The Secrecy of Evil (TW: abuse)

By now, everyone and their cousin has seen the video of the dad, who shot his teenage daughter’s laptop because she posted a restricted rant about her parents on Facebook.  Having gone viral, thousands of people are congratulating Jordan about being a good father, while others are (justifiably) horrified. (It should be mentioned that the daughter bought the laptop, herself¹.) My stomach has been in knots all day because of it.  When you come from a similar situation, you can spot a dysfunctional or abusive dynamic a mile away.

Teens can be brats.  Let’s get that out of the way.  They don’t quite know how to express themselves, and they’re trying to expand their boundaries, so some of it can’t be helped.  That having been said, it’s the adults’ responsibilities to provide good role models in how to negotiate these situations.  Jordan failed utterly in this regard.  All he taught her was that she has no reasonable expectation of privacy, no respect for property, no boundaries, and nobody who is supposed to be responsible for her will give a damn about her.

The daughter, Hannah, broke the cardinal rule of abusive relationships:  she dared bring to light the abuse.  Abusers keep power by keeping up the sheen of normalcy.  They’re the parents praised as “good” parents, and the majority of abusive parents aren’t the stereotypical parents, who beat their children in the middle of Wal-Mart.  The abusive parents I’m talking about are the ones you’d never expect.  You see their children, and remark about how well-behaved they are.  These parents are those who you see sacrifice for their kids to give them everything they need and want.  So if they discipline their children, the kids must deserve it, right?

Evil needs secrets, and history is littered with stories of those who thought they were acting in the best interests of their culture and society, only to do unspeakably horrible things.  I’m sure Tommy Jordan was raised thinking such things were acceptable and that he’s doing the best he can for his daughter.

At first living in such a situation isn’t so bad.  You think everyone’s families are that way, so you don’t consider anything else.  In a sense, you’re numb, and there’s a lot I don’t remember now.  Like during “discussions,” which were my parents grilling me for hours about how horrible I was, my brain sort of clicked off.  Now I understand that was a survival mechanism, as are some other things I still do.  But when you’re in such a situation, you don’t recognize how screwed up your life is compared to other people, because it would make things impossible to withstand.

But little by little, you do realize how wrong the situation is, and that you have no privacy, no boundaries, no respect, and that you aren’t safe².  When you get to that situation, usually as a teen, you also discover that the people you’re taught to go to–adults–won’t protect you, or even believe you, since they’ve bought into the myth that your parents are wonderful.  I don’t think I can adequately describe the hold an abuser has over the abused.  If anything in this world is demonic, it’s close.  I went to a teacher–my orchestra teacher–in high school when I’d finally had more than I could cope with.  His response?  Parents have a right to discipline their children.  This, from a mandated reporter³.

The response of my former orchestra teacher is the same as the thousands of people posting in agreement on Facebook.  They, like my former teacher, have been tricked into believing lies.  They’re the same ones, who will discount this entire post, saying that I’m only reacting to the video the way I am because I was abused.  No, it’s because I was abused that I can see through the layers of secrecy and expose the abuse for what it is.

—
¹ https://www.facebook.com/tommyjordaniii/posts/299559803434210
² My abuse was physical, mental, and emotional.
³ I investigated legal options, but it wasn’t able to be prosecuted, since the statute of limitations had expired.

That Tim Thomas Thing

So for those that don’t know, one of the Bruins’ goalies skipped out on a recent trip to the White House honoring them for winning the Stanley Cup.  You can find all the details, statements, etc over on:  http://nhlbruins.tumblr.com/

On the one hand, I can’t agree with Thomas’s politics.  I’ve never been a fan of the libertarian viewpoint, although I can’t disagree with them, when it comes to civil rights.  I think Thomas and the Bruins’ PR people handled the whole thing badly, and keeping him from the Boys & Girls Club event after made him look even worse.  I think he missed an opportunity for dialogue–it’s our duty as citizens to engage in that, and he had an opportunity few do.  I also think he let his team down, since I’m sure he’s not the only one on the team with conservative political beliefs.  (Granted, most of the team is Canadian, and Canadian politics is left-of-center, with their conservatives being more like our moderates.)

On the other hand, while I disagree with Thomas’s viewpoint, I absolutely support his right to have that opinion.  It’s not right that the media is trouncing him as badly as they are, when some of the Red Sox refused to visit Bush (and didn’t get quite the response from the media.)  Truth be told, if I had an opportunity to visit the White House, I don’t know if I could.  I’m pretty damn pissed off about the war in Afghanistan, the constant drone wars, the fact that Guantanamo Bay is still open, and the fact that nobody has been held responsible for the policy of torture the Obama administration inherited.

