Southern Hospitality

Well, my mother doesn't read this, but if she did then she might see how some of the ideas that she put in her daughther's head might not be the healthiest in the world. I grew up in rural East Tennessee. It's a culture that places its women in a double bind. I was taught to be competent and not need men. I needed to fix my car, make straight A's, and be sure of myself. But I was also taught to be soft spoken and demure, play coy, and always be polite. Never insult a man's ego. Never expect too much emotional support from men. Never demand anything that you need. Just so you know, trying to be all of these things will make you insane.

Also consider that my mother grew up in a strong single mother family with two sisters and one brother, with a father that abandoned her family when she was two years old. My father had an authoritarian dad whose family caters to his every whim in such a subservient way that there is rarely conflict. So, the parenting messages were all sorts of muddled sometimes.

Another thing that my mother never does is send forwards. You know, those pithy, annoying emails that someone found amusing and thought that everyone including your second cousin should read. So, I found it INCREDIBLY interesting that my mother sent me a forward today. My interest was piqued.

Now, I know not to open emails with the title "Southern Women." But hope springs eternal, and I thought maybe the entire world had flip flopped, my mother had caught on to my anger about being shoved into a box that didn't quite fit all my life, and would preface such an email with something like "Look at this driveling pile of poop." But, no such luck, my mom sent the following as an actual serious forward.

Southern Women:
Southern women appreciate their natural assets:
Clean skin.
A winning smile.
That unforgettable Southern drawl.

Southern women know their manners:
"Yes, ma'am."
"Yes, sir."
"Why, no, Billy!"

Southern women have a distinct way with fond expressions:
"Y'all come back!"
"Well, bless your little heart."
"Drop by when you can."
"How's your Momma?"

Southern women know their summer weather report:
Humidity
Humidity
Humidity

Southern women know their vacation spots:
The beach
The beach
The beach

Southern women know the joys of June, July, and August:
Summer tans
Colorful hi-heel sandals
Strapless sun dresses

Southern women know everybody's first name:
Honey
Darlin'
Shugah

Southern women know the movies that speak to their hearts:
Fried Green Tomatoes
Driving Miss Daisy
Steel Magnolias
Gone With The Wind

Southern women know their religions:
Baptist
Methodist
Football

Southern women know their country breakfasts:
Red-eye gravy
Grits
Country ham
Mouth-watering homemade biscuits with momma's homemade jelly

Southern women know their cities dripping with Southern charm:
Charleston (Chawl'stn)
Savannah (S'vanah)
New Orleans (N'awlins)
Atlanta (Addlanna)

Southern women know their elegant gentlemen:
Men in uniform.
Men in tuxedos
Rhett Butler, of course!

Southern girls know their prime real estate:
The Mall
The Country Club
The Beauty Salon
(maybe we should add Wal-Mart)

Southern girls know the four deadly sins:
Having bad hair and nails
Having bad manners
Cooking bad food
Wearing too much makeup in the summer

Southern girls know men may come and go, but friends are fahevah!

Now...... Shugah, send this to some friends who
were raised in the South or wish they had been!


If you're a Northern transplant, Bless your little
heart... fake it. We know you got here as fast as you
could.....!!!

Now, I have to take some responsibility for this. I'm not quite adult enough to call my mom and tell her just how much this email hurts me, considering all the work I"m doing in therapy on the fact that I don't feel enough like a woman. My mother, a strong woman who is in the ministry, who thinks women are equipped to minister as much as men, who would fight to her dying day to be treated as an equal, subjects herself to such latent discrimination and it hurts me.

I've talked before about how my mother told me that she was basically disappointed in my pereceived level of feminity. This is interesting to me from the same mother who put me in Tball at the age of 4, who enrolled me in dance classes, told me I could do anything, and she literally fought city hall for equal wages for women at one point when I was child.


So, maybe I'm a snivelling ungrateful baby. My parents are happily married for 30 years, they were there for every game and award banquet, they taught me to love Christ and others, they never participated in manifest sexism, and they did not hold me back even when it scared them where I was flying.

But, it does hurt. And it makes me angry. GRRRRR.

Guess who's tagged, tagged again...

