.

A Good Person might snitch some supplies from the office closet.  Or let a friend get involved with someone they knew was mentally ill.  Or forget a friend's birthday.  A Good Person might get themselves in trouble at the investment bank and try to hide the tremendous losses.  And these people might look very much like your dad, your neighbor, even you.

A Good Person might not report a crime.  A big crime.  Over decades.  While simultaneously doing lots of Good Things; working hard, honestly, giving to good causes.  This person is being discussed in two ways, both, I believe erroneous:

A.  He is now a Bad Person and everything he did was Bad.  Nothing he did in his life matters anymore because he did this very Bad Thing.
or
B.  Yes he did a Bad Thing but he did so much Good so let's cool our jets.

The first point of view demands that we paint him only as a villain.  The serpent.  The Joker.  The evil nemesis.  B. wants us to whitewash the Bad, as if his Deeds, his Works atone for the Bad, like a global tally sheet.  The fact of the matter is, Joe Paterno, like all of us, was Good and Bad.  The Bad choices he made do not get a reprieve because of all the Good things he did.  The Bad Thing remains objectively Bad whether committed by Adolph Hitler, The Buddha, or a beloved football coach. 

Most of us live unremarkable lives, doing seemingly unremarkable good - being kind to a neighbor, loving our children, doing an honest day's work.  But if we're honest, we live doing unremarkable bad - yelling our our kid, rolling our eyes about our in-laws, cursing out the other driver.  Were I to see that shower?  I know without a doubt, I would have tackled that guy and pulled the boy out.  No doubt.  But in humility and truth, I can't say I'm a better person than McQueary or Paterno.  At the same time, I have no scruples saying that wickedness won here.

In the end, maybe none of us are Good or Bad, but Human, capable at times of doing Good and too often capable of doing Bad.

Encounter with the Mall Clerk

Went to the post office in the Mall.  The Clerk does not acknowledge me. She slouches over to the counter and barely asks what I want.  Her mannerisms display a clear lack or concern, as if she is bored and can't be bothered.  I ask if I should make the package smaller to lower the price and she sneers an answer.  Al-righty!  It doesn't matter what she said; it was how she said it.

I hold out $20.05 for the $9.05 bill. She cannot even look at my hand to notice that I am holding a nickle with the twenty. I tell her twice I have a nickle. She doesn't respond but finally throws the change she has started to count back into the till and takes the nickle from me.

OK, this lady needs some lessons in etiquette and...or... she must be having a bad day.

As I turn to leave, I hear this Clerk say to the Customer behind me, "Hiiii! How may I help you?" and I hear all manner of perkiness from said Clerk.

I wait for the Customer to come out. She is a lovely grandmother type. I approach her cautiously and say "Excuse me, I just want to check if I'm crazy. Do you think that lady was rude to me?" She agreed with me wholeheartedly that she was very rude to me, and even told me that she saw the clerk roll her eyes when she took the nickle from me.

I shopped a couple of minutes to think things through and pray.  First, approach the person who offended you.  As I approach the Clerk I can see she is already bristling. As I stand at the counter, she is brimming over with a double-shot of attitude. I say, "Do you remember me?" The disgust in her "yes" is palpable, as they say in bad novels. "I just wanted to know if I did or said something to offend you," to which she replied, "Oh I am just having a bad day."

"Well, that's what I thought, but then I saw how polite you were to the woman behind me and I just wanted to know if I offended you somehow." She repeatedly says that "everything's fine" and sorry if I was offended. Hmmm, call me cynical but I don't think she really meant it!  Not only was she [at least] rude, she was also a coward.

So, I spend a few minutes thinking some more, then I went to the Mall Office and shared the situation. It was obvious from the Mall Woman's expression that this was not the first complaint about said Clerk. She said she would take care of it, and she apologized to me.

*

So what do you think happened?

Need I tell you the Clerk was white?  

and that the grandmotherly Customer was also white?

*

I have so many friends that do not think East Asians are on the receiving end of prejudice or racism in all it's ugly glory.  How else could I interpret what happened?

Bad Enough

I've drastically altered how and what we eat in our household over the years.  I believe what we eat is really important, which may sound really obvious.  But if it's so obvious, then why don't more people eat healthy?  I have faced many crossed-arms of closed-mindedness and sardonic looks of disbelief, verging on the eye roll whenever I bring up the notion of Real food or Slow Food, as if I were some far-out Birkie-wearing crunchy granola.  WHICH I'M NOT!  (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) Anyone who writes for a fashion blog by definition, can't be!!

