Dear Representative

Dear Representative Graves:

I'm JF, a constituent of yours here in Baton Rouge. I write to register my support for the articles of impeachment currently moving through the House Judiciary Committee.

A quick perusal of your website does not yield any information about your stance about impeachment. I assume, however, that like most Republicans you lean toward voting down the articles.

I don't know the extent to which your eventual vote on this issue will stem from a personal conviction (you sincerely oppose impeachment) versus a political calculation (it would be political suicide for you to vote for impeachment). Thus, I'm not sure what kind of argument, if any, you or your staff would find persuasive.

To be frank, I don't have a lot of hope in writing this note.

Polarization around this issue, as around so many others, makes rational discussion of this issue seem impossible. The question seems instead to boil down to pure tribalism: whose side are you on? Reds or blues? This fundamental question, this basic animosity, seems to determine all other political actions and interactions. Blues like me in districts with red-leaning politicians wonder whether our representatives truly represent us, just as I know reds who live in blue districts do. I don't know how a democracy functions with such mutual distrust.

It seems plain that the President has at least attempted to use the power of his office to benefit his personal political interests. It likewise seems incontestable that he has flatly refused to cooperate with House inquiries into this attempt by ignoring subpoenas and using lawsuits as delaying tactics.

I would like to think that, were the President a Democrat, I would support the House taking steps to hold him accountable for these same actions.

I don't know, though. That's a high ethical bar to hurdle, to move against the political fortunes of my own party. It might be that in such a hypothetical reality I would fall back on rationales that preserve my sense of integrity while letting my President's unethical acts slide. I'm only human, as motivated by tribalism as anyone.

Challenged to hold a Democratic President accountable, I might complain about the process, pointing to longstanding and vocal anti-President sentiment by many in the opposing party. I might insist that we must wait until the next election. I could equivocate about whether the President can be held accountable for a manipulation attempt that did not succeed. Perhaps I would argue against all evidence that the President was merely interested in combating Ukrainian corruption generally rather than targeting his primary opponent specifically. Most cynically, I could just declare that using the Presidency to advance personal interests over national interests is something everyone does now. "Just get over it."

Or if all else fails, I might concede that, yeah, the President's attempt was problematic, but it doesn't justify impeachment.

In that hypothetical scenario, though, I would be stuck with an uncomfortable question: would I be OK if the other team's President did exactly what my own did? I would not. I am not.

The only hope I have in writing you, Representative Graves, lies your own basic answer to that ethical question: would you be perfectly OK with the President's actions if they had been committed by a President Clinton or a President Obama? Failing to hold the President accountable now all but guarantees that the next administration--Republican, Democrat, or otherwise--will have carte blanche to maneuver against their personal opponents in whatever way they wish while simply ignoring Congressional checks and balances.

I hope you will vote to support impeachment. But beyond hope, I recognize my duty to communicate my convictions to you. President Trump has committed impeachable offenses. It is Congress's job to function as a check and balance. I hope you will do so.

Sincerely,

JF

Frozen 2: The United Methodist Church

Sometimes, when I'm running or otherwise exercising hard, the endorphins flooding my brain combine with whatever I'm listening to on headphones to give me one of those faux-transcendent experiences. I think, Oh my heavens, this is so profound. I get teary-eyed and choked up at song passages or lyrics that I'd normally ignore.

Tonight's pseudo-profundity arrived courtesy of the Frozen 2 soundtrack. Cards on the table: I liked Frozen 2 just fine. It was, I recognized, exactly the sort of stuff that would have captured my fantasy life for months had I viewed it when I was a preteen. It's little gay me crack. That water horse Elsa rides? The quasi-superhero elemental battles? The gorgeous (for a cartoon) Kristof? All of it.

Old boring woke me recognizes the problematic colonial subtexts that the script attempts to grapple with. (The story ends up with a kind of utopian Canada arrangement.) And of course I know that there's a good bit of cynical cash-grab behind the whole sequel endeavor.

But I do like the songs. Lyrically, I think Moana's the stronger contender. But Frozen 2's "Into the Unknown" has a surprising climb up to some soaring heights:

Just a fun, stirring song. And Panic! At the Disco's cover is equally fun.

As I ran and listened, though, I started thinking about some expanded meanings for some of those songs.

