*blinkblink*

I am...appalled and disgusted.  You know what about.

And I'm a bit tense about going to work today because I work with a number of right-wingish people and I don't.  Want.  To hear it.  Thank god I don't have to go to my home church any time soon, too.  Or maybe not, maybe I should be raising some hell among the fuckers there I know will be cheering the murderer.

Argh.

Names, Nicknames, and Identity

Due to discussion about names, nicknames, and the importance we ascribe to them here, I got to thinking about mine, especially my first real online handle.

Somewhere on that thread, someone named Rebecca gets told maybe it would be cool if she went by "Reb."  This was, in fact, my first handle, short for both my middle name and "rebel" (not the Southern kind, but stemming from an odd occurence in my youth group*).  I loved that name, really, even though I haven't thought about it in years.  It felt very "me" at the time--maybe still does in some ways--and I wanted badly for my friends to call me by it, but that would be (like Buck) violating the First Law of Nicknames.  Plus, self-ascribed nicknames rarely stick.

"Seraph" was thought up for me partly by a friend of mine in highschool (The Mastermind), when I was making my first-ever online journal.  I tend to overthink screennames because I want them to convey my identity more fully than a lot of people tend to bother with, and I had trouble thinking up that one because I felt that my social identity was in flux at the time.  Mastermind suggested some combination of "shadow" to express that gray area, and "seraph" because I'm religious and it sounded cool.  Eventually the shadow part got dropped but Seraph stuck somehow.

In a lot of ways I think of myself more as Reb or Seraph than my real name.  But there's no way calling myself by those names in social situations would fly.  This comes from very early personal experience, when I tried to get everyone I knew to call me by the name of a candy that I liked, and which sounded vaguely like my name in some contexts.  I think only two people ever called me by that name, and one of them arrived at it on his own instead of having me try to tell him.

Maybe names aren't something we're meant to pick for ourselves, somehow?

*One time, my youth group in the course of a Bible study was asked to think up a bunch of people they would call "rebels" to write up on the white board.  My name ended up there alongside Che Guevara and Saddam Hussein, probably due to my perpetual tendency to play devil's advocate in discussion rather than immediately swallowing the usual doctrine.  Maybe they should have called me "Buck"?  The actual point of the exercise was to demonstrate that while most people that youth-groupers will call rebels are "bad," there is a good way to be rebellious, especially since Jesus was portrayed in that study as "The Ultimate Rebel."

Oh gee, Thanksgiving.

My extended family is a confusing morass of great-aunts, removed cousins, adoption, marriage, remarriage, re-remarriage, and random unrelated folk tacked onto the edges. The English language needs more specific terms for cousin relationships and chosen-family relationships. There were at least twenty people, maybe twenty one, swarming the house today--we had people eating in the dining room, the den, the living room (which should be called the parlor) and the foyer. I hadn't ever met one of them before today--my grandmother's cousin's daughter's boyfriend's son. It sounds like the route traveled by urban legends.

I don't even really feast fully on Thanksgiving--turkey isn't really good until at least the next day. But my extended family are generally Moravians (instead of Baptists--we're in the Baptist church because of my dad) so there was no long drawn out blessing and giving of thanks, just the short and simple Moravian blessing, said in unison:

Come Lord Jesus, our guest to be,
And bless these gifts bestowed by thee.

Bless our loved ones everywhere
And keep them in thy loving care.

The second verse is even optional. Sometimes when there are enough people who know it, grace is sung:

Be present at our table, Lord,
Be here and everywhere adored.
From thine all-bounteous hand our food
May we receive with gratitude.

It's sung to one of the melodies of the Doxology; not the Old 100th, the other one. In searching on YouTube I've found it sung to the Talis Canon as well.

Obviously, I'm rambling. But I like the communal aspect of the Moravian blessing; which is a lot like the Moravian church in general, the motto of which is:

In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; and in all things, love.


I'll have more to say later; this blog is getting dusty with disuse.

Oh fer...

By the way, for whom it may concern... by Belle, including this link: Kali Ma.

Y'know, I'm pretty damn monotheistic, but even I have to admit that there are Forces out there that you shouldn't be screwing around with, and Kali is definitely one of them.

Goddess =/= Happy Fluffy Loving Mother Who's Automatically On Our Side.


