It's not a maze, but it is amazing!

It is not usually the purview of this blog to give advice to its (limited) readership, but I hope you have all had a chance to experience the wonder of a labyrinth and that if you have not you will go out and experiment with them immediately.

A labyrinth is an ancient symbol, a unicursal design used for prayer and meditation. Though many sources associate a labyrinth with a maze (a misconception not helped by the 1986 film Labyrinth starring David Bowie*), there is a distinct difference: a labyrinth has a single path in and out. Whereas a maze is a complicated series of paths in which it is easy to become lost, a labyrinth requires no choices and involves no confusion. One must simply journey in and out.

The pattern can be quite simple:

Or quite complicated:

The most well-known pattern is this one

which is the same pattern of the 13th century labyrinth inlaid into the floor of the cathedral in Chartes, France, perhaps one of the beautiful and most famous:



I had loved labyrinths for a long while and have appreciated their metaphorical and spiritual significance. But I was prompted to remind you about them when I had an opportunity recently to participate in a guided labyrinth walk accompanied by an incredibly talented music thanatologist or harpist who accompanies patients at the end of life. (If you have never heard this type of harp music, I suggest you do! It is the most soothing, peaceful, and beautiful sound you could imagine. In fact, if I am ever near death, I hope my loved ones will call just such a person.)

Anyhow, just a suggestion for your journey, something I've found quite helpful. Enjoy!

p.s. For those of you in the Cambridge, MA area, there is a beautiful outdoor labyrinth on the campus of Harvard Divinity School. Check it out!

p.p.s. Some people get so into labyrinths that they get tattoos of them! Can you believe that?




* Did anyone know that Labyrinth the movie was directed by Jim Henson? Strange...

Don't Take the Bait

On a recent weekend trip to Minneapolis, I was trapped and reeled in by an unforeseen yet dangerous beast of the travel world: the talkative-airline-seat-mate.

Now, as a particularly egregious extrovert, I have to be very careful not to be sucked in by enemies such as the talkative seat mate because I lack a particular enzyme that allows me to end a conversation (for example, it takes me approximately 1.5 hours* to pick up our dog from the dogsitter, while it takes my husband 10 minutes....I just cannot stop talking!). So once the airline chat has commenced, I am committed to talking for the rest of the flight even if it is excruciating.

But this seat-mate was employing advanced, guerilla-warfare-like tactics of conversational entrapment, such as

• Upon arriving, over-enthusiastically announcing that this was her row.
  
• Sitting down and immediately asking me if it was better for me to have the seat arm up or down (and other questions that precluded "yes" or "no" answers). Inserting that she didn't care either way.
  
• Commenting on the number of babies surrounding us in the aisles and how cute they were. When I responded, "mmmhmmm", asking if I had ever seen so many babies on a plane.
  
• Taking out her phone to listen to her voicemail and then exclaiming "OH MY GOD" quite loudly and then looking at me.
  
• Engaging in verbal outbursts as she was reading including "WOW" and several machine-gun bursts of laughter.
  

I proudly managed to avoid her advances almost the entire flight through curt answers, exaggeratedly un-welcoming body language, repeated attempts to engage Mr.Love-it-or-leav-it in hushed conversation (although unfortuantely as an introvert he easily rebuffed my interjections) and pretending to sleep.

But, alas, in the final hour, she outwitted me with the one simple question that is impossible to avoid and which releases a torrent of other possible questions: are you going home or going on a trip? Depleted of my powers, I gave in, telling her we were on our way to Minneapolis for a wedding, at which point she talked my ear off the rest of our journey about her children, their academic and athletic careers and personality quirks, her life as a teacher at a boarding school, her childhood, the health of her parents, their recent home remodel, her recent vacation schedule, and her personal opinions on everything from traffic in Boston to American culture to why Dartmouth is inbred.

I left the flight exhausted and irritated, feeling defeated by having given in to the beast in 22C and fully committed to investing in some sound-canceling head-phones and an eye mask.



*Note for MP: This is ACTUALLY, LITERALLY how long it takes me, and therefore NOT an exaggeration of any kind.

