Review: Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things

I just finished reading Stuff, which was recommended at a presentation I recently went to on hoarding, led by one of the staff members of the Institute on Aging (an excellent resource itself). Stuff was well worth a read, as it paints a portrait of the issue of hoarding that creates at least some understanding but more importantly a deep compassion for those who hoard.

I was surprised by many of the things the authors discovered in their research on hoarders and hoarding, the primary one being that hoarders are, almost without fail, perfectionists. They hoard not because they are slobs, but because they can't bear to think about what would happen if they got it wrong and threw the wrong thing away. It illustrates the psychic (and sometimes almost physical) pain hoarders feel when trying to get in control of their hoarding, and the comfort they feel in what most people see as truly unlivable conditions.

Stuff primarily presents its information through illustrative narratives of the lives of individuals, looking at hoarding through a variety of lenses. At the very end it offers further resources for people looking for help. The authors, Randy Frost and Gail Steketee, have a workbook for treating hoarding behavior that sounds very useful for those seeking personal help to change.

I do wonder if the extreme conditions used throughout the book might do a slight disservice, however, as some who may suffer more mildly from hoarding tendencies may read this and think, "Well, at least I'm not as bad as that." As the authors point out, the problem with hoarding is not the stuff per se, but the pain and distress it causes the hoarder.

As I said earlier, however, the overall sense I got from this book was one of compassion for hoarders and their families. It shows that hoarding is not a moral failing, a weakness,  a sin, or consumerism run amok, but a painful and difficult problem that requires treatment and care.

Various & Sundry: If there's a common thread, I don't see it.

I'm puttering today, which is wonderful. And the puppy is wrestling with one of the other dogs so I can sit here and blog, which is also wonderful. So let's see what's been piling up, here...

[By the way, if you're wondering where I get all this stuff, these are some of the things I tweet throughout the week.]

Since I started the week preaching about money, I thought this discussion on whether getting rich is worth it was an excellent companion piece. The answers from some very wealthy people are thoughtful, honest, and actually very tender.

Moving from money to peacemaking, the Pastor's Wife writes about how her husband, who had plans for establishing peace in  the Middle East, had a more difficult time of it when it came to pairing mismatched socks. Ironically, the one comment on this article so far is one woman's solution to not losing socks, which was rather missing the point.

I thought this plan to help WWII prisoners escape using doctored Monopoly games was mighty clever. I just wonder if any prisoners actually found all of the maps, compasses, files, and money hidden there.

Although this article is called The Science of Snobbery, what it really says to me is that we use all of our senses to draw conclusions about our experiences, and we are much more dependent upon context than we want to believe. I tell you one thing, I'm sure I'd be among those fooled if I were given a white wine with red food coloring in it. And another conclusion to draw: how and under what circumstances you present yourself makes a difference, whether or not it should.

The headline on this post was "Guy trying to call out 'Fake Geek Girl' gets destroyed."

The comments beneath the post suggest that many comic book geeks of the male persuasion are sensitive flowers who are hurt if you don't respect their geek bona fides when they don't know one obscure comic book character.

How interesting.

Lots of good obituaries this week, as always, because there are lots of interesting people out there. In particular, I liked the one I saw this morning for Spider, New York's Oldest Cabby, who died at the age of 94.

While it was unclear exactly when Mr. Footman first obtained his hack license, David Yassky, the commissioner of the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission, said it was “only a few short years” after the modern taxi industry was born in 1937, when the city’s board of aldermen first began limiting the number of hack licenses granted in the city.

That's a whole lot of city driving.

Various & Sundry, too random to categorize

Sorry I'm so late! Today, I was working on the revisions for Confirm not Conform Adult and came across this great TED talk of Karen Armstrong explaining the Charter for Compassion. There are worse ways to spend 20 minutes.

Anyway...let's see what else I've got here. It's fairly minimal this week. I guess I've been doing other things.

