#It's more or less just feeling continually called to explore Orthodoxy

[orthodoxadventure]

Howdy, hope you are well!

Why Orthodoxy? I don't know very much about Orthodox Christians.

Have a blessed day!

Sorry it took so long to get to your message! And apologies in advance if the following is a bit rambly or unclear. I struggle a lot with being concise.

Largely what put me off of Orthodoxy when I was enquiring into Catholicism, was that at least in Scotland, the Orthodox Churches here primarily conduct their Liturgies in languages other than English. It felt like they were primarily orientated at serving local Romanian or Greek or Russian immigrants, and didn't seek to expand those demographics. Which was fair. But at the same time, this put me at odds with what I felt was the universal (or, Catholic) message of what Christianity was. By and large, this was my own failing to conduct proper research. Don't get me wrong, at the time there was also logistical issues. When I was looking at converting into Christianity in general, I was in London for university. Which is a huge city with a range of Churches that serves various Christian communities. Whereas back at my tiny town in Scotland, there were only Protestant and Catholic Churches. The nearest Orthodox Church just simply wasn't commutable by public transport and I don't drive.

I was (and still am) very new to exploring Orthodox Christianity. A lot of my initial exposure to Orthodox Christians online, were largely negative experiences. Which I strongly don't recommend using as your basis of whether a faith is true or not, but they were my only real exposure to Orthodox Christians and I think their overzealousness perhaps muddied their intentions and the faith they were trying to relay to others.

I'm saying these things, because originally I was brought up in an atheist household. I converted to Catholicism in 2018/2019. I made that choice of Orthodoxy or Catholicism then, and it's something I'm returning to now. My initial exploration of Orthodoxy was admittedly extremely poor on my part. I let anxieties of bothering these people steer me away from really exploring it. And because I was learning about Catholicism, this naturally brought in a lot of misconceptions that some Catholics have about Orthodox Christians and I took these things more or less at face value. I was a very different person then in terms of how I approached educating myself. I was at a very vulnerable point in my life with regards to having extremely poor mental health issues and having no support network. I was desperate for community and a relationship with God. The English speaking Catholic Church nearby was therefore a much less daunting and accessible community for me. It was a lot easier for me to integrate.

I also have a lot of love and respect for the Blessed Virgin Mary, and with regards to Marian Dogmas put forth by the Catholic Church largely just took the position of "Well these are just so obviously true, how can the Orthodox say otherwise?" While never actually being brave enough to actually give much exploration into what the Orthodox positions on the Blessed Virgin Mary actually was. I was very caught up in the anxiety that I would learn the wrong thing, and by doing so offend her and by extension God. Over a period of time, I would learn again and again, through various accidental means that some of my misconceptions about Orthodoxy were simply that - misconceptions.

Something that I hold very closely to my heart was praying the Rosary after an extremely traumatic life event happened (or trying, I was mostly just crying and shaking). And I remember just feeling enveloped in the smell of roses. It was something so deeply warm and comforting. That whenever I smell roses, I always think of that singular event. For a long time I have prayed for her to be like a Mother to me, and to continually bring me back to her Son.

One of my other prayers that I held so dearly to while converting to Catholicism was praying that God would bring me to Him. And that if I ever strayed that He would guide me back. Over time, my exposure to Orthodoxy became something akin to being in a maze. No matter which way I took a path in life, re-treading old ground or exploring new ones, I felt like I was continually being brought back to the topic of the Orthodox Church.

You arouse us so that praising you may bring us joy, because you have made us and drawn us to yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you. - St. Augustine

I'm in a city now where there is an English Liturgy offered, and the Romanian Priest that offers the Liturgy in Romanian is also extremely warm and welcoming - even going so far to get a translator for the sermon and conducting various parts of the Liturgy in English. For the Lord's Prayer, people from each community take turns in praying it out loud. Hearing the Lord's prayer in various languages that have come together under one roof to praise God is a lot more universal and welcoming than I initially thought or even knew about.

In some sense, I feel like a lot of the readings I was doing particularly around the Church Fathers and the early Church, pulled me towards Orthodoxy. And I'm in a much better position to be more open to exploring those things, and challenging my own misconceptions that I had about Orthodoxy. It was never a case of me waking up one day and deciding I didn't like the Pope or some other part of the Catholic Church. It was something I loved, and love, dearly. It was heartbreaking to feel the pull towards Orthodoxy, and it still is in a lot of ways. But I have to be understanding and open to the way that God leads me in my life. And this is the way I feel like I'm being led. And I'm in a much better position to explore that now.

Something you might find useful / interesting, if you don't have much exposure to Orthodox Christianity would be the following:

https://www.saintjohnchurch.org/differences-between-orthodox-and-catholic/

https://www.saintjohnchurch.org/teachings-orthodox-church/

Kallistos Ware also has two books: The Orthodox Church, and the Orthodox Way. Both of which are usually recommended to both inquiries and Catechumens.

[filmjrnl365]

#118 The Art Life (2016)

Director:

Rick Barnes

Olivia Neergaard - Holm

Jon Nguyen

United States

In Kristine McKenna’s book, Room to Dream, both she and David Lynch go into great detail about Lynch’s formative childhood memories, and the impact of the discovery of fellow painter Bushnell Keeler. In the movie The Art Life, we are provided documentary footage of the private studio life of David Lynch. Both of these works are highly recommended to anyone interested in acquiring more information of the life and work of David Lynch, but they tackle different topics from different vantage points.

McKenna’s book, written along with David Lynch himself, explores Lynch’s biography. A chronological look at both his personal and creative life. The book shies away from in depth analysis of his films, and offers more anecdotal and contextual information. This is very useful content, because it draws some very tangible connections between the images in his films, and what is going on in Lynch’s life outside the screen.

In contrast, The Art Life approaches Lynch as a creative person. One who not only directs films, but writes, draws, paints, sculpts, and is constantly tinkering in a studio that is packed with all kinds of odd paraphernalia. A fair amount of these “projects” make their way into his films. Eraserhead for example, due to Lynch’s lack of money, was essentially a hand built movie, where every prop and affect was the product of his thrift store resourcefulness and manual dexterity. In The Art Life, we see this impulse at work. It is the one constant in Lynch’s life. The film has a lot of contemporary footage of Lynch’s studio, a kind of modernist shed tucked within the Hollywood Hills.  We see telling details, a reproduction of Hieronymous Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights pinned to the wall, cob webs, old tools, stacked papers, dirty fingernails etc. We see Lynch with surgical gloves on, slathering a paste like material onto a painting, or scrawling adolescent lettering around tortured cartoons.  One image remains constant throughout the film: the image of David Lynch, his blaze of unruly hair, enveloped in cigarette smoke. There is a lot of silence. This is not a confessional where Lynch rambles on in minute detail about anything. He reminisces about key people and events, but this serves more to prompt his memory or feeling of memory, so analysts of Lynch hoping to hear the director’s confessionals about definitive meanings to his movie’s ambiguities will be disappointed. I actually appreciated this about the movie. I would rather most of the mystery remain intact.