Gridlock Traffic, Racism and Idiocy

A story on NPR the other day (listen to it here) combined with an experience I had while driving in Harvard Square prompted me to reflect a bit on the idea of racism and its implications for various generations of Americans.*

First, the story: the Talk of the Nation segment was discussing recent media hype over comments made by Supreme Court Justice Nominee Sonia Sotomayor and whether or not those comments could be classified as "racist". Most of the callers on the show were older Americans who had lived through the civil rights movement, and many asserted that the worst thing in the world anyone could call someone else was "a racist."

Now, the experience: I was driving through gridlock traffic right in the heart of Harvard Square. When I finally got the much needed opportunity to make a left turn, just at the critical moment, a man stepped out into the crosswalk (against the light) right in front of me, causing me to slam on my breaks at which point the light turned red, the walk signal began to chirp and I was stuck in the middle of the intersection swarmed by annoyed pedestrians. Now I must confess that in my frustration I made a face and gesture at this young man (made more awkward by the fact that it was beautiful out and all my windows were down). But in the midst of my gesturing, I realized that this man was Arab. I was immediately filled with guilt and shame, and the first thought that popped into my head was "oh my gosh, I'm so........racist!" I seriously considered trying to reconcile with this man (and would have were I not stuck in the middle of an intersection surrounded by commuters on foot), to shout something about how I wasn't thinking, or to confess to some neutral, non-culturally oppressive deity.

This incident came flooding back to me when I listened to the NPR story, and caused me to wonder about the differences in the way my generation and that of, say, my parents' views race and racism. I see that my generation (or at least my sub-cultural section of my generation) has grown up with the idea that political-correctness is to be valued about all else. As a child, I learned never to judge, to believe that all viewpoints were valid, and to understand that everyone was different and to be valued. But I wonder where this trajectory has led us? What have we lost in advocating the religion of political-correctness? How ridiculous is it that I feel racist for being upset with someone who annoyed me just because that person also happened to be part of an ethnic minority?

A quick survey of friends my age revealed similar issues: one friend felt racist because she didn't like salsa music. Another had been called racist because he didn't like hummus. I wonder if this type of self-reflection is really helping anyone at all. I would be willing to wager that it isn't. Of course not all viewpoints are valid: knowing that is what allows us to say no to violence and oppression, to real racism when we see it.

Several callers on the NPR show wondered whether or not racism had to be connected with power or judgment. Did you have to exercise power to be racist, they mused? I'm not sure whether or not I agree, but I do appreciate the sentiment that we need a deeper investigation in this country about what racism is before we can confront it and understand the real ways it still works.

I didn't think that the man crossed the street against the light because he was Arab, I thought he crossed the street against the light because he was an idiot. And idiocy, fortunately, can be found in every race. So maybe I'm not too racist after all.

If you're concerned at all about you're own racism, watch this youtube video to know you're not alone.




* This subject matter might seem strangely heavy compared to the normal WUJ content. But don't fret, more hilarity is coming soon!

Presbyterian Pride

Sitting around this weekend with not too much to do, I thought I'd take my pastoral authority out for a spin. So, as my first pastoral act, I marched in the Boston Pride Parade last Saturday. What a great time! The atmosphere was so positive with throngs of people lining the route clapping and cheering us on. It was an absolutely beautiful day, and a great time to show off some Presbyterian Pride.

The Big Day

There are times in which having incredibly talented friends can make you feel jealous or un-self-assured. But there are other times when having incredibly talented friends makes you feel blessed. Today is one of the latter.

Thus, I present to you the winner of the "What's Up, Jesus? Reader Submission Video Contest,"* a production of one of my most talented friends to whom I will be forever grateful for capturing special moments from my"big day." I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.





*Huge thanks to our submission participant Dina Rudick Jacobs.

Exaggeration Station

So I've come up against a new problem lately: literalists.

Not biblical literalists. I can deal with those. These are literal literalists; they take everything I say literally.

