Cultural Identity

What do you consider your cultural or ethnic identity? What traits or practices do you associate with that identity? Are there things you would like to do to enhance that part of who you are?

I chose this blog prompt because it's hard for me. And because it's something I've been thinking about a lot lately. Do all parents begin to feel that their time is so limited with their children and there are still so many things they want their children to know and learn? Mane is in 7th grade. She's 12. And already I am beginning to feel that my time with her is stretching thin. I have only so many years left. There's so much I want to squeeze into our lives, into her learning. I remember that when we got married, Mango's mother warned me that she wasn't finished with him yet. She wasn't prepared for him to marry so young, and she was still parenting.

One of the things I want Mane to have is a sense of cultural identity, as sense of where she comes from and who she is. I think this is an essential human need - to know our place in the world. I find that many families I know struggle with a lack of cultural identity, in particular those families who have no recent immigrants. We look at the more recent immigrants around us and long for what they have - foods, traditions, clothing, holidays that define who they are as a people. Perhaps, though, our ideas of cultural and ethnic identity simply need some expanding.

Ethnically, I am primarily German and Swedish (with a little Irish, Dutch, Swiss, and Prussian for good measure). Very little of those ethnic cultures have come to me through my family, other than a stubborn German/Irish temperament, and, perhaps, a Swedish love of the dark nights of winter, wool sweaters and candles. I love the Swedish Christmas goats and Dala horses, chocolate from Switzerland, and the music of the Irish.

As a cross-cultural family, we're also part Mexican. Ha! And from this adoption of Mexican heritage, we've developed traditions of authentic Mexican food - Tres Leche cakes for birthdays, mole, caldo, enchiladas... Strangely, we've done very little with the holidays...except read about them. Food was such a daily comfort and such a foundational piece a bringing Vespera into our family that we integrated that first and best.

In terms of holiday celebrations, we actually look a whole lot more Jewish than anything else. Or, perhaps, we've adopted church tradition and Jewish tradition as a way to feed the need for cultural identity. Religious practice can be a huge part of cultural identity for people. At our house, Advent has become the anchoring season...because we light candles nearly every night, read stories, and pray. We have a Jesse tree, an Advent wreath, a stack of picture books, and...often...somewhere in the middle of it all...a chanukiah. We trace the seasons of the year from Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot and Chanukah, through Passover/Easter, Shavuot/Pentacost, and, of course, a weekly Shabbat.

On a different level, our "family culture" also includes homeschool, whole and organic foods, and natural living choices. It's not the culture of my childhood, but a culture that has developed over the last 16 years, as Mango and I have developed our own "culture," as our separate cultures have blended into each other.

I would love to nurture more of an ethnic and cultural identity for us, and I think I know how to do it. It's about picking up the little traditions and just doing them. Three Kings Days and Cinco De Mayo...Santa Lucia and Saint Mary's Day. It's about reading the stories and visiting the food markets and cooking the food. I have learned that it isn't really about big things but about simple moments.

I want to visit the Swedish Institute more and Mercado Central. I want to find a Dala Horse that I love for mantle. I want to learn a little German, take Mane to German restaurants, and read about German immigrants. I want to attend the Cinco De Mayo parade and make a Three Kings cake. This is who we are. Our stories shape us, whether we know it or not.

Ivory

I have been longing to join the Creativity Boot Camp along with some other wonderful women bloggers (whom I discovered through the Momalom gig), but the first word prompt on Day 1 threw me so badly that I had to let it rest for several days. I was planning to remain several days behind the rest of the camp anyway, as Boot Camp began in the days prior to my oldest flying out of country, and I needed to spend time with her. Anyway...the first day's prompt was the word, "Ivory," and I haven't been able to finish the piece of writing.

Here it is in its partiality...so that I can move on, and let it sit while I continue with the boot camp prompts.


Ivory makes me think of elephant tusks and piano keys and the book about the tooth fairy that I used to read to Mane when she first started losing teeth. It also makes me think of wedding dresses, of the more muted and elegant color of ivory in contrast to the stark white of...well...white. And then there's the stigma that off-white is for the non-virgin bride. And then my thoughts spiral away like elephant tusks thinking of the damage done in the name of female virginity.


I finished a novel about a week ago called Breath, Eyes, Memory about a Haitian girl who comes to live with her mother in the U.S. at the age of 12 and her experience with the practice of mothers "testing" their daughters to check the status of their virginity until they marry. This is to insure that the family name will not be dishonored by a woman turning out to not be a virgin on her wedding night. This, of course, raises myriads of questions for me. Among them: What kind of husband parades a bloody sheet through the streets after his wedding night? Should he really be proud of himself for that? 