It's not just about whether the food is organic or not, because it's about more than that, but for argument's sake, or a brief blog post's sake, let's say organic food vs. industrialized food.

I realized it's not just that people have to believe organic is better, because I think people do.  It's that they have to believe the industrialized food is bad, or bad enough to make the extra trip, make the effort, pay the extra.  Otherwise, why change?

Why fix somthin' that ain't broked?

I had a long talk with a friend today.  She's seriously considering breaking up her very serious relationship.  He has a serious, congenital health problem that can be dramatically improved by lifestyle changes.  But he won't.  Seriously.  I guess he wants to keep cheating death, but he has to buy into the notion that the lifestyle he's living now is bad, or bad enough to make the change worthwhile.  Right now, he doesn't believe that it's bad enough - for his children, for my friend, for her children...for himself.  It makes me wonder if he values himself.

A former boss wanted to write a little book on change.  He wanted me to do some reseacth and thinking about it.  I was really stumped.  Within the context of Christianity, long-lasting change with regard to the essense of who we are, is impossible without Christ.  We have a Genesis-borne tendancy to deny God's importance in our lives and do what is good in our own eyes.

Change, in terms of day-to-day habits that do not go to the core of our Nature, can be accomplished,  because WE VALUE OURSELVES over all else.  If we believe that what we are doing/saying/living/eating is bad, or bad enough, we will change, to survive..  Maybe it's just the primal survival of the fittest.

These are my thoughts of the day.  More to come...

Until then, enjoy the holiday weekend.  Be positive, be useful, be safe.

Perception is Reality, Part Deux

Here's a slightly different take on Perception and Reality.

I was at a birthday party several years ago and was speaking with an acquaintance. Let's call her Ceci. She's very intelligent and very successful. Princeton undergrad, an Attorney, tall, good-looking and black. She was born and raised in New Jersey. I was raised in central Pennsylvania. Her take on Pennsylvania is that everyone past Philadelphia regularly walks around in white hoods, carrying a torch in one hand. At the time, I was merely bemused. Later on, as I thought back, I was mildly offended. I don't think I was deeply offended, but I was deeply affected. I continued to replay that interaction, testing it for perception vs reality.

Recently, I had the chance to do a little research into her perception. If you'd like your nice suburban butt kicked out of your comfort zone, go browse The Southern Poverty Law Center website. My analysis is going to be far from a thorough scientific report, but it will give you some idea of where reality lies. Lays. Lies. What's true and not.

Pennsylvania has 46,058 square miles and 37 known hate groups, which equals 1 hate group per 1,245 square miles. New Jersey, at 8,722 square miles, is about 1/5 the size of its neighbor. New Jersey has 40 known hate groups, which equals 1 hate group per 218 sq miles.

Pennsylvania has a population of about 12,500,000 people which is about 1 hate group per 337,840 people. New Jersey has a population of about 8,680,000 people. That's 1 hate group per 217,000 people.

I'm not picking on New Jersey. Some of my best friends are from New Jersey. They can be very nice. ;-) I just wanted to check Ceci's perception. And defend Pennsylvania. She, like most people, are comfortable at home, no matter what "home" actually is. It could, in fact, be dangerous, abusive, toxic. But not knowing what's out there, the unfamiliar, is UNcomfortable, even scary. What is that saying about the known evil? Help me out here. Think about the extreme situation where a child is abused in her own home. But it's home and normal to her. She grows up and what? Another abusive situation. Feels like home. How about you? What do you take for granted as being safe and even, good? but is merely familiar?

Perception is Reality, Part One

When I was in architecture school, we were discussing the notion of safety. The professor spoke about real safety vs perceived safety. What? you say? Architects learn about safety in architecture school?

Here's a hypothetical scenario. You're walking home late from the library back to your dorm. You are walking past large, illuminated windows. Through them, you see a sea of hunched shoulders, pretending to be deep into their poli-sci text. You are relieved to go home and looking forward to a bowl of ramen noodles and crashing. Of course you're safe! So safe, you don't even think about it.