The documentary shows Lynch at work on his paintings, and shows how he made his way into cinema via the study of painting. It may be inaccurate to say the “study” of painting, since by these two sources, Lynch was for the most part, a promising, but less than consistent student. But once David found himself in the company of others who were real artists, or ones who shared the same degree of passion, he proved to be quite driven and consistent. In the end, Lynch just hated school. What was pivotal to Lynch was what he called “The Art Life”. The proposition that a person could build their own life / reality around the singular, almost fanatical dedication to the creative process. A process that allows the  realization of virtually unrestricted freedom. This was the key epiphany for Lynch, and for his own life’s direction, the Art Life became an all or nothing proposition.

The result of this artistic resolution does impact Lynch’s cinematic work, both on a practical as well as aesthetic level. Lynch became admitted into the Hollywood system as an outsider. And throughout his career he has inhabited both sides of Hollywood’s cinematic orthodoxy. Eraserhead, was his cultish debut film, a god-send opportunity from the American Film Institute. The Elephant Man, legitimized him as a bankable director. Dune, threw him back into dubious territory. In all of these works, Lynch’s approach to creating characters and imagery does have some continuity, and patterns and connections begin to emerge. Nothing goes to waste – a spare napkin in a break room could provide a character sketch, a stray piece of wood or lumber could be instrumental as a prop, or critical to the mood of a scene. Lynch makes a lot of stuff from the discarded stuff that everyone else throws away. And anyone who has been to art school knows that this is one of the first things you learn as a penniless visionary –you borrow or dig into dumpsters whenever you can! So it stands to reason, that if you hand a guy like that a sizable Hollywood budget, be prepared, because there is now ample monetary space for his imagination to run wild.

However, not everything works. Lynch’s creative process is not a streamlined one. It is not programmatic or didactic in the sense of say Minimalism. Lynch scrapes around in the dark, and in the ambiguous; he approaches things by feel, rather than reason. This could be confusing to many watching this film, but Lynch provides key narration.  We see him in a dark studio behind a solitary microphone, as Lynch recalls key memories or connections. In the bizarre reality of David Lynch, The Art Life offers us a guided tour, but we can still only get so close to the allusive truth. We are still left with much that remains an enigma, and we are left with this: if one really wants to get inside the head of the creator, inside the inner workings of David Lynch, it’s probably best to immerse yourself into the films. There you have all of his projects and tinkerings on full display, his music, his writing, his drawing, his painting, and of course the films themselves. 

The Art Life is an important documentary to watch. It is probably the most honest and direct account of what David Lynch does with a lot of his creative time; light up a cigarette, stare at a painting, and let his mind wander deep into the dream.

 https://filmjrnl365.tumblr.com

[betsynagler]

Critical Thinking is Hard

I’m lucky: I grew up in a family where thinking was encouraged. My parents treated me and my brother like we were brilliant, which makes you want to be brilliant, and come up with your own ideas. They liked to talk about stuff, and, while they definitely treated us like kids, they also didn’t really shelter us too much. My mother was always ruining TV shows for me by pointing out the sexist moments in television, from reruns of The Brady Bunch and Star Trek, to Charlie’s Angels, Three’s Company and, well, it was the 70s and 80s, so pretty much all TV shows. But they still let us watch them, as well as R-rated movies which may not have been age-appropriate, and while they told us not to smoke pot, when we found out that they smoked pot, they gave us reasons for why it was okay for them and not us (since they “weren’t going to have any more children,” which seemed to make sense at the time). Another thing they did was encourage us to take responsibility for our own decisions from a fairly young age, which meant that you could stay up until 10 or 11 pm on a school night if you really wanted to, but it’d be your fault when you felt like shit all the next day. One can debate the pros and cons of this method of child-rearing (pro: de-mystifying drug use and other taboo behaviors to the degree that they actually start to seem uncool; encouraging kids to develop strong ethical compass and think through their actions; con: kids are even more weird compared to their peers, and precociously develop anxiety and guilt about their own actions). Nevertheless, it did start me on the road to learning the value of thinking for myself.

I didn’t really come into my own as a critical thinker until junior high, however, when I spent two years in a program for gifted students. First, isolation from my peers at a time when I was supposed to be learning the social skills of adulthood and the bullying that naturally flowed from that taught me to look for other people’s faults as a means of self-defense. That made me critical, if not necessarily thoughtful. But then I also had two years of Mr. Snyder teaching me social studies. Many of us in the gifted program had all of the same teachers for all of our academic subjects two years running. This meant that we got to know those teachers really well, and, in the case of Mr. Snyder, came to greatly admire and be shaped by his worldview. Mr. Snyder wasn’t an obvious candidate for intellectual guru to early adolescents. He wasn’t particularly handsome, and he’d had polio as a child and walked with a prominent limp. But he was funny and charismatic, gave terrific lectures that were like brilliant comedy monologues or TED talks, and knew how to make his students feel smart and special — in part because we had made it into his class, but still. We liked him so much that several of us would get to class early every day so that we could draw cartoons of him on the blackboard with clever word bubble-jokes, and he loved that. Too see him come into the room and look at our clever depictions of him and smile and make jokes right back at us, to feel appreciated for our intelligence and creativity, a sensation could be hard to come by as a suburban New Jersey youngster, was wonderful. The class was a mutual admiration society and a bit of a cult of personality that I think hugely affected all of us who took it.

I learned a lot there, as we studied political systems, geography and the history of the ancient world, among other things. We were assigned projects that were unlike anything you’d typically get in junior high or even high school, a combination of fun, self-driven exploration, and out-of-control amounts of work. We had to make a map of the world that included every single country, city, major mountain range and body of water, using color-coded overlays — something that I would have enjoyed, and sort of did, except that, since I was in 7th grade, I was terrible at judging how long it would take and left it until the last minute, and had to repeatedly re-letter the smudged plastic to make it readable in my 12-year-old handwriting. The following year, when we did separate units on Greece and Rome, we had to either fill in an entire outline that he provided with a paragraph or more on every subject, or do a handful of more creative projects designed to help us probe the topics in more interesting detail. After choosing to do the outline for Greece, thinking it would be easier, and ending up with several pounds of handwritten paper (I could not type) on everything from Sparta to Socrates to Doric columns that was probably 75+ pages long, Mr. Snyder had stared at the pile and admitted to me that he hadn’t really expected anyone to choose that option, that he’d made the outline so absurdly long to encourage people to do the creative projects. I probably got an A more because he didn’t want to read the whole damn thing than anything else, and on Rome, I did the projects, like going to a Roman-Catholic service and writing about it — which I did by interviewing my Catholic friend, Tara, instead of actually going to the service myself — or going to the Met to observe and then expound upon the differences one observed between the Greek and Roman statues — which I did after 15 minutes of taking furious notes on a Sunday when we arrived just as they were getting ready to close. Just because I loved Mr. Snyder didn’t mean that I, like any other kid, wasn’t always trying to get out of doing homework in any way I could.