Oh, and btw, in the link to info about Kali that Belle provides? "She is especially known in her Destroyer aspect, squatting over her dead consort, Shiva, devouring his entrails while her yoni sexually devours his lingam, penis." How much do I love that image? He doesn't penetrate her, oh no, she devours his penis with her vagina. How great is that.

*buuuuuh*

I've found lately that looking at fundamentalist Christian websites, books, videos, practices, etc, makes me feel dirty.

Buuuuuh, get it off me.

I grew up in a Southern Baptist church, I did the purity pledge thing, I went on mission trips. I "witnessed" to my friends (for those not familiar with weird xian jargon, to witness to somebody is to tell them about Jesus in the hopes that they'll decide to convert. Not necessarily as creepy as it sounds). But it never made me feel skeeved out, unclean, or intellectually violated like looking at the Purity Ball or Quiverfull or Mars Hill or what have you stuff does now.

The key difference is probably that my five-point Calvinist and seven-day creationist, yet uber-beloved youth pastor really, truly wanted us to think. Bring your Bibles with you to church, he said. Pray and think about what I'm telling you and what the other preachers and Sunday school teachers are telling you. If you don't agree with us, that's okay.

And sometimes (maybe a lot of the time), I disagreed with him, and that was okay. And when he decided he was wrong about something he had taught us, he told us, and apologized, and told us what he'd learned.

Looking back now, I can say I swallowed a little too much of his more conservative doctrine, but I did so of my own free will (pretty funny for the student of a Calvinist, eh?). And being taught to think about my shit made it, if not easy, at least not near-impossible to change my mind and learn and grow. And not having it shoved down my throat made it possible for me to see the love of the god I believe in, and return that love in my human and imperfect way. I can pretty accurately say that he was probably the biggest influence on what I believe, even if I don't believe in a lot of things he believes in. Here's to you, Mr. Youth Guy.

So feeling like I'm having some nasty, hateful doctrine forced upon me is actually a fairly new sensation, and it's totally grossing me out. Ew ew ew.

Delayed Creep-Out

As seems to be usual, I am behind. I just found out about Purity Balls.

Oh god, the creepy. The middle-aged dads, the dressed-up teenage girls, the vows (someone please tell the author of the vows that "cover" is a word for animal sex), the ring exchange...creepy creepy creepy.

Unfortunately, the video that seems to have sparked the discussion in 2006 has disappeared into the ether waves, but I rounded up some other pertinent links:

Would you pledge your virginity to your father? (Glamour magazine)

Purity Ball (short documentary following a father and daughter)

Hey Little Girl... (thoughtful vlog about the Balls)

Serious ew (belledame on the subject of creepy controlling sexuality, Purity Balls included)

Purity and Danger (Queen Emily on the dangers of daughters reserving their sexuality for their fathers)

*shudder*

I took an abstinence pledge in February 2002, which would have made me about 15, through the True Love Waits program.

I even got the ring, see:















I still have it--it doesn't fit anymore due to me inexplicably losing a ring size. I still wear a ring in it's place though, because it would feel seriously weird to not have one (and I need balance for the rings on the other hand).

But this whole virginity thing is wearing kind of thin. Though I was interested in boys when I made that pledge, it was basically the same sort of interest I'd felt since I was about five. This whole virginity thing seemed clear cut and easy, to a young girl who found the idea of kissing with tongue distasteful (ew, slobber).

And now, I'm old enough to do anything but rent a car, basically, and in a good relationship with a boy I love and trust and desire. And if I decide to marry this kid, it will be, oh, five years? of waiting before we're both done enough with school to be able to move to the same city on a more or less permanent basis and get our shit straight so we can get married. And five years of horny youth is a long time.

And, beyond that, I'm pretty much positive that it will be difficult for me to not clutch my "purity" with such a tight fist once I'm married. One gets used to the idea that Sex Is Bad.

(Note, in the Glamour article, one girl says she worries that she might disappoint her husband by not being pleasured by his fucking. Poor kid, won't even allow herself to worry about her own pleasure except for how it might displease her owner.)

I know a number of people who would be appalled at me not upholding abstinence-until-marriage as wonderful and Godly and something everyone should do. But neither they nor my father owns me, and they don't get to say what I believe anymore.

Before this post falls apart utterly (I have a headache forming and I'm tired), I would like to say that my parents didn't push me into the True Love Waits thing at all. In fact, I recall my mom seeming a bit reluctant to buy me that ring. I found that odd but didn't think about it at the time; I now figure it's because they knew it was kind of a dumb idea.