Now, as you may have noticed from this blog, I consider myself to be somewhat of a storyteller, a spinner of yarns, if you will. And I freely admit that there are times when a story needs a little "boost". Now don't get me wrong, facts are facts, but there are some situations in which a little splash of excitement and drama is necessary to make the telling of the story worthwhile. This is all for the sake of the hearers, of course, so that they can experience first hand the original sense of the narrative. I don't consider a little bit of enhancement to be off-limits, especially if I'm trying to tell a funny story or a story about something that annoyed me.*

But recently, my storytelling abilities have been stalled by the literalists. I'll give you an example:

Me: I went to Target yesterday to buy paper towels, and there was only one checkstand open, on a SATURDAY, and there were fifty-eight people in line.....I had to wait in line for an hour to pay.
Literalist #1: You really had to wait a whole hour?

See, this is where I get stopped up. Because there is not way to respond to the literalist. Okay, so maybe there were three checkstands open and I only waited five minutes behind three people, but I was in a hurry so it felt like an hour. (Besides, it wouldn't be worth retelling if it went like this: I was in Target and had to wait the normal amount of time to pay for my items.) But to explain all this would be to kill the story-telling buzz for both the teller and the hearer. Because the teller is forced to confront his or her exaggeration (never fun), and the hearer forced to realize that it wasn't a very good story to begin with.

So, I would like to propose a new system for letting the exaggerators remain in the closet and the literalists feel safe. My new system is called: Don't ask, don't tell. The basic premise is that no one should question any of the facts of my stories, and I won't tell you the mundane details of my life that are not (at least mildly) entertaining. This way, we'll all feel fulfilled and keep boredom (and terrorism) at bay.


*As it turns out, exaggerating is actually a genetic trait. My father has it, evidenced by the fact that 30% of my childhood was spent asking "MOM, is that true?" Scientists are still working on finding the gene for it, but it definitely may be connected to the easily-worked-up-about-things gene, also dominant in my family.

Watch It....

So, I've joined Weight Watchers again, mainly just to remind myself why it's not a good idea to eat Indian take out every night and have multiple servings of Brie cheese at every party. I've done it before and it's usually a great wake-up call about my health habits. Also, the stress of graduate school is having an effect on my figure, so it was more than time.

But joining up prompted me to share this story about last time I tried to join Weight Watchers, which is actually inexplicably hilarious.

So we're in the meeting and the leader is describing the plan to us (you know, making good food decisions, planning things out, less bread, more veggies....typical stuff), and in walks a very tall, very skinny woman with green eyebrows. (The color of her eyebrows is irrelevant to the story, but an interesting fact!) Now I'm not one to try to create animosity between women of different sizes and shapes, but this was not the body type one expects to see at a Weight Watchers meeting. However, no one seemed to mind so she sat down. After a few moments, she raises her hand and the following dialog ensued:

Instructor: Hi. Welcome to Weight Watchers. Are you interested in joining us today?
Skinny Lady: No. Actually, some of my co-workers are really overweight so I'm checking out this program so I can recommend it to them.
(At this point, I am beginning to feel a little resentful imagining what I might feel like if one of my coworkers told me that she visited a weight loss meeting in order to check it out for me....I can sense from looking around the table that I'm not alone.)
Instructor: Ummm......okay. Well, as I was saying, with Weight Watchers there is a points value assigned to each different food. You get so many points per day and...
Skinny Lady: Excuse me?
Instructor: Yes?
Skinny Lady: What resources do you have for people who need to gain weight?
(Awkward silence.)
Instructor: Well, not really any. This is mainly a program for people to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight.
Skinny Lady: So you don't have anything for people who are too thin?
Instructor: No.
Skinny Lady: Okay then.....

At which point, I was no longer able to pay attention because my blood pressure had gone up 70% in the last three minutes. In my head, I was thinking of genius things to say to green-eyebrows such as "I'LL GIVE YOU A RESOURCE FOR GAINING WEIGHT: IT'S CALLED A HAMBURGER YOU CRAZY $#%@#" or as my friend N says "You should be aware that you look like a ham sandwhich to everyone in here, so you should watch it....."