The thing I learned and remember best, however, was not the facts, but the method. We had a class about political and economic systems — communism, socialism, capitalism, authoritarianism — and the first thing Mr. Snyder did was define these terms for us, explaining that they weren’t what we’d been told they were. Specifically, “communism,” the way it was looked at in the budding Reagan Era of the early 1980s, wasn’t actually communism at all. Real communism was an economic system that someone named Karl Marx had come up with, in which everyone owned everything, nobody was rich or poor or more powerful than anyone else, and that was, in fact, kind of the opposite of what the Soviet Union had become. This somewhat blew my mind. Here was the boogeyman that everyone talked about as the great evil threatening us with destruction — and remember, in the world of an American kid who had trouble sleeping at night because she obsessed with how we were one button push away from nuclear war, that meant genuine annihilation —  and it wasn’t even what it really was. How was this possible? How was everything that we saw on TV and in the newspapers and at the movies just plain wrong? It turned out that, once you delved into it, the evolution of the term “communism” in the popular vernacular was an education in how concepts entered the public consciousness and then were propagated endlessly in the echo chamber of the media and society until they became something else entirely, usually in the service of some political or social end. Sound familiar? It wasn’t the same then as it is now that we have the Wild West known as the Internet, in some ways it was easier to get an entire culture to basically think one incorrect thing rather than many insane things, but the ability to miseducate a huge swath a people without their questioning it? Yes, that existed, and understanding that was a very big deal to me. It meant that you always had to look deeper than the surface of things to be sure you understood the reality, even when it came to what those things were called.

Why doesn’t everyone get taught to think this way? Well, like most things in life, it gets increasingly harder to learn as you get older. The more set in our ways we get, the tougher it becomes to look at ourselves critically (which is essential to critical thinking, because to truly get that you must dissect and assess the viability of ideas, you have to start with your own assumptions), much less change the way our brains function in terms of adopting new ways of doing anything that’s really embedded in there, much less ways of doing everything, which is kind what it means to change the way you think. Plus, it’s in the best interest of those in power to keep the bulk of the human race from doing it. It’s tough to build an army of people who don’t automatically follow orders, or have a religion made up of people who are always questioning the word of God, or build a movement if the followers are continually asking the leaders, “Is that really true?” And so we’ve arrived at this situation where we have so much information out there now to make sense out of, and the bulk of us without the tools to figure out how to do that — and many who reject those tools because they’re told education is just liberal elite brainwashing. Instead, you see a lot of people turn to a kind of twisted, easy version of “critical” “thinking” espoused on the fringes of the left and right, which disposes with the thinking part and instead just espouses wholesale rejection of anything dubbed “establishment” or “mainstream,” no matter how awful the alternative may be (and at this point we know: it’s pretty awful). Add to that the folks who skillfully exploit the overwhelm of information and lack of analytical skills to support their own greed, lust for power and desire to win at all cost, and you end up with an awesome new and different kind of embedded orthodoxy, that encourages us to silo ourselves within “our” (really their) belief systems, walled in with “alternative facts” and media that support them, and defending it all tooth and nail with false equivalencies that encourage us not to critique thoughtfully based on evidence, but to to pick apart every idea that doesn’t fit or even makes us uncomfortable (“Well, every politician lies” was one of the most egregious ones I heard used recently to defend the president). 

And, when it comes right down to it, can you blame people? Thinking is exhausting, especially in this environment, and even human beings with the best intentions manage to ruin everything good anyway. Like, even though my parents didn’t make us believe their ideas, of course they still managed to inculcate in us their most mundane opinions. My father was particularly good at doing this, particularly when it came to eating (yup, Jews), like how fast food and chain restaurants should be avoided not based on nutrition but on lack of flavor (which I guess is why we still ate at White Castle), or how chocolate was really the only kind of acceptable dessert. It’s amazing that, no matter how far I’ve come as an adult, I still find it really hard to shake these ideas — like I saw a conversation on Facebook about how pie was superior to cake, and I just thought, Huh? But there aren’t any good chocolate pies. Another case in point: by the time I was a senior, Mr. Snyder had moved up to the high school, and was teaching an AP history class that I had the option to take. I decided to take economics instead, because I had never studied it, because one of my best friends was taking it, and, on some level I’m sure, to show that I didn’t need the wisdom of this idol of my 7th and 8th grade self, now that I was all of 16. I heard from people who took Snyder’s class that in his first opening monologue of the year he mocked those of his former students who had decided not to take his class — which I think might have just been me. That wasn’t really an appropriate thing for a teacher to do, especially since I was kind of doing what he’d taught us: to move on, do my own thinking and evaluate him critically. But as a human being, it’s hard to be a charismatic leader and just let that go — which is why the world has so many despots, and celebrities, and despotic celebrities. On other hand, my economics class was a terrible waste of time because it turned out that I didn’t like economics and the teacher was boring, so perhaps my premature rejection of Mr. Snyder and my 8th grade way of thinking, just to prove that I could do it, hadn’t been the best decision either. It’s hard not to wonder if I’d be just a slightly better, smarter person today if I’d accepted one more opportunity to take his class.

I’ll never know, but I guess the fact that I’m telling you this story means I haven’t given up on critical thinking. Maybe it’s because self-flagellating comes naturally to me, but these days, more than ever, I try to employ those skills as much as I can, even as it grows increasingly fucking hard. On top of all that media landscape stuff I mentioned a few paragraphs back, I also have this stupid menopause business I mentioned in my last blog post, which just amplifies all of the emotion that drives me as a human to err on the side of insanity, as if there weren’t already enough bad news, and bad “news,” out there driving a person in that direction. There are so many bad actors with so many tools that can be used to manipulate our fear and greed and lust into steamrolling our thinking these days, and all we have to fight back are these little broken piles of poop in our heads. And yet, we all do have them, aka brains, and so we have the ability to use them. And as one of those cynical-on-top-but-at-bottom-idealistic folks who believes we all also have the capacity to change, no matter how hard it might seem, until the day we die, I think we all have the ability to learn how to use them better. And yes, that means you, and your friends, and your kids, and even your cousins in Florida maybe, if we all just try a little harder.

I’m not sure what Mr. Snyder would say about me now, as I try to get people to think about stuff with this blog that almost nobody reads, but considering how many years he spent trying to teach adolescents about Platonic ideals, I’d imagine he’d approve. So in honor of him, and any teacher you’ve had who inspired you to think more, and more better, let’s advocate in 2019 not just for “our values,” but for the value of intelligent thought, even if we have to do it one mind at a time.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

February 1, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

Today’s two big domestic stories are developments that will help to determine the future of our democracy: President Biden’s insistence on a major new coronavirus relief bill and Trump’s role in the January 6 insurrection.

President Biden has proposed a $1.9 trillion economic relief bill, called American Rescue Plan, to get the country over the economic downturn caused by the pandemic. This is a bold move that rests on the idea that the government must help to manage the economy. Republicans abandoned this idea in the 1980s and even today continue to insist that tax cuts and private enterprise are the keys to a secure economy.

But that theory took a beating even among previous adherents under the previous president, as corporate leaders invested money from tax cuts into stock buybacks, driving money upward, and as the administration refused to coordinate a coronavirus response and thus helped to create a disaster that has led more than 440,000 Americans to their deaths. Biden’s attempt to pass a big coronavirus bill that supports ordinary Americans, as well as cities and states, contradicts the Republican orthodoxy that has come to dominate the nation.