I have found a new blogger that I like a lot: one Lance Mannion by name. This week he had an interesting post proposing that "the object of liberalism is to create more conservatives." It's a fascinating argument, which you'll just have to read for yourself. I'm still pondering how this actually works in real life.

In election news, I was very glad to see Greg Sargent ask Can we please talk about torture?

The executive order banning torture was the very first one signed by Obama, to improve America’s image abroad, explicitly repudiating a major policy of his GOP predecessor. The Romney camp is internally debating whether to rescind that order, which would represent a return to those policies. There are only five weeks until the election, and we still don’t know what Romney will do on an issue with far reaching moral and international implications.

I'll be watching to see if this comes up at any of the presidential debates.

One of the people who played a role in the Supreme Court's ruling on the Affordable Care Act died this week. Jennifer Jaff, who had Crohn's Disease and was an advocate for the chronically ill, wrote an amicus brief in one of the cases brought to the court, arguing against insurance policies denying coverage to those with pre-existing conditions.

After the Supreme Court ruling, Ms. Jaff told The Hartford Courant: “I live and breathe chronic-illness law, and in my estimation this is the most important civil rights advance for people with chronic illnesses ever. There can never be equality if we can’t get health insurance.”

I can't imagine what it must have felt like to her to see that law upheld before she died. She was 55.

On a completely different note, Peacebang offers some helpful suggestions for cultivating a personal sense of style, something I'm working on. Here's the essence:

Style can be beautiful, pretty, dramatic, shocking, erotic, and many other things. Whatever it is, it is mindful. It is intentional. It is knowing. The stylish person knows a few things: 

1. What they love.
2. What kind of impact they want to create with their apparel, accessories and personal grooming.
3. How to use fashion to communicate their inner vision of who they are.

She then goes on to give some exercises to help you do just that.

Here's someone with a definite personal sense of style. Well, point of view, at any rate.

And with that, I hope you have a lovely weekend.

Thoughts on holiday giving

It's December, which is of course a big month for charitable giving. Over at Good Intentions are Not Enough, Saundra Schimmelpfennig has prepared a Holiday Guide to Charitable Giving that offers practical thoughts and suggestions on selecting charities that, in the words of the Episcopal Church's Baptismal Covenant, "respect the dignity of every human being." I highly recommend it. I think it would also be a great study guide for church groups considering how to help those in need.

The main thing I would say is this: Beware of the curse of SWEDOW! SWEDOW is shorthand for "Stuff We Don't Want"--the things we give away to "the poor who might want it" when we clean out our closets and cupboards. As Saundra pointed out on an earlier post, when we do this, the problem we are trying to solve is not helping the poor in their poverty, but getting rid of clutter. As she puts it, "our waste is not the solution to other people’s problems, our waste is our problem."

Cartoon by Andy Dietsche

One of the hardest things I have had to do was throw away clothes. OK, there have been harder things, but it went against the grain. I wanted to give them away so that I didn't feel wasteful. But part of the lesson of SWEDOW is accepting that perhaps I have been wasteful and learning to deal with that, rather than assuaging my conscience and letting someone else deal with my trash as the trash it actually is.

Sometimes the best thing we can give organizations is our money. Maybe it makes us feel good to do something active or give something tangible, but the point is that charitable giving is not about what makes us feel good. That's just a side benefit. The real question is: What will actually help the people or cause we say we want to help? That's what we need to discern and do.

Advent: A public service reminder

Here's what I wrote for the All Saints newsletter for December:

Happy Advent! I like to think of Advent as the secret season, known only to a few. The rest of the world is crazy and consumed with consumerism, but inside the church, we’re a little quieter, a little contemplative. There’s something a little somber about Advent—not gloomy, but maybe a bit melancholy. Our winter season helps with that, of course, as the days get shorter and chillier here in the Northern hemisphere. The weather itself suggests we should slow down and settle in for a bit.

I think Advent is an excellent season for clearing out clutter. I don’t just mean the actual physical clutter, of course, but the spiritual clutter that builds up when we don’t have the time or space to reflect. “Let every heart prepare him room,” says the carol, and Advent is the time for preparing that space for the Christ child to enter.