Context: I just came from my church's quarterly council meeting. All went well, no big conflicts. Of course, unspoken were the conflicts facing the United Methodist Church. The pro-inclusion folk in Louisiana are circulating a letter to sign on to, asking our Bishop to agree to a moratorium on trials and disciplinary actions against clergy who violate the new (and incredibly restrictive/punitive) rules about LGBTQ issues. Schism is coming to the Church. It's now just a question of what kind of schism it'll be (sorta amicable? horrifically messy? mutually destructive?) and what remnant will survive.

It's a scary time, I reflected, going into the unknown. Suddenly, I started seeing all the Frozen 2 songs as commentary on the future of my Church.

Consider Kristof's Chicago-inspired "Lost in the Woods":

Again, you're gone, off on a different path than mine
I'm left behind, wondering if I should follow
You had to go, and of course it's always fine
I probably could catch up with you tomorrow
But is this what it feels like to be growing apart?

...
Up 'til now the next step was a question of how
I never thought it was a question of whether
Who am I, if I'm not your guy?
Where am I, if we're not together forever?

Where indeed? What can we as a church be without each other? I do fear that, in venturing into the unknown, each side following what it hears as the Spirit's voice, we're destined to spend time lost in the woods.

And in such a situation, what can we do? Anna's "The Next Right Thing" fits perfectly:

I've seen dark before
But not like this
This is cold
This is empty
This is numb
The life I knew is over
The lights are out
Hello, darkness
I'm ready to succumb

I follow you around
I always have
But you've gone to a place I cannot find
This grief has a gravity
It pulls me down
But a tiny voice whispers in my mind
"You are lost, hope is gone
But you must go on
And do the next right thing"

Look, I get that all this is a stretch, a juxtaposition of an overstressed brain high on running chemicals and caffeine. I'm reading way against the grain here, recruiting pop culture fluff into my own spiritual processing. But hey, if I were a pastor (which, under the Traditional Plan of the UMC, I'm not able to be), I'd be building a sermon around some of these songs. 

It's a confusing time. I'll take whatever vehicle the Spirit uses to impress on me some comfort and guidance, even if the ultimate message here is less a happy ending for the Church as I know it and more permission to let it go.

Wrath versus Sloth

In my more pessimistic moments, I think our immediate political future in this country boils down to a war between vices. Which will prove stronger: wrath or sloth?

Right now wrath feels like it's winning. I was talking to my partner today about Joe Biden's recent angry challenge to a voter in Iowa. The voter, an unnamed 83-year-old farmer, said Biden's son Hunter had been up to no good in Ukraine. Biden called the man a "damn liar." The heated exchange continued, with the farmer claiming Biden was too old to run. Biden responded by challenging the man to a push-up contest and an IQ test.

My partner thought this was a good look for Biden. Biden has to beat a bully, he reasoned, so he has to become more bullish.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi likewise had a testy exchange with a reporter from Sinclair news asking if she hated the President. She forcefully refuted that thought, attesting that she prays for the President every night. She had no patience, she said, for the insinuation that she operates from animosity. "Don't mess with me," she told the reporter.

This, too, my partner says, is a good step for Democrats. "It's time Democrats stopped being the nice pushovers."

"No Republican," I responded, "not a single one that I read, believes that Democrats are too nice." Quite the opposite. The rude, judgmental liberal is a staple of media discourse on the right. Indeed, if you hid the names and affiliations of players in most political news stories, folk on the right and the left would likely automatically attribute tales of rude remarks or angry outbursts to the other side. Both sides, at least online enclaves, seem certain that the other team operates in bad faith. Each loathes the other.

Beneath this wrath lies quite a lot of fear and no small amount of despair. It's gospel in most parts of the online right that a President Hillary Clinton would have ended the Republic, declaring martial law and extending her totalitarian powers into a permanent police state. Obviously progressives think we're seeing the start of just such a devolution in the Trump presidency.

I used to worry, in my naivete pre-November 2016, about what Trump's base of support would do the day after he loses the election. Would Trump respect the results? Would he cede the election? Would his followers declare civil war? Now I wonder about whether some on my own side won't panic in similar ways should Trump be re-elected in 2020 (I consider this a likely outcome).

The specter of civil war sometimes doesn't seem that far away.

But the kryptonite of wrath is sloth. Inertia, to paraphrase Rick James, is a hell of a drug. Aside from being an awful humanitarian catastrophe, civil war is just so energy intensive. It takes so much work. The pacification measures laced into our lifestyles and media are quite powerful. Barely half the eligible populace even votes. Of course, such widespread lassitude can make coups d'état much easier to accomplish. But even that level of effort and organization seems unlikely in the USA absent some significant changes.