The reality is, the path to the building is lit only by the glow from the fluorescents in the reading room. The reality is, everyone has an iPod on. The reality is, college students often rough house and scream in playfulness. If someone jumped out of the bushes, dragged you to the windowless side of the building, and did something horrible to you, you'd never be detected. Why? Even the students who might have their earphones off might look up if they heard your scream. They'd look out the window and see . . . blackness and their own reflection. Nobody in the library would see you, or hear you.

So, why were we discussing safety vs perceived safety in grad school? As architects, we need to think outside of our own particular goals and do our civic duty to consider the implications of the fenestration, encourage proper lighting, appropriate landscape design.

So how does this apply to us in our own lives?

Let's look at the difference between feeling safe, and being safe.
Do you automatically feel unsafe in an unfamiliar town?
Do you feel unsafe in an unfamiliar area of your own town?
Do you feel unsafe, or uncomfortable, when the people around you don't look like you?
Conversely, do you feel safe in you own neighborhood?
. . . do you feel safe because everyone around you looks like you?

Sometimes when I'm driving, I will forget to lock my door. No matter where I am, I will eventually remember to lock my doors. But, if I see a "suspicious looking" person coming toward me, that is the jab reminder to lock my doors. Even if I know they are locked, I'll press the switch again, for psychological reassurance. I remember years ago when I got that panick-jab when I saw a "suspicious looking" person - a black male. But after I locked the doors, it panick-jabbed me in another way:

Am I racist?

I thought and thought about it. It sickened me to think that no matter what I believed and how I acted consciously, that I might, deep down, harbor racism. Another time, another town. Again, a panick-jab that made me check my doors. This time, the "suspicious looking" person was a white male. . . a tremendous. relief. to me.

My next thoughts were: What is it that frightens me? Was it the swagger? The clothes? The cigarette butt hanging from his mouth? The tattoos? The multiple piercings? Would I be just as scared of a woman? And now that the all of that, especially the tattoos and piercings can be seen on every other stay-at-home mom and teenager in every suburb, what do those signals mean, anyway? When you get tattoos of skull and bones and dragons on your arm, when your son gets the nose and eyebrow piercing, what is that telling the world? Is it OK if said son is dressed in Abercrombie? Is it OK if you're driving a hybrid SUV? Can we no longer judge what is safe and what is not? Were we ever really able to? or were they prejudices we were allowed to harbor because it wasn't questioned? Was it actually less safe in the poor, latino neighborhoods? or was it less safe on the roads in the upper-middle-class white neighborhoods after all the 2-martini lunches?

What scares you? Is it the entire neighborhood? Why? Because of the poor? the color? I had a boyfriend who worked in Chinatown as an ESL teacher. Everyone he worked with was East Asian. Except him. He was in the society registry. He was in the signers of the Magna Carta thing. He wasn't the hardest worker and his job was in jeopardy. One day, he was complaining about his boss and the work environment, "I see all these slanted eyes looking at me." Clearly, he felt threatened. He transposed his unease into racism. And that. That, was the beginning of the end for us.

Are your fears perception or reality? Here are some questions I ask myself. I've developed them over the years as I've analyzed prejudices and sense of safety. It's simply what I use to question myself; to help me get one step beyond where I am. It requires me to look beyond my initial reactions. It requires me to look. And think.

Look. Think.

If I'm in an unfamiliar neighborhood:

1. What do the residents think? Are there bars on the homes? If the residents don't feel safe, it ain't safe. Get out, fast. Especially if you're the wrong color. Don't be naive.
   
2. Is it clean or dirty? Do the residents express a sense of responsibility and pride by caring for their homes and property?
3. Are there viable businesses? I don't mean pawn shops and bars. Is there a town center with a drugstore, a grocery, a burger joint? Chances are, there's a sense of community, belonging, responsibility, which engenders safety. Unless, of course, there are bars on the windows. (See #1, above.)
   

If I see people different than me:

1. How are they different?
2. Look past the differences and see the meaning
3. Are they well-put together, albeit not in your "style?"
4. Are they kind, simply using different words?
   etc.
   

I'm no fool. If I feel unsafe, I get out, first. Then think later. But I do think about it. Because I want the world to be better. I want me to be better.

Strive for peace with everyone . . .
-Hebrews 12:14 (ESV)

After this I looked and there
before me
was a great multitude that no one could count,
from every nation, tribe, people and language,
standing before the throne
and in front of the Lamb.
-Revelations 7:9a (NIV)