By "spiritual clutter" I mean whatever it is that makes it harder for you to love God and love your neighbor. It may be an over-busy schedule. It may be the pursuit of a nebulous or unreal goal. It may be expectations you place on yourself or on others. It may be a grudge or a fantasy. If you ask yourself what makes it harder for you to love God and neighbor, take a look at what comes up. It may be spiritual clutter, and it might need to go.

I know the heat is on to get everything done and ready and wrapped and perfect, and I don’t want to add any pressure to that. But I would encourage you this Advent to take even a few moments to reflect, to take a walk in nature, to have a quiet evening, taking a look at the spiritual clutter and preparing Christ room. You don’t have to do it perfectly. But you might find the preparation brings you closer to God, to your neighbor, and to your true self.

Tim Gunn reads Kierkegaard!

It's Thursday and that means Project Runway and the lovely Tim Gunn.

Some generous person gave me an Amazon gift certificate a while back, so I splurged and got Gunn's Golden Rules, and then (because if I got it, I could get SuperSaver Shipping) added his Guide to Quality, Taste and Style as well.

The latter is the book I want to rejoice in today. Who among us would not be delighted to read this paragraph:

Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), Danish philosopher, opera lover, and the man Ludwig Wittgenstein called "the most profound thinker of the nineteenth century," can actually be a huge help when it comes to curing one's closet. The author of Fear and Trembling will not tell you explicitly to toss out those clam diggers, but he will supply two enormously helpful ideas.

The rest of the chapter does indeed use Kierkegaard--specifically Either/Or--as a starting point for curing one's closet, as Gunn puts it. The two ideas?

1) Make choices "Choosing what stays and what goes can be intimidating, but we have nothing to fear if we listen to Soren. He counsels that the unmediated choice is the only choice one will never regret." And then there are parameters for choosing what stays and what goes.

2) Form and content in harmony "For Kierkegaard, a 'classic' results when form and content meet in perfect harmony. In our case, the content is the person inside the garment; the form is the garment itself. Some form and content marriages are quite obvious...What isn't successful is choosing a rigid form and trying to wedge one's unhappy content into it."

Tremendously practical but also very thoughtful stuff. For closets and for life.

Oh, Tim. What would we do without you?

Various and sundry

As July Snarkfest 2010 slinks to a close, I apparently have run out of spleen to vent. Or whatever it is one vents when one vents one's spleen. In other words, other people say things so much better than I do, why should I bother? Oh, was that snarky? Maybe there's life!

At any rate, here are a few things that I found (or was sent) this week that were all very interesting but to which I had nothing to add. Read them as your fancy strikes you.

Molly D. sent me this great article on the Bay Area graves of famous people. I'm going to have to hie me to Colma one of these days to go visit Joe DiMaggio and Wyatt Earp. (I also need to rent Colma: The Musical.)

I stumbled across an article in the NY Times about microfinance lending in the United States. Sounds like a good idea to me. I'm glad to see microlending is not just for "those poor people over there."

The fabulous ladies at Dirty Sexy Ministry have a list of things they wish weren't true. I think my favorite is

8. We cannot run other people's lives. The most pervasive acts of violence are unsolicited advice. Most of the time, when people tell you their troubles, they simply want you to listen, not to tell them how to fix what's hurting them. Trust that if people want advice, they will ask. Otherwise, just listen, hold hands, or give them tissues when they cry.

That's probably because I'm still in denial about chocolate ice cream having calories (#1 on their list).

Finally, I loved this essay by a music industry insider called How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Technology.

Every creative field, maybe even every field, has been shaken by technology in recent history. Technology can be cruel. With one hand it gives and with the other it takes. It doesn't do it because it hates you. It just really doesn't care about you. It doesn't even know you exist. You are Molly Ringwald in the first act of every '80s movie she was in and technology is the boy she's crushing on.