It bears remembering, though, that sloth isn't necessarily better than wrath. Sloth, after all, doesn't mean laziness. The old term acedia names more a kind of depressed inaction brought about by a lack of hope. It's more like despondency. It is the sin that, alongside pride, I am most vulnerable to. It describes my personal gravitational pull away from God.

I hardly want civil war or fear-based rage to rule the day. But a hopeless, despondent inaction, a suicide without death, is surely not much better.

Fear and Loathing, Cultural and Political Power

In my last post, I expressed disappointment at Rod Dreher's piece castigating as some trans people whose statements at a city council meeting in Olympia went viral among some right-wing sites (a Google search turns up almost entirely right-leaning hits). Dreher's post struck me (and still strikes me) as hyperbolic and just plain mean.

Statistically, trans people, particularly trans people of color, are among the most vulnerable demographics. The people in the video were speaking out against the way Olympia carried out the Trans* Day of Remembrance. There's no indication the LGBTQ community of Olympia or elsewhere endorsed their statements; they're a minority within a larger minority. The thought that these three people (1) stand in for progressives broadly, and/or (2) represented a deep and dire threat to Christian conservatives baffles me. For Dreher to harp on them as he does, an in such insulting terms, seems like punching down.

I mean, I could easily come up with people claiming to be conservative Christians saying awful things in city council meetings. See here, for instance, where a city councilman in GA spoke out (at a meeting) against interracial marriage. For the record, it would be wrong to frame such instances as typical of conservatives or Christians. There's a reason such clips and quotes go viral, and it's not because they're run-of-the-mill sentiments. It's cheap to select and represent the most extreme examples of one's opponents as representative.

From my perspective, the question concerns who has power. Who has actual influence? The three trans activists, as they themselves admitted, have no power. They're a minority of a minority complaining to an unsympathetic council. Aside from providing fodder for conservatives to laugh at, they have zero influence.

The example I shared from Georgia at least came from an actual councilman. That councilman was in turn defending his mayor's statements that a candidate for city administrator should be rejected because he (the candidate) was black and that the city wasn't ready for a black city administrator. Again, I do not suggest such attitudes are broadly representative of Christian conservatives. But, I submit, that story represents an instance where culture (in this case, parochial racism) finds direct expression by elected representatives. That's power.

Dreher differs. Setting my annoyance aside, then, I remain curious about his argument that the left's cultural victories easily trumps the right's political or legislative victories. Here's Dreher (I'm bolding what I see as his biggest point):

Hear me loud and clear: I understand why the Left fears Trump in power. What is a mystery to me is why they don’t see how thoroughly they’ve conquered this culture — and, eventually, will have conquered its politics. As a religious conservative, if it were possible to trade the presidency for the cultural power the Left has, I would take that deal without thinking twice. As I explained here, power to force one of the most successful corporations in America — Chick-fil-A — to violate its brand and change corporate policy out of the “shame” of having donated a little money to the Salvation Army, of all groups — man, that is some real power. It’s malevolent, but it’s real, and it’s going to dominate American life for the foreseeable future. Some religious conservatives rally around Trump because they really believe the rhetoric that comes out of their own mouths about how he’s the best president Evangelicals have ever had, and suchlike. But others, whatever they say in public, know the truth in private: that absent some unforeseen event, Trump is the last thing holding back the forces of the Left in this culture from doing exactly what Michael Brendan Dougherty, above, says they’re going to do: punish religious believers and their institutions as hard as they can manage. We know this from history. We know from recent history, too, that the Jacobin spirit is alive and well.

Most left-leaning folk I know would bark laughter at the idea that conservatives feel powerless. They control the presidency, the Senate, and--thanks to Mitch McConnell--much of the federal judiciary. They pass laws that from progressives' view actively seek to block or roll back decades of progress on racial justice, reproductive rights, LGBTQ equality, climate policy, and immigration. There are simply no one seriously advancing a policy that would target Christians as a class of people to bar them from legal marriage, lock them out of certain jobs, or gerrymander congressional districts in ways that minimize their electoral influence.

Those facts, of course, don't feel the same to conservatives I know. They, like Dreher (and like Micheal Brendan Dougherty whom he quotes), see some high-profile instances (Chick-fil-A is a favorite one of late; Brendan Eich is another) as signs of general trends. Those in certain (usually urban, often coastal) areas often feel isolated, dots of red in a sea of deep blue. They hear their neighbors and co-workers bashing Trump and know to keep their heads down. They see how younger generations are much less religious and much more aligned with progressive attitudes about sex, race, and gender than they are. And thus they see threat.