Republicans don’t like the plan, and even the Republicans willing to entertain the idea of another relief bill think Biden’s proposed number is far too high. For nearly two hours today, Biden met with ten Republican senators who offered a $618 billion counterproposal. This was Biden’s first meeting with lawmakers of either party, and giving that first meeting to Republicans was a sign that he is willing to entertain good-faith bipartisanship. After the meeting, Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) expressed optimism that the two sides could continue to work together.

But the tide seems to be running away from Republicans toward the Democratic plan. On Friday, a bipartisan group of more than 400 mayors across the country begged Congress to provide aid to cities, aid that is in Biden’s package and not in the plan of the Republican senators. Mayors and governors actually have to make government work and thus are often more practical and less ideological than national lawmakers.

Explicitly calling for Congress to pass Biden’s plan, the mayors noted that “American cities and our essential workers have been serving at the frontlines of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic for nearly a year” without direct federal assistance. Because cities and states cannot borrow to cover budget shortfalls, they look to the federal government—which can—to tide them over in times of crisis. This time, though, that aid was not forthcoming. Left with no choice, local governments have cut nearly a million local government jobs. Direct, flexible aid to cities will help suffering families and fuel a recovery, the mayors say, as well as enabling cities to vaccinate people. “Your quick action on President Biden’s plan is a crucial step to making meaningful progress in one of the most challenging moments in our country’s history,” the mayors wrote to congressional leadership.

This morning, West Virginia Governor Jim Justice, a Republican, also backed the larger coronavirus package. “I absolutely believe we need to go big…. We need to quit counting the egg-sucking legs on the cows and count the cows and just move. And move forward and move right now.” Justice’s interview on CNN puts pressure on West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat, who has expressed concerns about a big relief package.

Meanwhile, Democratic leaders began the process of advancing the Senate process that will enable the Democrats to pass their own proposal without Republican votes. This process is known as “budget reconciliation,” and it requires only a simple majority to pass. When they were in power, the Republicans used it to advance policies like ending the Affordable Care Act, so the Democrats’ invoking of this rule is not unprecedented.

“Congress has a responsibility to quickly deliver immediate comprehensive relief to the American people hurting from covid-19,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said in a statement. “The cost of inaction is high and growing, and the time for decisive action is now.” Later Schumer tweeted: “Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen just told us: ‘The smartest thing we can do is act big.’ And that is just what this Senate is going to do: Act Big.”

Tonight, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki issued a statement that gave generous credit to the ten Republican senators who offered the counterproposal for “a substantive and productive discussion” and a “shared… desire to get help to the American people, who are suffering through the worst health and economic crisis in a generation.”

But the statement also gave notice to the Republicans that the Democrats were willing to go it alone on a bold package. It noted that Biden had told them Congress must respond “boldly and urgently,” and that their proposal did not address major issues. He told them he is eager to find common ground and to strengthen the measure, but he is willing to pass it with Democratic votes alone if he must. “He reiterated… that he will not slow down work on this urgent crisis response, and will not settle for a package that fails to meet the moment.”

If Biden gets this bill passed and Americans feel that it relieves the economic crunch, it will go a long way toward erasing people’s distrust of government action to regulate the economy.

While the Biden administration moves forward with an aid package, a clearer picture is emerging of the events of January 6, as well as of the road to them. Yesterday, the New York Times published a long exploration of the relationship between the Trump campaign and the January 6 rally that led to the attack on the Capitol; today it published a shorter synopsis of that material. The shorter article, written by Matthew Rosenberg and Jim Rutenberg, began: “For 77 days between the election and the inauguration, President Donald J. Trump attempted to subvert American democracy with a lie about election fraud that he had been grooming for years.”

The picture they paint is of a man who insisted on a lie—that he really won an election he clearly lost—until he found enablers who would agree with him. Key lawmakers, including former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, indulged the former president because he wanted Trump’s help electing two Republicans to the Senate in the Georgia runoffs. As reality-based Republicans backed away from the challenge to the election outcome, more radical lawyers and financiers stepped in to support the former president.

A coalition put together by activists in a group called Women for America First, funded by Trump advisor Stephen Bannon and the founder of the MyPillow company, Mike Lindell, pressured key senators to contest the election outcome. Women for American First began to organize the January 6 rally, but Trump decided to take it over. Several former members of the Trump campaign and the administration—including the former president-- began to work on the event. They were the ones who added a march from the rally to the Capitol.

The nonpartisan Coup D’état Project at the Cline Center of the University of Illinois, which analyzes and categorizes political violence, last week determined that the storming of the Capitol "was an attempted coup d’état: an organized, illegal attempt to intervene in the presidential transition by displacing the power of the Congress to certify the election.” Its statement about the coup warns that “coups and attempted coups are among the most politically consequential forms of destabilizing events tracked by the Cline Center.”

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[agameforgoodchristians]

That time Jesus was a Racist (Matthew 15:21-28)

People cry at weddings for the same reason they cry at happy endings: because they so desperately want to believe in something they know is not credible.

--from The Blind Assassin, Margret Atwood

Fair Warning: this Card Talk is different than most of the others. It’s a little more serious. It's not very funny, at all. It's also longer than most. And the F-word makes an appearance a few times. Reader discretion is advised. 

 Historical Note (8/19/17): We've been writing this Card Talk for a while. But the confluence of the Lectionary, preaching schedules, and the events in Charlottesville, VA last weekend caused us to finish it. 

People are overly satisfied with happy endings. 

People walk away from this passage happy because the characters all lived happily ever after. Even though they didn’t. Not really. 

For those unfamiliar, and those needing a reminder, here is the story:

Jesus and His disciples are met by a screaming Canaanite woman (specifically, a Syrophoenician woman according to Mark). The woman is not crazy, she is grieving and in desperate need of help. Her words: “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is tormented by a demon!” She keeps screaming this. Over and over. And over.

Jesus ignores her and keeps on walking. 

She follows and keeps on screaming for His help.  The disciples, bothered by all of the screaming, ask Jesus to “send her away.” Finally, Jesus responds, saying “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  

The woman, still screaming, throws herself at His feet. On her knees, face buried in the hem of His garment, tears washing His feet, she cries “Lord, help me!”  

Jesus, the one full of love and compassion, the fullness of the Godhead on earth, the one who cares for all, looks down at her and says,

“It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”  

As a young Bible nerd, I grew to hate this passage because of what it made me think about Jesus. More accurately, I hated what it made me feel about Him. This was the first time I equated “Jesus” with “God” in a negative way. 

It’s easy to rail against “God”: belief in a personal deity doesn’t fully remove the image of an abstract figure, distant from us. The image of a transcendent, sovereign being with an agenda we can’t always understand. The one we ask the age-old questions, “why do bad things happen to good people?”, “why do good things happen to bad people?”, and “why me?” The “God” of the Job, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, and Psalms gives us liberty to interrogate when our lives seem unfair, when the world seems not all that it should be. “Why did you allow/cause X to happen…?”

This is a question we ask of “God” in the abstract. Or, when our orthodoxy matches our orthopraxis, when our head matches our hearts, these are the questions we ask of God the Father. But how often do we ask the Son?

How often do we blame the Son when things go wrong?