I know, I know, it hurts. Take it from me though, that huge wave of technological progress sweeping over [insert your career field here] doesn't have to mean the end. At least, not the end of your career. Your life will definitely change. Your field will too. If you want to survive, I'll help you.

I read this [inserting Church here] and found it incredibly helpful. But I'm hardly in a position to use my new-found illumination, so I hope some people who do will read this and pass it along.

That should keep you busy for a bit! Have a terrific weekend.

Ash Wednesday

I was talking to a friend last night about spiritual disciplines. She said she hated the use of the word "discipline" because it suggested punishment. She proposed spiritual exercise. I said I hated the use of the word exercise because it suggested...ummm...exercise. We settled on spiritual practice because that suggests it's all right not to get it right. It may not make perfect, but it will probably make better.

What spiritual practice do you want to try this Lent? Me, I still don't know. If you have something good, I'll probably copy you. In the meantime...

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

Thoughts on the Conversion of St. Paul, and still more thoughts on spiritual practice

Last weekend I went to a conference. When I registered, along with my information packet, I got a rock. A little brown landscaping rock. And on this rock was printed a name in permanent marker. And I was informed that this was the name of another person attending the conference for whom I was to pray. And I thought to myself, “I hate this spiritual crap.”

Later at lunch, there was a discussion about what age Godly Play stops being an effective Christian Education program. One person said she found that it loses its charm for kids at about fourth grade. The woman next to me announced that, no, it was great for kids all the way up to middle school, and in fact adults love the stories, too. “They quiet right down when the story starts.” If they’re like me, it’s because they’re biting their tongues to keep from screaming in agony. But I bit my tongue rather than say so.

Why? Because it would be rude, wouldn’t it? to say I hate this stuff. Worse still, maybe it shows I’m not really spiritual at all because my spiritual practice doesn’t look like it ought to. My daily spiritual practice looks a lot like writing snarky posts on my blog and on Twitter and Facebook.

I’m still having trouble believing that this is OK, that it’s all right that I don’t do what looks like a daily devotion either of the liberal/spiritual or evangelical/religious sort.

I can’t help but think that the rock/prayer partner spirituality was used, not because anybody planning the conference genuinely felt deeply moved by that practice, but because the planners thought they ought to feel deeply moved and spiritually empowered by that sort of exercise.

It’s the feast of the Conversion of Paul. He had a dramatic experience, of course: bright lights, falling to the ground, hearing voices, and doing a 180 turn from persecutor to church founder. I wonder (to use a Godly Play term) how much of the emphasis on conversion stories in many churches is based on Paul’s story and the belief that that’s the way a conversion ought to happen. I wonder how long it will take us to realize that God meets us where we are, not where someone thinks we ought to be.

[Image is from the Brick Testament, which has a darn good representation of Paul's whole conversion story.]

My unsettled decade

I was thinking back over the aughts the other day. There's the headline news version of this crazy decade, of course, but I was thinking about what it was like for me personally. And I realized it was incredibly unsettled.

Let's start with the living arrangements. I realized, upon consideration, that I have lived in 12 places since 2000. When writing my Christmas cards this year, I noted that I have moved 5 times in the last 2 years. I lived in three states (California, Ohio, and for one summer, Washington state) and two countries (Uganda, natch). My longest stint was in a dreadful apartment from which I did not move because I kept expecting to move to something more permanent. That didn't happen until I was laid off, which in many ways was the best thing to happen to me. (It got me out of that apartment for one thing.)

Then I started thinking about work. Of the past 10 years, less than half was spent in full-time employment, in three separate jobs. I was employed part-time for about three of those years, was unemployed for a total of one year (in two separate stints), and was a student for 1 1/2 years at the very beginning of the decade. I'm actually amazed I'm in financially as sound a situation as I am, especially given I'm living in California, but I know that's largely due to the generosity of family, friends, and church.