I agree with Ezra Klein (whom Dougherty cites approvingly, and who in turn name-checks Dreher) that fueling the Republican support for Trump isn't (or isn't only or primarily) endorsement but fear. It's the "flight 93" presidency (existential, all-or-nothing threat)--forever. Dougherty and Dreher would supplement Klein's argument with the idea that it's both sides--Democrats as well as Republicans--who are operating from fear and loathing of the other side.

It is not a hopeful picture.

Petty Disappointments

In some past entries, I've occasionally referenced the columns of Rod Dreher, a conservative Orthodox writer at The American Conservative. I find many of Dreher's columns a refreshing departure from the chorus of pro-Trump rhetoric in my daily tour in the realms of right-wing media. Dreher also wrote The Benedict Option, a work whose argument (basically--Christians should hunker down and focus on surviving in a secular world) I find important in my own research.

Most recently, it was Dreher who turned me on to Heroes of the Fourth Turning, Will Arbery's new (and now very well-known) play about white conservative Christian thought. The script name-checks The Benedict Option and other ideas. It's smart, complex, and eye-opening for coastal-urban progressives who often have trouble imagining beyond their own worldview. I've toyed with the idea of having a mini forum on the play, even inviting Dreher to participate.

But then I read pieces like this. Dreher takes aim at a small group of trans people who spoke at a city council meeting in Olympia, Washington, to express displeasure at some aspects of the city's Transgender Day of Remembrance celebrations. What exactly they were upset about you do not know from Dreher's retelling. (The issue seems to relate to the city's use of police forces as part of the celebration, though I'd need to do more research myself to know for sure.) Instead, Dreher focuses on other matters. "Now, you regular readers know that I, a passionate Ignatian (Reilly), go catatonic with joy in the presence of freaks." It goes downhill from there.

Dreher includes pictures and videos, mocking them for their appearance, their complaints, their being trans (an identity Dreher simply has no truck with--he consistently refers to the trans women there as men). He sprinkles in a bit of pity; from his perspective these "loonies" are in distress. But his main point seems to involve pointing and laughing at the "freaks" whose complaint "shows why there's no satisfying progressive activists."

Let's bracket off the host of issues here--the fact that three trans activists in Olympia are hardly spokespeople for "progressive activists" the world over, the fact that these are largely out-of-context clips of a local political situation we're not privy to, the fact that almost no one except for clickbaity right-wing sites are showcasing this story. Let's even stipulate that the activists in the video are performatively expressive--wearing outfits and speaking words meant to get attention (and that seems to be working). They seem odd and unusual because they're mobilizing a bit of spectacle.

Do I agree with or endorse these activists' stances? I don't know enough about them to say. I might not. Like any inchoate group, left-leaning LGBTQ folk don't always like or agree with each other. Obviously other trans folk in Olympia thought the Day of Remembrance was good enough to participate in. (Notice we don't hear about them from Dreher's piece.) Look, there are plenty of times where I've been annoyed at woker-than-thou internecine squabbles on the left (just as I used to be annoyed at holier-than-thou internecine squabbles on the right). But do I feel the need to add to the pile-on of the right-wing internet laughing at how odd or extreme some people in the video look? Nope.

I'm disappointed, then, to see Rod Dreher joining the pile-on. Dreher, a pundit and writer of national renown, seeks out and lifts up for ridicule three people who are about as powerless and remote in comparison to him as anyone. It's punching down. It's just mean. It's--to be frank--just not Christlike. What have these three people to do with anything in Dreher's life? The only reason we know about them is because right-wing media has made their clip go somewhat viral, largely in order to present them as somehow typical of trans people or progressive activists.

Dreher is of course free to comment on people and respond to their public statements. But his piece here occurs as part of one his larger narratives, that Christian-hating progressives like these three people pose an existential threat. The constant, pernicious threat of progressives (especially LGBTQ progressives) forms a favorite theme of his. White Christian conservatives, it seems, are the ultimate victims of victims. Even that would be something I can read and think about. But this piece isn't a measured, well-thought-out argument. This is name-calling and jeering at people who live their lives as constant targets of ridicule.