In the end, though, is this really any different than the libertarians on my Facebook feed?  They make a statement I disagree with.  I can respond or not.  I make a statement they disagree with, and they’re free to do the same.  In the end, the things I admire about them still outweigh the things I disagree with.  We agree to disagree about a lot, and life goes on.

Is this any different?  Thomas is a gifted athlete.  I admire his origin story, since it parallels mine.  I love the fact that he’s got an English degree, and that his recommendation for the Bruins summer reading list (for kids) was The Lord of the Rings.  In the end, though, he’s a person just like the rest of us: uniquely gifted and flawed.

In another sense, I’m not owed more of an explanation.  To demand more feels like sinking into fan entitlement.  While what I do as a composer is overtly political–all art is political–hockey isn’t.  If I put a piece of music out there and someone like Thomas questions my politics in it, he/she is free to do so.  I’d also hope that it transcends politics and speaks to something else.  That having been said, while we can discuss the statement Thomas made, pointing to his performance as a goalie doesn’t hold up in the same manner.  There’s a clear line between politics and hockey that doesn’t exist between art/music/literature and politics.  If I want what I do as a composer to speak to more than just the people who agree with me politically, I have to extend that to others.  In the end, while I find Thomas’s statement problematic, we’re going to have to agree to disagree.

Risks, Jocks, and Nerds

So based upon some conversations with the hockey player, Ian Laperrière on twitter, I’m having a few thinky thoughts about injuries, jocks, nerds, and the line between the two.  The point Laperrière has been making is that, yes, we should prevent injuries, but also that people take risks to play at such a high level.

Enter the recent discussion on NPR that had little to do with sports writing. It devolved into a panel discussion of how horribly violent hockey is.  Nobody is arguing that point, but the attitude of the story was that the sport isn’t worth it (and that hockey is mostly fighting, which is another argument for another time.  Short response: they haven’t been watching the same games as I have this year.)

But it got me thinking:  What would that panel have thought about the scads of musicians that suffer career-related injuries? RSI’s are legion among musicians, as is hearing loss.  (Ask any violist what they think of the brass section behind them. Those sound barriers don’t block a whole hell of a lot.) You see the same kind of attitude here, as well.  If a rock musician is injured, it’s their own damn fault, whereas an oboe player with a crippling case of tendinitis is somehow nobly sacrificing for his/her art.

Before I got into composing, I was a violinist.  I played semi-professionally all through high school, and I was well on my way to being a gigging musician.  I wasn’t soloing with orchestras or on the solo concert career circuit, but–to be honest–I was pretty good.  Then in my sophomore year of college, I developed tendinitis in my shoulder during a marathon 3-performance weekend of most of Handel’s Messiah. I was on the “scratch list” for most of that weekend and on NSAIDs and muscle relaxants.  Because teachers and professors weren’t overly understanding of the effects of RSI’s back then, it only got worse until I was in the middle of a premiere of a piece by Robert Ashley a few years later in the worst pain I’ve ever experienced. (I’ve broken bones before, and I think they hurt far, far less than bad tendinitis.)  My playing career was over.

In hindsight, it was a good thing that happened to me.  It freed me to fully pursue composition, which I dearly love.  While I liked playing the violin, I didn’t like practicing much, and I can’t think of anything more mind-numbingly boring than a 3-hour orchestra rehearsal.  (And that includes having my own pieces played.)  A part of me misses performing.  There’s no bigger endorphin rush of giving a great performance and connecting with an audience.

But back to Laperrière’s point:  people take risks to play at such an elite level.  I remember back in high school people telling me that a career as a musician was a “waste” for someone like me–who was academically gifted, a nerd.  They told me that I wasn’t a jock, and had options.  First, this is pretty insulting to both groups:  there are nerds who’re athletically gifted, and there are jocks who’re intellectually brilliant. But beyond that, we’re not dealing with normal people.

If a child is gifted at something, be that music, sports, or whatever, it’s cruel to enforce “normality” on them.  They aren’t ever going to be normal, and to withhold the training and competition they need to hone their craft isn’t helping them. Yes, athletes retire, and so do musicians.  But the best thing that can help either isn’t to harp on what they expect to do after retirement, but to encourage them upon the way there.  It’s a very long road with hours of training to get at the point where a person is offered an NHL contract or a chair with one of the “big name” orchestras.