With all of that, I was starting to feel very depressed about wasting 10 years of my life. But then a Facebook friend, looking at my blog the other day, commented that I was very impressive. I couldn't imagine what he was talking about. But there it is, over in the "about me" column: I was a Kiva fellow in Uganda, and I'm the managing director of a non-profit, which I guess does sound impressive. Then I realized I also got a graduate degree, did a couple of triathlons, and started a college chaplaincy. If you look at it that way, it was a really good decade.

If there's one thing I've learned from obits it's that a life that looks impressive in summary takes an awful long time to live. And if there's one thing I've learned from cemeteries it's that your accomplishments don't remember you.

I'm not sure, summing up, whether it was a good decade or a bad decade for me. It was what it was. How was it for you? Personally, I'm happy it's over. I'm looking forward to a new decade and curious to see what happens. I'm hoping for something more stable. But you never know.

John of the Cross

Today is the proposed commemoration of St. John of the Cross, a saint I appreciate personally for helping me revise another of my youthful beliefs that I no longer find useful.

In seminary, I took a wonderful class on John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila and Therese of Lisieux, three very different saints and mystics (though John and Teresa knew each other). The wonderful thing I got from John of the Cross was the notion of the dark night of the soul. Specifically, that the dark night is not a bad thing, but in fact a time of great spiritual growth. As I understood it (and vastly simplified), that time when a person feels dry and distant from God doesn't necessarily mean that the person is doing something wrong. John's advice (again as I understood it and vastly simplified) is not to get upset about it, but recognize it for the part of spiritual life that it is.

What a change from the message I heard growing up, that "When God feels far away, guess who moved," that clearly you are doing something wrong, and that your efforts need to be redoubled. I am so grateful to John of the Cross for teaching me to embrace the dry and dark times and not harass myself in the midst of them. The dark night of the soul is not a flaw or a failing and God continues to be present.

More on Spiritual Discipline, or "What Have You"

I wrote the previous entry on backsliding rather rapidly and need to do more thinking about that. One of the ways in which I wimped out was in saying, "But of course you need spiritual disciplines like prayer and Bible study," when the truth is my primary spiritual disciplines are Facebook, Twitter, and blogging, mentioned in the entry under the wimpy phrase, "or what have you."

I'm not kidding about that, by the way. I do think of these things as spiritual practices that help connect me to others and to God. Which is what any good spiritual practice does.

One of the essays in Jesus Girls that resonated most powerfully with me was about the sometimes obsessive devotion to daily Bible reading churchy people often feel we must do all the time. In Quick and Powerful, Hannah Faith Notess (who also edited the collection) writes about Bible memorization, the read-the-Bible-in-a-year systems, the highlighted and underlined passages.

Oh, it was all so familiar. In high school we had a special group that met after church to practice our memory verses (which came in this nifty little packet so we could carry them around and practice). I read the whole Bible through at around that same time, starting with the Old Testament since I thought the New Testament, upon which our preacher would expound using the original Greek, would be too hard. Somewhere I still have the red binder in which I painstakingly went through all of the Pauline epistles verse by verse, giving my personal, teen-aged commentary. My Good News Bible is full of highlights and underlines.

In college in InterVarsity, I was introduced to the concept of the Daily Quiet Time. There was much praise at our noon prayer group for a good daily quiet time and requests for God's help in the face of bad ones.

This devotion to devotions has taken different forms in the Episcopal Church. There's the Daily Offices, Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer, which treat the pray-er to great swaths of Scripture.

Then there's my bete noire: Lectio Divina which seems to be what all the really spiritual people do. Can't stand it. I've tried numerous times. Can't do it. Just can't. It's not for me.

My Bible reading these days is mostly in sermon prep. One poll of pastors reported in shock that "Seven hundred fifty-six (756 or 72%) of the pastors we surveyed stated that they only studied the Bible when they were preparing for sermons or lessons. This left only 38% who read the Bible for devotions and personal study." I fail to see the problem with that--and what makes you think that I'm not reading the Sunday lections for my personal devotions? Those passages do their work on me just the same as any other parts of the Bible.