It's just disappointingly petty from a writer who I rarely agree with but often learn from. It makes me rethink the whole notion of having some kind of forum about the play where he's a speaker. He'd be a natural--essential--participant but for the distracting noise of pieces like this. For better or worse, he's established that these kind of comments are part of who he is as a public intellectual and representative of conservative Christian thought. It's not just Benedict Option; it's also calling people "freaks." His attitude here makes me wonder how he'd be around some of my students, especially those who are themselves queer, trans, and/or nonbinary. And how would they feel knowing I've invited to speak someone who has a history of mocking people like them?

I just can't see an ethical way to have him at some official event for my students.


And that's depressing.

The New One by Mike Birbiglia

The last thing we do in my graduate script analysis class is watch Mike Birbiglia's My Girlfriend's Boyfriend. Birbiglia is ostensibly a stand-up comedian, but like lots of comics today, he more resembles a theatre artist than anything. His shows, including Girlfriend's Boyfriend resemble intricately structured stories peppered with some comedian-ish elements (impromptu audience interaction, etc.). They're marvels of dramaturgy, delivery, staging, and even design. I'm a big fan. (Someday I'll teach a class where I pair Hannah Gadsby's Nanette with Birbiglia's Thank God for Jokes.)

I was thrilled, then, to see Birbiglia's newest piece, The New One, on Netflix this last weekend with my sister. The show has all the standard Birbiglia features--great writing, charm, self-deprecation, deep pessimism mixed with hopeful pragmatism.

But in the opening credits, my sister (more perceptive as always than I) groaned, "Oh, I hope it's not about him having a baby."

Birbiglia has been open about his and his wife's plans not to have kids. My sister and I both made similar plans. As soon as she said it, though, I saw it: yep. This is going to be the "Here's how I had a kid" one. The kid is "the new one."

And sure enough, that's the story. Birbiglia does his best to make the piece as meta as possible, devoting half the show to his multiple reasons for not wanting a kid. (He has seven. I agree with all of them.) Then he and his wife have a kid, which in Birbiglia's narrative finds him alienated, literally and figuratively, from the "we" that used to be his relationship with his wife.

Birbiglia, as he's performed about before, has a sleep disorder that causes him to act out his dreams. He once jumped through a plate-glass window on the third story of a hotel, injuring himself badly in the process. He now sleeps in a cocoon of a tight sleeping bag and mittens. With a baby, on doctor's orders, he also now quarantines himself (and his cat) in a separate bedroom locked from the inside in a way his sleeping self could not circumvent.

On a more profound level, though, Birbiglia finds that the closeness he and his wife shared simply pales in comparison to his wife's relationship to their daughter Oona. They are as close as two beings can be, intimate in a way that Birbiglia recognizes he can never be with anyone, including his wife and daughter. (It also sounds like Birbiglia had relinquished much of the parenting duties to his wife, which of course fuels quite a bit of tension between the two of them.) In an uncomfortable moment of realization, Birbiglia discovers he can see why some fathers leave their wives and kids.

He does not.

In the end, he concludes that, unlike what his wife had promised, the "new one" had produced irrevocable change in his life. They'll never go back. But, as his many other friends had promised him, he finds it worthwhile.

I was sad, seeing it.

I once wanted kids, wanted them badly. I wanted the huge change, the permanent reset of priorities that children bring. For a number of reasons I chose not to pursue that path (a path that would have been extremely hard due to gayness. It's bizarre that some heterosexuals can have kids by accident.).

I have a lot of guilt--and sometimes regret--about that choice. Above all, I have the FOMO sense of having skipped a part of the human life script that everyone else sees a mandatory. I've at best missed out on something good; at worst I've abandoned my duty as a human to perpetuate the species.

Of course, I now also harbor real doubts about the wisdom of perpetuating the species. The reasons Birbiglia gives for not having kids are, in my view, spot-on. Understand: I'm committed to the right of humans to decide for themselves if, when, and how to reproduce. I'm likewise committed to the invaluable worth of all humans born. But, if you were to ask me, I'd say that humans could stand to have fewer children overall. It'd be great if we could no longer have kids "by accident" (except if the parents-to-be are in that "we're wanting more kids but not actively trying" state where pregnancy would be welcome). I'd like every child born to be a child that's wanted and planned for and provided for.

I recognize I'm in the minority here. I recognize that my not having children leaves me in a tight spot in old age. So much of our elder care system assumes children and grandchildren. Those without any find things even more difficult than usual.