I can’t speak for other athletes, because I’m not them and their world is different from mine, but for me the transition from gigging musician to composer wasn’t that difficult precisely because I had taken the risk.  I knew who I was.  I knew what I was capable of, and–more importantly–I learned my limitations.  That never would’ve happened, had I played it safe with an escape route planned out in some career I had no interest in.

What do we take away from this?  Prevention is a worthwhile goal.  What happened to me, for instance, was preventable.  This happened in the early days of the 1990′s, so medicine hadn’t quite caught up to the epidemic of computer-related RSI’s.  I never should’ve been pushed to keep playing as much as I did when the injury happened.  But also: we can’t wrap people in bubble wrap.  Shit happens, and bodies aren’t machines.

 

 

Still Alive

Still here.  Still alive.  Big move.  Different area.

How’re you?

Hi.

I’m still here.  I’m in the final throes of my dissertation, so I’m kind of wrapped up in that.  Hopefully I’ll have time to blog on some stuff in the near future, if I still have any braincells left.

By the way, cleaning one’s bathroom is a perfectly acceptable method of procrastination.  Let’s just say I’ve got procrastination down to an artform.

(N.B. This isn’t directed at anyone in particular.  It should not also be read as a flounce.)

Today is kind of a weird day, if you’re a contemplative, and it’s mainly to do with the fact that contemplatives aren’t understood.  In one sense, today is a very public demonstration of one’s faith.  In another, the entire Church is being called to turn inwards, perhaps more than most would in their everyday lives.

That puts those of us who’re called to some sort of contemplative vocation in a weird place, especially if we’re the liminal types who’re both contemplatives and not living in some sort of community fully dedicated to contemplative life.  Every day of our lives, we’re pulled in a thousand different directions, mainly having to do with our secular lives, which is as it should be, since we have obligations to things that contemplative monastics don’t:  we have our families, our friends, and our jobs.  That also means that our faith gets showered with a thousand different “shoulds” as to what we “should” be doing.  Yes, witness is important, but so, also, is contemplation, which is something I think our culture has lost.

Some are quick to point out that there have been contemplatives who’re more public in their lives.  (Mother Theresa had a very public ministry that was invaluable, but she’s not the type I’m discussing, although contemplative prayer was important to her.)  Everyone likes to pull out Merton as an example of a “public” contemplative.  Most religious communities in the Benedictine tradition lovingly offer hospitality.  I’m certainly very public with some things:  I blog, I’m on facebook, and I play WoW.  I’m also engaged.

But there’s always a cloister.  No matter how much I love my fiancé, he will never fill that “God-shaped hole” that’s in me.  Nor will my blogs, facebook, or WoW.  If you are at some sort of cloistered or semi-cloistered community, there are places you’re requested not to go, the cloister.  Merton’s writings have certainly been a blessing in my life, but I can’t help but also feel his pain at being forced into a more public life than he was being called to, because that pain is something I have to mitigate every day of my life.

I’ve also got some pretty clearly-defined lines.  There’s a point every night at which the computer gets locked and I get my space with my Maker.  My prayer life is between my God, my spiritual director, and I, and there are things which don’t get blogged about, either.  It’s when those lines get blurred that there’s trouble and conflict between these two worlds I’m in.

Yet often because my faith doesn’t fit “the norm” I’m written off as not being “on fire” enough or lukewarm, especially among the types who’re influenced by evangelicals.  I’m attacked because I don’t publicly support the right causes or do the same things.  Certainly there is always a need for protests, soup kitchens, and other acts of charity.  Sometimes those things have to take precedence over anything else.  But by engaging in those kinds of witness, I would be ignoring the one to which I was born:  contemplation.  I hope there’s still room for diversity in what our vocations are.  Without it, the world would be a poorer place.

And here’s a link from Steve:  http://faultline.org/index.php/site/item/incendiary

One of many reasons why I’m marrying him.

Welcome to the new blog.  It’s the same as the old blog.  Haloscan started charging for commenting features, so I decided to move.  Blogger’s got a lot going for it, but its comment functionality is limited, to say the least.

On trying to be a good ally

First, a video I saw on Kurt Sutter’s blog:

I think it’s instructive to watch, especially in light of yesterday being National Coming Out Day. So many people I read yesterday posted something along the lines of coming out because they like members of the opposite sex. This is not being supportive. This is not being a good ally. It’s being a douche. Why, you ask? because of privilege. You’re taking the voice of someone marginalized in our society, whose voice might not be heard. Congrats!