I am very glad I did get such a strong background in Scripture, but it has been very hard to let go of the guilt that I'm not as devoted as I used to be. But Notess' essay hit it on the head--at least on my head--when she wrote, "If I was going to read the Bible in any meaningful way, I had to give all those seeds I'd crammed into my mind a little time to sprout. So at eighteen, I put the Bible on the shelf for a while. I took a step back from it, just to see what would happen."

The collect for this Sunday is one of my favorites:

Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The "inwardly digest" part is always the best; it makes me happy every time. Finally I get that the happiness comes not only because the image amuses me, but because it's a very freeing thought. I'm still trying to let go of the guilt of not always reading, marking and learning, but to know in my heart and not just my head that inwardly digesting is part of the process too. I am reassured by the thought that perhaps I am not refusing the nourishment that comes from Scripture but savoring the food I've already been given.

I said earlier that "I'm not as devoted as I used to be," but I don't think that's true. I think I'm just as devoted to Scriptures, but finding my way into the practices that best stir me up to love. Certainly that's my hope.

Long one today! Whew! Thanks for reading!

The theological closet: Backsliding

One of the themes that came up over and over again in the various books I've been reading about being Evangelical is backsliding, a term I have not heard in the liberal church. Backsliding is the sense that if you do not keep up the self-discipline of a Christian life, through daily Bible study, prayer, devotions, attendance at worship, small groups, reading Christian books and periodicals, and generally staying within the confines of Christian culture, you are bound to lose your faith entirely.

I have very mixed feelings about all of this. First of all, I do think that a certain level of spiritual discipline is a good thing: regular prayer, reading the Scriptures, what have you. But the notion that unless you do all of this all the time, you are bound to fall into perdition is actually, as I think of it, rather sad. It suggests that a) we can maintain our faith through our own efforts and b) if we don't, then God will be powerless to hold on to us through God's own love and presence.

I certainly feel I have a healthier relationship with God and a better understanding of God now than I did when I was younger. Maybe it would be better, simply because of mature understanding, along with the Daily Quiet Times (DQTs) and other paraphernalia of a more conservative faith. But one of the things a more liberal faith has given me is freedom from fear.

That would be c) in the list above. I hope a lot of people are involved in their spiritual disciplines because they want to do so, but much of the time I feel it is motivated by fear: if you don't do this, then something terrible will happen. Not doing the spiritual disciplines becomes its own level of sin instead of something that will help us to be free from sin and be more loving to God and neighbor.

In the baptismal covenant, we promise to "persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord." I find that very refreshing, that if and when I sin, there is something I can do about that. There's hope.

I posted last week about Sesame Street's 40th birthday. Today is the actual day. Big Bird says it well. I'm not going to call it backsliding any more.

From the theological closet: Good Christian = Happy Christian

Reading these books made me think of an unexpressed but strongly implied belief from my childhood--namely, that if you are unhappy, there is something wrong with your Walk With The Lord.

Sunday School in junior high and high school always started with a few songs. Here's one of the ones we sang practically every week throughout junior high school.

It's a happy day
and I just love the weather!
It's a happy day
and I'm livin' it for my Lord.
(shoo-be-doo-bop-bop)
It's a happy day
and things are gonna get better
livin' each day by the promises in God's Word.
It's a happy day, oh yeah!

verse two went like this:

It's a grumpy day
and I can't stand the weather.
It's a grumpy day
and I'm living it for myself
(phlllbbbt)
It's a grumpy day
and things aren't gonna get better
livin' each day with the Bible on my shelf.
It's a grumpy day, oh yeah.

OK, so how bad is this theology? Pretty darn bad. But, boy, this song has stuck with me now for over 30 years. And it came roaring back with the desperate up-beatness of the people Kevin Roose encountered at Liberty University.

When I was looking at colleges, I looked for about 20 seconds at Wheaton College, a Christian college in Illinois. I couldn't do it for two reasons: one was the intellectual dishonesty I heard in the tour when our tour guide told us that there were rules against drinking, smoking, and dancing, "not that we think dancing is wrong, but it's tradition;" and the other was seeing the encounters between people on campus, over-exuberant to the point of being unnerving. "Hyper-happy Christians," I labeled it to my parents afterwards.