Serious exploration of this passage was the first time this happen to me. When Jesus, the Son, was the target of my questioning. The focus of my disconcerted mind.

People are overly satisfied with happy endings, which is why this passage often gets a pass. The reason why more people aren’t pausing to ask, “Jesus, wait: WTAF?!” For as the story ends:

The woman, (apparently) unperturbed by Jesus’s reply— because she was so incredibly desperate, or so used to this sort of abuse from men, or from Jews, or from everyone— replies quickly: “You’re right, Lord, but  even dogs get to eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”  

Jesus (apparently) appreciating this answer, answers her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” 

And her daughter was healed instantly.

There’s the happy ending. The woman got what she wanted. Jesus keeps His New Testament record: no one is denied the healing that they request.

But this is not like making an eye-salve out of dirt and spit, or allowing someone to touch the hem of your garment, or sticking your fingers in someone's ears and grabbing their tongue, or simply telling them to rise up and walk. No. The road to this healing is very different.

But we love happy endings. So we sanitize the passage’s problems to fit the synoptic syllogism:

A is in pain B loves A B asks Jesus to help A Jesus helps A

But that is not this story. This story reads differently:

A is in pain B loves A B asks Jesus to help A Jesus ignores B Again, B asks Jesus to help A Jesus emotionally kicks B in the teeth for a while B, through broken teeth, asks Jesus to help A Jesus eventually gets around to helping B

The Problems with this Story

There are many things to be bothered about in this story: things the story itself points out as problematic. We'll highlight only three

1. The Rejection

Jesus does not begin by addressing this woman's pain, this mother's anguish. He completely ignores her for the majority of the story, either through silence, or by directing His comments at the disciples and the rhetorical middle-distance. We could make a case that this is like God answering our prayers with "wait" (instead of a "yes" or "no," or whatever Christian cliche we learned as children), but this is hardly satisfactory. 

Notice that even the disciples are uncomfortable with the events. They've never seen Him shun someone like this before. He's usually the one yelling at them for pushing people away. They don't question Him, but they ask Him to act. If He won’t heed her cries and heal her child, then at least tell her that, and send her on her way. Imagine ADHD Peter sliding up to His side, disturbed, and stage-whispering, "Jesus, at least get rid of her!”   But how some writers need to defend Jesus: one went so far as to accuse the woman of being a prostitute, because no woman would go up to Jesus and speak to Him in public like that. Because Jesus would be social bound not to speak to a prostitute (deep sigh). Apparently this writer never read Matthew 21:31-32 or Luke 7:36-50.

2. The Racism

Jesus calling her a "dog" was racially charged. Commentary writers over the centuries have recognized this and tried to smooth it over, make excuses. 

In verse 25 the writer uses the Greek word proskyneō {προσκυνέω} for the word for "knelt" or "worshiped" (depending on your translation). This is pretty standard usage in the New Testament. However, the word is a compound containing the Greek for "dog" as a root, and whose etymology most likely stems from the prostrated devotion one sees from canines to masters. Jesus' response to the woman plays on this dog-like subservience. He sees her action and follows it up with a pun, calling her a dog. The woman plays along, continuing the analogy of her as a dog, but what else can she do? As a moment in biblical literature, this is classic. Puns and double meanings are among the things that make the Text so rich. But as a depiction for how Jesus treats a human being in pain: what the actual fuck? This is how God treats people?

Commentary writers have seen the problem with this event and run to the defense of Jesus' reputation.  Some point out that the Greek word for dog (kynárion υνάριον) directly translates to "little dogs" and they attempt to shift the focus to the role of dogs in contemporary society. Some say this means that he was referring to puppies or dogs that were pets in the home, who normally sit under the table. However, there is much historical debate as to whether or not Jews kept dogs as pets in their homes; that it is anachronistic to apply our relationship with dogs on a previous culture. Jewish sages before, during, and since the time Jesus walked the earth, debated whether dogs were even allowed in Jewish homes. This is borne out in the Mishnah, the Talmud, and other works.  But even if this were the case that dogs were pets, why should we be satisfied with this answer? It is still dehumanizing. Is this how we are supposed to feel: less than human in the hands of God? 

Other commentary writers are honest: they acknowledge that Jews of the time period called gentiles in the region “dogs.” It was a racial slur rooted in gentiles being seen as not holy or "clean" in terms of Jewish law. 

They point to Exodus 22:31 for a foundation, and question whether the other word for "dog" used in the New Testament ( kýōn κύων) has any significant difference in the Aramaic Jesus was speaking (c.f. Matthew 7:6, Philippians 3:2, 2 Peter 2:22, and Revelation 22:15 none are positive references).

 And let us not forget that this woman is a Canaanite. Remember them? The ones the Jews were supposed to completely kill off (see Deuteronomy 20:16-18). 

(At this moment, before moving on to the final reason, we should point out the moments shortly before this encounter. Moments where Jesus explained to the disciples that the words that come out of our mouths that defile us (Matthew 15:20). Oh Jesus, but what has just come out of yours?)

And we're back where we started. But it gets a little worse when we consider the final point...

3. The Reason

When finally pinned down to explain why, Jesus gives a classic answer for why He isn't paying attention to the woman: it's not His “mission” to speak to gentiles (vs. 24). In other words, Jesus pulled not my circus, not my monkeys. 

But wait. Aren't you the Son of Man? God incarnate? Aren't all the peoples of the world made in your image? Red and yellow, black and white, aren't we all precious in your sight? Don't you love all the little children of the world? So again, what the ever-supposedly-loving fuck?

So Jesus won't do good to all who come before Him if they are the wrong ethnicity? His resources are so limited that He was afraid that He didn’t have a miracle to spare? Was He worried about setting a bad precedent among the Jews or His disciples (“look He loves everyone! Boo! Burn Him! He's a witch!”) Isn’t that exactly the sort of negative press He seemed to engender throughout the gospels, empowering the lower/lowest classes, eating, teaching, loving the worst of the worst. But that’s okay because those people were Jews and this woman is a gentile? If that's the case, then Jesus is a racist on par, if not worse than, Jonah. 

This argument is further complicated by Jesus' own words and actions earlier in the book of Matthew. In Matthew 11:21-22 Jesus chastises the Jews before Him for not believing in His “mighty works,” comparing them to the very location He is meeting this woman in chapter 15. So He talks about doing hypothetical mighty works in the area, but then hurls racist slurs when someone asks when He gets there instead?

 Again, commentary writers have wrestled with justifying the ways of God to men on this account. Being overly satisfied with the happy ending, they work from the end of the story and focus on Jesus' planning and/or foreknowledge of her faith. "Yes, He made her work for, but there is a good reason," or some variation on that theme. 

Those variations include:

Jesus had to bring the woman to a place where she understood how unworthy she was to receive Jesus' help. Because she was filled with some form of pride, Jesus needed to break her down before she could receive His help.  (Multiple Commentary writers have said something like this and there is a special place in Hell for them) 

Jesus knew she would persevere and could take the abuse. It was all a test of her faith that He knew she could pass. 

If her she had walked away, Jesus would have stopped her or made a house visit later to heal the child, because Jesus never lets anyone go unhealed in the Gospels.