Hey! I'm back. I'll give you all crazy wonderful posts about my thoughts, some positive and some not, about the AACC world conference in Nashville and the people that I met there. Also coming up: the rocky dispute that might well defend the claim that single Christians can be frigid weirdos afraid of sexuality and reality...

But, on a lighter note,Zalm tagged me and validated my existence. So stay tuned for a brief and bizarre ride into my past and present...

10 Years Ago:

Living in Tennessee, in the same house I had always lived in. I was 15 and a sophomore in High School. I was dating an alto sax playing band geek who I actually should never have dated because he was headed for an entirely different future than I could ever imagine for myself. I was crushing on a skater arty/farty guy in my geometry class that I eventually dated for over a year, and who actually reminds me a lot of my husband, but this guy later broke my heart. I still thought the world was black and white, and so was my faith. The biggest drama in my life was my decision to quit the basketball team because of the asshole coach and not getting caught while making out. I do remember around this time was Homecoming, and I snuck back to the football stadium with my boyfriend (the band geek) to make out.

5 Years Ago:

I had met my *now* husband four months previously. We were pretty serious and already talking marriage. I was 20 years old and a junior in college. I got accepted into my interdisciplinary degree program. I was taking Sociology classes and working on my thesis. I thought I would become a youth minister. I read my first Francis Schaeffer book. I was in a class with an asshole professor who harangued me because I was a Bush supporter. I was taking a class that would change my life, Technology, Society, and the Common Good. And my women's flag football team won the championship with me as quarterback. Oh, and my team beat Philip Fulmer's daughters' football team in the process. After he saw me run the reverse at that game, he ran it next game. I can't prove it, but I swear he stole my play.

1 Year Ago:

Married two years and living in Illinois, I was at the beginning of my second year of my Master's program. I would soon learn that the license I wanted had been discontinued, and I would have to decide whether to get my doctorate. I was dealing with who I wanted to support in the election (I ultimately chose Kerry). I began walking the wire between my conservative family and not so conservative husband. I began to realize that I might actually need to go to therapy to provide it to others well. I found out I was going to Europe with Kevin and on a mission trip. Kevin would be full time at his job. I would soon start three jobs (that's too many). My life and life's outlook were under scrutiny and and in flux. They still are.

Yesterday:

I was in Nashville and finally reunited with Kevin after two weeks of being apart. We were visiting with the best man from our wedding, his girlfriend and roommate, and two of my colleagues who were at the conference with me. We started off with dessert at midnight at the Sunset Grille. It was one of my colleague's birthdays. We didn't get in until 2am. I dropped off my colleagues, and then ditched the last morning of the conference to spend time with Kevin and said friend/best man from the night before. Returned to have lunch with the rest of my colleagues and a couple of our profs who were at the conference. Drove colleagues to the airport and returned rental car. Then rode with Kevin back to Illinois. Had crazy "haven't seen you in two weeks" sex with him. :)

5 Snacks I Enjoy:
Pita Chips and Hummus, Gummi Bears, Flattened Bananas from Trader Joe's, Dried Apple Rings, Veggies and Ranch Dip.


5 Songs I Know All the Words To:
By Derek Webb: Wedding Dress, I repent, and Beloved. Bitch by Meredith Brooks, Pink by Aerosmith


5 Things I’d Do with 100 Million Dollars:
Give a lot away, Pay off my school loans, Put some aside to start my own free community center and clinic, Buy a house, Go back to Europe.


5 Places I’d Run Away To:

Smoky Mountains; All of Europe (especially Italy, Fussen,Germany, and Krakow); California (never been); Oregon (never been); Canada (never been)

5 Things I’d Never Wear:

Cliched Christian Tshirts, Anything that shows my midriff, a bikini, thong underwear, and low ride jeans that show my underwear.


5 Favorite TV Shows:

Well, I'll stick to ones currently running on Television:
Family Guy
Amazing Race
Desperate Houswives
Grey's Anatomy
House

5 Biggest Joys:

Spending time with my husband, bike rides on sunny days, knowing myself better, travelling to cool places, and working with my teenage girl clients.