I mean, I'm a person who reads obituaries for fun. Can you imagine how much it would annoy me to have people constantly telling me to cheer up? Smile, God loves you? I hate that. And the implication that if you're unhappy or don't like the weather it's because you're living for yourself--boy, is that pernicious. This has got to go. Out. Not even to Goodwill with you. In the trash.

I'm going to go be grumpy now. And I'm going to enjoy it. Phhlllbbbt.

The Unlikely Disciple

This book is crazy good. I mentioned it last week when I was talking about things I'm reading that seem to be of a piece: books that make me ask myself what kind of evangelical theology is still hanging around in the back of my brain.

Here's the premise: this young man, a freshman at Brown University (who, I might add, grew up in Oberlin, Ohio, my uberliberal college town), decides to enroll at Liberty University, the school founded by Jerry Falwell, for a semester and write about the experience. He does a fantastic job of it. I can't tell you how impressed I am. He's so generous in his writing and clear in his understanding. He neither vilifies nor exonerates the people of Liberty University; he works very hard simply to understand.

One of the themes that comes up both in this book and in Dave's is how much energy is expended on keeping sexuality under control. At Liberty, the rule is you may hold hands, but nothing else. You may hug someone of the opposite sex, but for no longer than three (3) seconds.

There are ways in which Kevin Roose, the author of The Unlikely Disciple, finds this very freeing: he doesn't have to worry about What Is Expected. At the same time, there are still rules that his dormmates tell him (open the door for her, "You didn't walk her to her dorm?!"). He also finds a wide variety of behaviors around and under and past the rules.

It all made me think that in the Bible, we read of "sexual immorality" but there's no clarity about what exactly that "immorality" part is. Is it hugging for more than 5 seconds? Kissing? Petting? Is there a particular line when it becomes sex? And when that line has been crossed, is it always immoral outside of marriage? Can there be sexual immorality within marriage? Does it depend upon the situation? And if so, what does it depend upon?

That phrase seems to be a complete Rohrschach test; so often it seems "sexual immorality" is defined by "what makes me uncomfortable." Or "what makes the pastor uncomfortable," perhaps. I don't know. It certainly seems to me, though, that sexuality has a lot more gray area than I thought when I was growing up. This book and Dave's both help show that even in a world where sexual immorality is presented as black and white there is still a whole lot of gray.

Cleaning out the theological closet: the reading material

So I've been thinking about what I wrote yesterday about cleaning out my clothes closet and realized that, yes indeed, I'm also working on cleaning out my theological closet, partly in thanks to several books that have ended up on my bedside table at the same time.


The first is Dave Dickerson's book House of Cards. I can call him Dave because we're Facebook friends, don't you know. You may remember he's the guy who did the Greeting Card Emergency I posted here for Coming Out Day.

Dave's book is a memoir about working at Hallmark and losing his virginity and there are parts that are laugh out loud funny. Other parts are simply cringeworthy (as well as funny) because he's simply ruthless about exposing himself in all his geeky foibles. But one of the themes in his book is moving from being raised fundamentalist to converting to Catholicism to losing his faith. I think he's very astute in observing what his faith required of him and how it doesn't match up to his own experience and what he sees as true.

Another book that's come to my attention, thanks to the Internet Monk, is called Jesus Girls: True Tales of Growing Up Female and Evangelical. It's a collection of essays from women on areas of community, worship, education, gender, sex, and identity, and the ones I've read so far have been very good.

Finally, just in at the library is a book I hadn't remembered placing on hold: The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University. A Brown University student enrolls for a semester at Liberty University and writes about his experiences there. I just picked this up yesterday so I have no idea what I will find there.

But there seems to be a theme, here, and I'll be curious in future days to explore a little bit of what I find in my own theological closet from my days growing up Evangelical. I already have a couple of things I know are worn out but still hanging around. We'll see what else emerges. Stay tuned.