Some answers move beyond the woman, making her merely a foil for some larger lesson:

Really this was a lesson for the disciples about speaking up and acting. That they had already been given the power to heal in Matthew 10, but were doing nothing to help the woman now. That Jesus was exposing their racism and inaction.

Really this was a lesson to the early church about God’s grace extending to all nations (even reluctantly). That Jesus is the bread of life, broken and shared to all peoples (or causally swept under a Jewish table to the Gentiles begging on the floor).

Another "solution" looks forward in the unfolding story in Matthew:

Jesus had no  intention of healing her, but her faith actually changed His mind and mission. This time “extracurricular healing” on His part had a larger impact.

When Jesus leaves the woman to return to her healed child, He and the disciples travel along the coast of the Sea of Galilee and after they climb a mountain

Great crowds came to him, bringing with them the lame, the maimed, the blind, the mute, and many others. They put them at his feet, and he cured them, so that the crowd was amazed when they saw the mute speaking, the maimed whole, the lame walking, and the blind seeing. And they praised the God of Israel.  (vs 30-31)

After this, Jesus performed a food miracle and fed four thousand people. Gentile people. Those crowds He healed and fed were Gentiles.   

But does this happy ending excuse His treatment of a mother fighting for life of her child?

The Problem With this Story as Life  

People are overly satisfied with happy endings: this is dangerous because not all stories end happily. At least not on this planet. Yes, we can claim a happily ever after in heaven, but regardless of whether that is "enough" for you mentally/emotionally/spiritually, it's not what this story is about. This story is about pain in the here and now. On this planet. And how God, how Jesus, chose to respond to a woman in pain. 

I don’t understand this passage, not really. I don’t accept the answers I’ve read. Not fully. This doesn’t “feel” like how God “should” work. So I am left still searching. 

But this might be the story of my life – crying out to God, advocating for the pain of someone I love, being rebuffed, and awaiting an answer.

I know I'm not alone.

The Bible makes it easy to be an anti-theist sometimes. Stories like this come to the fore in that conversation. I am reminded of words C.S. Lewis wrote following the death of his wife:

I tried to put some of these thoughts to C. this afternoon. He reminded me that the same thing seems to have happened to Christ: 'Why hast thou forsaken me?' I know. Does that make it easier to understand?

Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him. The conclusion I dread is not 'So there's no God after all,' but 'So this is what God's really like. Deceive yourself no longer.'

Our elders submitted and said, 'Thy will be done.' How often had bitter resentment been stifled through sheer terror and an act of love — yes, in every sense, an act — put on to hide the operation?

Of course it's easy enough to say that God seems absent at our greatest need because He is absent — non-existent. But then why does He seem so present when, to put it frankly, we don't ask for Him?

- A Grief Observed

As true as I find this, that God continues to exist, perhaps it is equally true that there are versions of God that have died in my mind/heart, and that's the problem. 

Starting at a Different Ending

We are left with more questions than answers with this story. None are compelling. Some of you reading this are still wondering "so do you really think Jesus was a racist or not?"

We might respond

No. Of course not.

or 

No, but the writer of this story sure as sheol makes Him sound like one.

or

Is there a difference between being a racist and using racist epithets in front of your friends? (Not that we haven't heard this argument used since the beginning of the last election cycle)

or

I hope not. 

or

...

It's disturbing that the closet biblical analogy to this story is The Parable of the Widow and the Unjust Judge (Luke 18:1-8). In summary:

There was a judge who didn't not care about the opinions of God or man. However, a widow who had been wronged by someone kept coming to him demanding justice. The judge continually refused. The woman continually bothered him. After a while the judge said, "screw this. I don't care about the ways of God or man, but if I give this woman what she wants, she'll leave me the Hell alone." And so he did.  

According to the text, the purpose of this parable is Jesus' need for the disciples "to pray always and not to lose heart" (vs 1). Jesus said that God (the Father) will grant requests a lot more quickly, and for better reasons, for the faithful (vs 7-8).

The mother in Matthew had faith and she was granted her request. Faith is one thing: persistence is another. Especially persistence when you don’t know what God will do next. Jesus called her faith “great" (vs 28), megas in Greek. She stood nose to toe with Jesus calling her a metaphorical dog, and she didn’t heel.  

"Mega faith" seems fitting. Maybe that's the lesson.

But this requires ignoring or excusing Jesus' actions which, as argued above, we have some issues with.

So what now?

Unlike most preachers, speakers, commentary writers, and scholars, we think a better way of finding meaning in this story is to focus on the woman, not on Jesus. Unlike the answers above, not focusing on what was going on in Jesus' mind, but in the woman's.

She is the most forthright, loving, and patient character in this story: She always spoke her mind, directly to the person she was addressing; she was always motivated by the love of her child; she was always patient with Jesus. Focusing on her faith, the one thing everyone, including Jesus, agrees on. 

This woman was a mother fighting for someone she loves, taking on the burden of another as her own. She did something about her problem, took her pain to a place she thought she could gain succor. She advocated for someone else despite the apparent odds of success. And This is one of the few lessons I can take from this passage:

to advocate for others regardless of the apparent barriers to advance. 

A clergy friend once said, "it is not our job to make excuses for God." We recognize that this Card Talk has largely explored the ways in which those who have come before us have tried to do just that. 

And perhaps our friend is right and it is not our job to make excuses for God. 

Perhaps we won’t understand everything that Jesus did/does, but we are still asked if we trust Him regardless.

Perhaps this is more an example of "faith" than an example of an intellectual cop-out.

Perhaps this story is an example of how we disapprove of Jesus’ methods, but trust His heart.  

Perhaps this story is an example of why some people question how much the gospels represent Jesus, rather than different conversations within the early church (esp. with Matthew's gospel being considered the most sensitive to Judaism of the four gospels).

Perhaps all of these contradicting queries are what lead our elders in the church to say we must simply believe He knows what He is doing.

Perhaps this is what it means to "believe on His name," remembering that the Hebrew for "name" is shem, the word for "reputation." 

Perhaps this leads us back to the question of what a story like this does to Jesus' rep?

 Perhaps we can wrestle with this without failing to be like the woman, the mother, who can lay these issues aside long enough to fight for someone she loves. 

 But what do we know: we made this game and you probably think we're going to Hell. 

[usrussianrhetoric-blog]

Post Proposals

For your post this week, and in lieu of our physical class, let's proceed by way of Blackboard. Please post your latest draft of your research proposal. Make it as excellent as you can, following all directions, and using correct and complete MLA style for in text citation and your works cited. And please respond to an many of your peers proposals throughout the week as possible. Respond with your characteristic thoughtful suggestions, affirmations, etc., to get our work to the next level of excellence!  