5 Favorite Toys:
Settlers of Catan, My Awesome Flat Screen Monitor and Computer, My Dell Axim, My bicycle, and my kitty cats.

5 Fine Folks Who Can Now Consider Themselves Tagged:
Kevin, Insane Preschool Mom, Myste, Stephanie, and Meg

Just when life seems overwhelming

...you find something like this on a blog.

The honorable one...

To whomever Googled the exact phrase, "Journeys In Insanity." You made my me smile that someone actually thought to Google my blog. If you did it on accident, looking for something else, don't tell me. It's bad week and it's only Monday.

This week in community psychology...

This week’s readings on the Christian rationale for community and preventive psychology make a strong case for the utilization of such approaches not only by psychology professionals, but also by all members of Christian faith communities. As discussed by Wolterstorff in Until Justice and Peace Embrace, Christians are called to “uncover systemic causes of poverty and then work at eliminating those causes.” Pohl’s concept of Christians extending hospitality to the disenfranchised is key to achieving such revolutionary systemic change as suggested by Wolterstorff. However, understanding faith and allowing the church a central place in community interventions is valuable to all psychologists, not only those of faith. Kloos & Moore make a strong defense of the centrality of faith communities of all types in the social fabric of life and subsequently, the acknowledgement of such communities as legitimate arenas for psychological intervention.

Christians practicing in the field of psychology must answer the call for hospitality to the disenfranchised in order to return psychology to its roots of service. For such an endeavor to be undertaken, it must permeate all domains of practice for the psychologist of faith. Incorporating the suggestions put forth by Canning, Pozzi, McNeil, & McMinn for integrative training requires a thorough examination of the training philosophies, faculty, practicum experiences and course work of psychology programs. Moreover, this dedication to the “least of these” needs to also be reflected in the research and publications of Christians in psychology as recommended by Canning, Case, & Kruse.

The community perspective and focus on social justice within these articles evokes a strong supportive response from me. Ever since my undergraduate studies in sociology, I feel have been searching for the thread that unites all of these ideas, and feel some relief at having found it. Just this morning at church, I felt an undeniable stirring of the Holy Spirit within me to re-vision psychology and my own call to ministry. However, rather than abandon my training, I feel it is my calling to utilize psychology in a manner within the Church that champions God’s call to social justice and peace. Oddly enough, the words of Kloos & Moore, legitimizing the Church as a venue for psychological intervention, are what I needed to hear the most. For the past several years I had dismissed working professionally with churches because congregations that I had been a part of were not amenable to such radical ideas as social justice and ministering to the least of these.

Since coming to Wheaton College, and joining Community Christian Church in Naperville, God has placed key exemplars in my life whose motivations for justice and peace are inextricably tied to their faith in Christ. Having seen such integration in practice, the ideas of hospitality as subversive or the support for transforming the systemic causes of poverty, add a conceptual framework that helps to hem in the experiences, emotions, and the work of God in my own life for the past few years.

Thinking back to the first time that I watched The Color of Fear or stood on the football field in Diversity class seeing all my classmates of color behind me, I did not quite know what to do with the feelings of fear, anger, and guilt that I felt. I remember distinctly the triangle Derek drew on the board with each of those emotions at an apex. In light of today’s readings and that knowledge, it becomes clear that one of my callings as a Christian psychologist is to move my brothers and sisters in Christ away from the corners of fear, anger, and guilt toward communities that hold all of those emotions in tension by offering hospitality to the least of these. Moreover, I feel called to facilitate making a place for different people groups to learn from one another via reciprocity in our faith communities. As said by Pohl, we are to “move away from a charity model that reinforces ‘the donor’s distance and the recipients’ dependency.’” However, I want not to relegate justice to the state, or else we lose the crux of justice and peace, which is community and relationship with one another.

Specific, concrete ideas for how I can work in a ministry setting and convey these ideas is elusive to me at this point. For me, I know that it involves ministering to children and adolescents using my psychology training and conveying the ideas about peace and justice, hospitality, and the like to them. I am drawn back to last week’s reading by Durlak and Wells discussing the effectiveness of prevention. This uncertainty is what keeps me searching for God and in prayer, because I have few answers.