So it felt a little sad, like we've lost one, to see Birbiglia giving in to the life narrative he had so resisted. It's his business, of course, and I wish him and his family all good things. And his show is good.

But still: sigh.

Catching Up from Thanksgiving

And I'm back. I took a break during, well, the break from school. Said break consisted of me driving up to Oklahoma, spending the holiday with my family, and driving back on Sunday.

Had I been posting regularly, I'd likely have covered the following topics, each of which formed part of my mental blogging:

Bacon-wrapped turkey: we attempted this, lured by our love of bacon. It replaced our standard herb-butter rub. The verdict? Not impressive. Some of the bacon was crispy (as bacon should be); other parts were that kind of sad-floppy ham one gets when bacon is essentially boiled instead of fried or broiled. Some possibly related, possibly unrelated temperature weirdness (the thermometers read underdone, underdone, underdone--and then suddenly waaaaay too done!) combined with the unappetizing bacon to make this a low turkey year. Back to herb rub for Christmas.

Popup shops and local stores in Oklahoma City: OKC never gets enough credit, I think, for being a surprisingly cool town. It has a thriving arts scene, a robust independent food culture, and a lot of neat offerings for folk interested in Okie-made stuff. Yay, Oklahoma.

Knives Out: We saw this mystery movie from Rian Johnson in OKC with my sister and brother-in-law. It's quite fun, with a stellar cast. There's a fascinating racial/colonial subtext: whiteness eating itself. The final shot, with [SPOILER REMOVED] sipping from a coffee mug reading "My House," is the perfect button on that statement.

The Protoevangelium of James: I had to rush back home from OKC Sunday in time to prep a 7 AM Monday morning Advent lesson. We're using Amy-Jill Levine's Light of the World. Levine is a Jewish professor at Vanderbilt Seminary who writes a lot of books for Christians about Christian scriptures. It's an impressive feat of ecumenical empathy, watching her shift into the mindspace of a believing Christian. I'm enjoying it thoroughly and learning a lot.

I was teaching Chapter 2 about the annunciation of Mary and the Mangificat. Among the insights Levine shares is a reference to the Protoevangelium of James (aka The Infancy Gospel of James, The Nativity of Mary, and The Gospel of James), an apocryphal book from the second century. Though the early church by the third and fourth centuries had recognized the work as pseudepigraphic and rejected it from canon, its narrative proved popular enough to infuse Christian thought.

Levine analogies the text to midrash, a practice of (as she puts it) "filling in the blanks" left by scriptural accounts. In my reading (I sought out and read the whole thing--it's pretty short), it seems more like a fan fiction prequel to the Gospels: All About Mary. It's from this work that practically all the non-biblical stuff we hear about Mary (especially in Catholic and Orthodox traditions) comes. The Protoevangelium gives Mary two parents, Joachim and Anna, who after years of infertility, finds herself blessed with an angelic annunciation: she's to have a special child. It's here that we find fully expressed the idea that Joseph must have been elderly, a widower with sons of his own (these become Jesus's brothers mentioned in the canonical gospels).

It's here, also, that we get the idea that Mary was a perpetual virgin--before, during, and after Jesus's birth. The nativity narrative is fascinating. Mary and Joseph find refuge in a cave, not a manger. Joseph goes out to look for a Jewish midwife. All of creation stands still, but he finds a midwife. The midwife witnesses the miraculous birth (kind of a divine C-section: Jesus just appears) and fetches another midwife, Salome, to check whether Mary is still intact.

That's right, folks: the Protoevangelium of James contains the first recorded gynecological examination, described in fairly graphic detail. Salome inserts her digit into Mary only to find that (1) Mary is miraculously still a virgin, and (2) the hand that did the testing burns and whithers (it's later healed).

Wild stuff.  That led me to do a bit of research about the doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity. I found to my surprise that, historically, most Christians have affirmed this bit of non-biblical theology (including John Wesley). Only with the Calvinists did this idea fall out of favor with Protestants. It remains important to Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christians. I can't quite figure out why it's significant that Mary be imagined as perpetually virginal, but I'm content to remain happily agnostic. (Of course, the virginity of Mary is itself somewhat contested, especially since the Isaiah passage often cited as prophesying Jesus's birth to a virgin represents something of a mistranslation from the Hebrew. Almah in Hebrew just means "young woman of marriageable age," where as the Greek parthenos means "virgin" specifically.)

Anyway--it makes for a fascinating discussion in Advent class.

And that's what I would have been blogging about had it not been for the holiday.