Response:

TITLE: 

The Duality of Woman: Both Keystone and Superfluous  

AIM:

 While critiqued on a global scale, Russia’s newest law that has lessened the punishment for assault against women and children has been quietly dismissed as the actions of a backwards, underdeveloped nation. This discourse formation is problematic in every sense. Lack of examination of the power structure that has allowed this law to come into place allows this superpower to go unquestioned in its treatment of women and children. My goal is to explore the patriarchal structures in place in Russia that have allowed for the value of women and children to be disregarded in such a manner. I plan to examine the perceived connection between Russian Orthodoxy and the resurgence of conservatism in Russian politics that has allowed for the normalization of the rhetoric of abuse. The concept of “tradition” used by Russian Orthodox church must be parsed apart. Behind traditional values hide a narrative where physical violence is deemed not only a norm, but something expected in a reactionary sense or during discipline. In short, I am looking to answer a specific question; how have traditions been used to hide a deeply patriarchal society? And how was this patriarchal society the same one that was known for its women’s movement during the USSR? And to what extent do these two realms cross over? Finally, to include a the comedic reflexive portion of this project, I wish to turn the narrative upon the U.S. and examine what similarities the two societies share. This will allow a society that writes off Russian societal “norms” as backwards, nonsensical, or otherwise to reflect upon the similar motifs that run through both the U.S. and Russia.

REASONING & HISTORY: 

Recently, in Russia, a law was passed that decriminalizes first time, "less harmful" domestic battery, basically anything that does not put the person in the hospital. The amendment passed at 380 to 3. Russia's government is represented by an archaic structure called the Duma. The Duma is the lower legislative body of Russia and is based in elections. The group tends to vote conservative, supporting their claims with "tradition". Human Rights Advocates have been outspoken in their condemnation of Russia’s acts, yet no groups have been able to overturn the ruling. This law has become my object, and acts as a spring board to help me examine the past that has been obscured under the guise of tradition.

The moment I saw the first articles coming out about the domestic abuse law in Russia, I felt deeply unsettled for obvious reasons. Not only is Russia a world super power who has great influence over the policies of developing nations, but also because the rhetoric that was coming out in support of the new law sounded all too similar to what you would hear in my small southern town. Indoctrinated with strict patriarchal traditions, small towns are breeding grounds for the excusal of abuse within the home—as long as it didn’t lead to serious physical injury. But a lack of a broken arm doesn’t mean the violence doesn’t exist. In both Russian society and American, this is generally the case. Until it is overtly harmful, the violence is allowed to continue. While there are laws in place the cultural barriers in place make reporting domestic abuse even harder for victims. In this history, I plan to not only observe another country, but also look deeper into my own country's history of dealing with domestic violence and the corruption that exists.

Since the Cold War, looking deep into Russia and the USSR's propaganda and ideals on the treatment of women and subaltern groups often mirrors similar behaviors in the U.S. that often go unrecognized until the two are presented next to each other. In a sense, the U.S. and USSR interact through a chiasmus, not directly related but with enough similarities to draw some parallels. But while the United States didn’t kick off their feminist movement until the 70’s, the USSR prided itself on reinventing the Soviet woman during the 1920’s. Women were believed to be impowered, fulfilling the tenants of the New Soviet Woman. Women were always expected to run the household, raise the children, and look after their husband’s affairs while also heeding their tyranny and now, they were expected to take jobs as well. This duality of responsibility is explored frequently in Soviet era literature and is said to still plague the nation to this day.

PLAN: 

While looking to create a history that exists in the realm of rhetoric instead of usual history, I am looking to the writings of Foucault, Burke, and White to assist me in creating a discourse formation. In order to find the ruptures in this discourse, I have first found the uniting factors (Foucault). In this case, it is the power that women in Russia seem to have within their household, their daily lives, and in their work places—the rupture comes when one notes their exclusion from narratives of power. A second rupture appears with the resurgence of the Russian Orthodox Church as a wielder of power. For a majority of the 20th century communist leaders like Lenin looked at religion as one of the most unsavory features of the peasantry. Suddenly it has reemerged and has returned to a status of power.

To understand what gave led to the creation of this history, I will be looking back to the traditional treatment of women and children in Russian society, as well as their roles in the household. The power structures formed centuries ago are reinforced in the modern era with calls from the Russian Orthodoxy to support tradition. The same speakers that support and validate this object are speakers who exist in a position where they benefit from the patriarchal system in place. The members of the Duma, Vladimir Putin, and the Russian Orthodoxy all have their power reinforced by this law.

The discourse that has emerged must not only be recognized as ever shifting and in no ways shedding light on any proper “truth”, but it must also be turned in on itself in some way (Burke, White). In order to do so I plan to compare the emergent system in Russia with the present system in the U.S. because no matter how far removed or backwards the Russian model may seem to an American, the power dynamics are far too similar to go uncritiqued. Doing so would only further perpetrate the narrative of backwardness that the west has created around Russia and would excuse the power dynamics that are in play. I understand that there is no way to create a truthful narrative about this new law and the systems it exists within because something will always be lost in the articulation of my thoughts (Foucault, Burke). However, I will try to the best of my ability to properly represent the data I collect, and will feel no fear in growing the number of sources that I draw from.  And at the same time, I shall do my best to acknowledge where my own biases that stem from years of being exposed to propaganda against Russia begin and where the data ends.

Works Cited

Burke, Kenneth. Attitudes Towards History. Beacon Pr., 1961.

Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Routledge, 2002.

Kim, Lucian. “Russian President Signs Law To Decriminalize Domestic Violence.” NPR, NPR, 16 Feb. 2017,www.npr.org/2017/02/16/515642501/russian-president-signs-law-to-decriminalize-domestic-violence.

NPR gives a more broad overview of the issue, citing more numbers and including a video from a Russian news source with English subtitles. Once again, the news source is quite liberal.

Nechepurenko, Ivan. “Russia Moves to Soften Domestic Violence Law.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 25 Jan. 2017,www.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/world/europe/russia-domestic-violence.html?mcubz=3.

This article focuses on the American and Western European point of view, there is an outright condemnation of the actions of the Duma as well as voices from opposition of the law. The source is quite liberal.  

“Russia: Bill to Decriminalize Domestic Violence.” Human Rights Watch, HRW, 9 Feb. 2017, www.hrw.org/news/2017/01/23/russia-bill-decriminalize-domestic-violence.

This article comes from the Human Rights Watch, in my opinion it is more telling that the government is willing to actively support this law, while also being allowed to keep its seat in international organizations

White, Hayden. Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism. Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1997.