See, privilege is an insidious thing because while you have it, you don’t know it’s there. I can hit on a guy in a bar and not worry about being killed for it. I can tell my parents I like men, and not be kicked out of the house, shunned, or otherwise expelled from whatever support structure they offer. I’m free to marry the person I love with all the legal protections that come from it. And I’m certainly not going to be shunned or expelled from my denomination, should it become known that I’m attracted to men.

Don’t believe me that it’s happening in the Catholic Church? Go read this article. Go ahead. I’ll sit here and wait.

Here’s one thing you should take away from that article: twelve of Corcoran’s parishioners went to the bishop. They didn’t go to the parish priest, who could’ve diffused the situation. They went straight to the head of the diocese. Also, they went to the bishop with nothing more than rumor. Even if they had conclusive proof, what those twelve parishioners did was nothing more than a witch hunt.

If you can stomach to read further in, it’s mentioned that being an altar server isn’t a right, but a privilege. I’d agree with that, but I’d also like to point out the sentence where the one parishioner quoted says that gays and lesbians aren’t supposed to be involved in the liturgy. I wonder if the person who said that realizes that we’ve got at least two thousand years’ worth of Church history behind us. I’m willing to bet good money that a not insignificant amount of popes, priests, religious, saints, and martyrs have been gay/lesbian. And that’s not counting all the countless people not recorded who lived and died for our faith.

You know how in the video Wise discusses how the white people in the district next to the 9th Ward blamed everything on those who lived in the 9th Ward? That’s happening in the RCC right now. Look at what fingers get pointed where. Who got blamed for the sexual abuse crisis? I’ll give you a hint: it’s not the same group of people described in the research done by independent groups about pedophilia. Instead of whiteness, you’ve got sexual orientation being thrown around.

Divide and conquer. We don’t need other groups imposing it on us. We’re doing it just fine on our own.

A school for the Lord’s service…in Azeroth?

And first of all, whatever good work you begin to do, beg of Him with most earnest prayer to perfect it, that He who has now deigned to count us among His children
may not at any time be grieved by our evil deeds. (Rule of St. Benedict, Prologue)

So for the past year or so I’ve been playing World of Warcraft. I resisted it for ages, pointing out how it had borrowed a number of things from other games and pointing at its perceived flaws. I’m not sure why, but one day I asked my fiancé if I could make a character on his account to try it out. A few months later, I was level 80 and regularly raiding with a guild.

A year later, I’m still playing and an officer in the guild, and during that year I’ve learned a number of things about intentional community and my own understanding of the Rule of St. Benedict. Our guild–as Sr. Susan over at Musings of a Discerning Woman–so aptly pointed out was formed via social action.

I was hesitant to join a guild, a group of players who comes together to do certain content that can’t be done alone. So on a lark, I joined a “casual” guild, one that’s comprised of people who aren’t hardcore raiders, but are more in a guild for the bank space, social interaction, and help when they need it. I got to know a group of people, and we’d wind up grouping together more often than not. Soon, though, it came out that the Guild Master created the guild only to harbor gold farmers. One officer in that guild called the GM on it, and he booted her. A group of us left en masse as a protest. (Please do go read the article. Gold farming may seem innocent enough, but it is sweatshop labor, and it was something we weren’t going to support.)

Suddenly I found myself as a founding member of a guild, and an officer at that. I knew two things: I had no clue what it meant to be an officer, and I certainly didn’t feel worthy. But that action that created our guild–a concern for the ethics of what we do–has carried over into how we run the guild and play the game.

Time and time again, I’m reminded that there are people behind the characters. It can be in the life details: our GM has been out of work since December. Another guildie’s child broke an arm. Another guildie’s been sick with the flu. Someone else became a new parent. But it’s also in the interactions: I may not agree with the decisions of the Guild Master, but, ultimately, he’s in charge. After a time I’ve come to understand his decisions, and it’s helped me understand obedience in a way that a lot of commentaries on the Rule of St. Benedict don’t: fundamentally, obedience is lovingly listening to another, even when you think that other person is wrong, crazy, or being a jerk.

It’s also in letting that nice piece of loot go, when someone else needs it more than you. Sure, pixelated goodies don’t mean anything in the long run, but realizing you aren’t the center of the universe does mean a lot to the other person. The founding message of our guild was that the people behind the screen matter. What we do, we realize that we can’t do alone, and that we’re all in this together.

Next up: what I learned about the penal code.