Comments: This is a solid, smart, and important research proposal. Your aims are robust, and the articulation may tend to slip into more "plan for research" than "aims," so feel free to narrow and focus on just the aims--read and study again the template formula on definition of the "aims" section to make your edits and adjustments. The background you offer is at once personal (could benefit from citation of Spivak on examination of one's own subject position in writing history/producing knowledge) and rooted in your study of related discourses. Your plan for research is a smart and cunning design incorporating well all three theorists, as the turn to the U.S. offers the ironic, comedic turn so necessary for writing what White would call "genuine" history. Make sure to adjust writing for a general audience/reader, not one specially trained in our course.  Your discourses/digital archive is still developing with a stronger inclusion at this time of discourses related to Russian culture than U.S.  So make sure to include the discourses that you will use to show the U.S. normalization and norming of violence against women. Right now we seem to be flooded with civic discourses in the U.S. that illuminate these U.S. norms of patriarchy and violence.  Brock Turner gets a light sentence for raping a woman passed out behind a dumpster and is now appealing the conviction--lots of discourses there justifying the lack of punishment for Brock, displaying the deep seated ethos in the U.S. that values men more than women, and allows for violence against women for privileging the will of men. Roy Moore and his supporters are also circulating significant discourses on what they describe as the proper power of men over women. A young girl who killed her sex trafficker has been sentenced to life in prison rather than being seen as the child victim she was acting in self defense, that case is being circulated currently with lots of discourses showing U.S. disregard for violence against women.  Also discourses pointing out the problem in the U.S. of violence against women (see also Jimmy Carter's book of last year, for another example, which is not just U.S. centric, but shows that the U.S. is not at all free from this violence) all seem to be discourses important for your consideration in your digital archive, to show the U.S. social norms about women and violence.  Keep building your archive. I am eager for your presentation! I know it will be excellent, and have no worries, as all is always a work in progress. What you don't like about your presentation, if anything (as I expect I will like all of it), you can critique in your digital portfolio.  All is a learning process and open to revision before final grading.  Have confidence in your work. Be kind to yourself as you move through this experience, you are doing an excellent job!

Reflection: Overall, I very much agree with Dr. Mifsud on most of the points that she made in her commentary on this proposal. There was a good deal of blurring between sections, and my aims very much became part of my plan for research. But they were there, at the very least. As I went forward in preparing for the presentation, I would simply shift some of the information into the right section as I edited. While not perfect, this draft ended up preparing me for the final far better than the midterm ever could. But then again, it’s a process and it takes many different steps. I see a common theme in my posts that this post somewhat exemplifies. In her comments, Dr. Mifsud gives me a few examples of how to turn the dialogue onto the United States. This shouldn’t have had to happen--I knew what examples I wanted to use and instead of stating the opposing discourses, I simply outline them with a broad idea. I didn’t take the time to go into the specifics because the line between ‘purely a proposal’ and a ‘completed project’ was so foreign to me that I constantly found myself in this limbo between researching and actually doing the project. At this point even, I don’t think I understand the difference truly. Because in order to find the discourses you have to actually start to learn about the history. And once you begin down that road people begin to question them and start parsing apart the nuances of the history. So the answers start to appear quick quickly. 

I think one of the most beneficial things about this post was that we could review other student’s posts before we actually had to post our own proposal. I was able to read over Claire and Colin’s proposals and my understanding of how to phrase these proposals was expanded beyond compare. I realized that there really isn’t a template or anything along those lines, it comes down to which authors influenced you more in each section. As long as you include each of them in some way or another you’ve done what needs to be done. As I was writing this in the beginning I felt like I was grasping at straws. The ‘proper’ template for doing these projects was always just out of my reach. And that was incredibly frustrating for me in the beginning. However, I made it to the other side of this post with something workable.

As you can see in the section of this blog dedicated to the evolution of these proposals, my final proposal took a lot from Cory’s work and identified 3 concepts that the discourses in my history revolved around. I didn’t do that here because I was still confused about my history--looking at a discourse as if it was a history. Because of this view point, finding the statements was incredibly difficult for me. The view point I had about my history inhibited me from being able to word this proposal in a way that made it into an actual history. In my opinion, that explains some of the inconsistencies within this proposal as well as my rather large background and aims. I wasn’t trying to explore the discourses that surrounded domestic abuse in Russia, I was trying to explore the discourses that surrounded the law about domestic abuse. And even then, when you read into my proposal, I’m attempting to connect it to women and children, as was suggested to me in class. But I would go on to find that this would require a history of Russian women that would be fraught with statements and discourses that fed into domestic abuse in a way that one exists only because of the other. Looking back at the complexities of this history, I understand my confusion and find it somewhat warranted. But now that I’ve completed this project I think I could complete another proposal much clearer and efficient proposal. 

[renatowayn429-blog]

Inspiration Articles As well as Videos

Inherent inspiration comes from rewards fundamental to a job or activity itself - the satisfaction of a challenge or the love of playing basketball, as an example. The overjustification result recommends that if you award people for something they currently like doing, they'll really shed the motivation for doing it This has caused the firm concept of motivation, where it is argued that autonomy is better than monetary benefit for inspiring people, as an incentive is an external variable, beyond their control and could be eliminated any time, whereas offering somebody freedom means they have control and also obligation so a feeling of success, which could describe why micromanagement is so infuriating. If you have any type of concerns regarding where and just how to make use of click here!, you could contact us at our own website. It holds true that it the damaging result of money on motivation exists in experimental settings, but we have to reveal that it does undoubtedly have excellent influence in practice." Murayama as well as colleagues are currently beginning to make use of brain scanning to explore just how aspects other than loan, such as our desire to beat our very own targets or to do far better than others, may likewise influence brain networks connected with inspiration and also inevitably performance. Ultimately, the problem with synthetic inquisitiveness is that even researchers that have actually researched innate motivation for years still can not exactly define what interest is. Paul Schrater, a neuroscientist that leads the Computational Assumption as well as Activity Laboratory at the University of Minnesota, stated that the Berkeley model is the most intelligent point to do in the short-term to obtain a representative to instantly find out a novel atmosphere," but he assumes it has much less to do with the user-friendly idea of interest" than with electric motor discovering and also control. A secondary school dropout, Brian Tracy invested most of his early job years as a worker worldwide until he tried his hand at sales and ended up being a VP at the age of 25. A board member of Washington DC public policy institute The Heritage Structure, Tracy has actually authored numerous books, audio materials or even an on the internet management course. Examples of Motivational factors are: Development prospectus job innovation, duty, obstacles, recognition as well as achievements. In an era wdhere the credibility of news and also facts are coming under continuous examination it is necessary to additionally have a look at political correctness. Asda thinks that its continuously increasing market share is proof of a culture creating a determined and enthusiastic labor force. The second kind of blowback comes not from Buddhism doubters however from Buddhism enthusiasts, who lament that meditation has-- in some circles, at least-- become so ordinary regarding invite ridicule from the Adam Grants of the globe. The only way that people could've endured as a varieties for as lengthy as we have is by creating a decision-making device that's capable of making quick judgments based upon little info. E. If you have zeal to continue, in spite of problems ... then no person is more inspired then what you are. Simply puts, you 'd be hard-pressed to discover a contemporary programmer whose work hasn't been touched at a basic degree by something Lattner has actually produced in the past. This is among the amazing aspects of newer methods such as the Relationship Growth Intervention (RDI) ® Program, which focuses on remediating, as opposed to just working around, the core shortages we see in individuals with autism as well as various other neuro-developmental disorders. The book digs with more than 5 years of behavioral science to challenge the orthodoxy that sticks and also carrots are one of the most reliable ways to encourage workers in the 21st century. The entire Apple line was transitioned to Intel prior to completion of the year, an amazingly brief period of time. In Kalanick, Levandowski discovered both an advisor and a soulmate to replace Sebastian Thrun. We have to additionally understand the individual's inspiration and also capabilities to take those activities. That's why we made Mira, a sensational arm band, detachable tracker and mobile application that gets to know you. Inning accordance with Waymo's grievance, a tiny business called Odin Wave had put an order for a customized part that was extremely just like one made use of in Google's lidars.