And then I think of the opposite of the ivory wedding dress...the ivory tower: the elite untouchables, those who are too clean and pure to touch the rest of the world. Strangely, I feel that both the obsession with virginity and the cloistered elitism are part of the religiosity of conservative Christianity...or, perhaps, it isn't Christianity, but just religiosity, which seems to fall so readily into legalism. I'm not talking politics. I'm talking about graceless religion...the kind of religion that looks down its nose at people but refuses to get dirty in the trenches doing the real work. Hypocrisy. Claiming to love but refusing to love anyone who is lost, or wounded, or misled.


And I keep picturing the curve of the elephant tusk, the fine, easy graceful curve...the dangerous curve...both sides of the same coin. 


That's really all. Spiraling thoughts, eh?

**************************************

A Bike Named Martha

If you want to follow our progress with the biking experiment you can go to my newest blog: A Bike Named Martha. It's still a work in progress at the moment, but I wanted to start writing about it right away!

Biking Everywhere

We have some friends. Let's call them Mr. & Mrs. Bicycle. They bike everywhere...literally. They have no car, and they live here in this city. They are happy, well-adjusted people with real jobs, and a child. There's a second child on the way, too, by the way. They don't flaunt their no-car status. In fact, it's kind of hard to get them to talk about it. They just live like this, and I completely admire them.

I'm not sure what attracts me the most. Of course, there are the environmental benefits of riding a bike, rather than driving a car. The kind of car driving I tend to do is the absolute worst - city driving, stop and go, quick trips here & there with lots of turning the car off & restarting after a quick errand. I've been aware of this for some time now, though, and it hasn't compelled me to do a whole lot about it. (For which I feel somewhat guilty.)

There are health benefits, too, to be sure. One certainly burns more calories and builds more muscle on a bike than in a car. It actually occurred to me how funny it all is, actually, when you think about it...to sit down and have the car carry you half a mile to the grocery store. Half a mile was easily in the daily or several-times-daily repertoire of our ancestors.

But, still, the health benefits are not the most compelling.

About a week ago I went to Mr. Bicycle's house in the afternoon along with Vespera. She helps him run a bicycle repair and refurbishing business/charity out of his garage a few afternoons a week. Mango & Mane came along. I went because I had a trail-a-bike type apparatus to give to Mr. Bicycle. We all stayed because we'd biked all the way over there, and, well, it seemed like a comfortable place to be. We got our hands dirty repairing a few bikes. Vespera dug right in, knowing exactly what to do and where everything was kept. All kinds of people, from up and down the alley and all through the neighborhood stopped by. Some already knew Mr. Bicycle, and some came to ask a favor or buy a bike because they had been referred by someone else. A few came to practice their Spanish or teach a few words in Somali. It was unhurried, even leisurely.

Yes, that's it. Mr. Bicycle is never, ever in a hurry. In spite of the fact that he must plan all of his trips with extra time for biking (though he is fast), he's somehow never frantic. Maybe, just maybe, cars contribute to our hustle and bustle, hurried lifestyles. We can get somewhere more quickly so we squeeze more into the day and wait until the last possible moment to leave for anywhere. Even I, as planful as I am, often feel hurried, though I'm notorious for being on time or even early. The truth is, being early requires hurrying, too.

Mr. Bicycle said something when we were there in his alley the other day that rings so true, too. He said that he hated the winter until he started biking in it. Imagine that! Most of us, even here in hardy Minnesota, might agree to a 3-season bicycle experiment. But to bike in WINTER? Minnesota Winter? I wouldn't believe it, except that last year all the kids & Mango got snowboards, and I went out on skis, and we had fun in the Minnesota winter. I had been looking on-line for ways to beat the winter blues in MN, and I read somewhere that if you're going to live in the winter in MN, you have to embrace the winter, you have to get OUT into the winter and enjoy it. And how true that we can often find something to embrace when we just stop struggling so hard against it.

Next to not being hurried, I find that I enjoy the simplicity of biking. Mango told me the other day that the bicycle is the most efficient human-powered machine ever invented. That attracts me somehow. If you get around Minneapolis much, you'll see that many people have turned this bicycling simplicity into an art form. Bicyclists are inventive and creative in the ways they find to convey themselves and carry cargo. Very creative, and, yet, still so simple...homemade, backyard solutions. Anybody can learn to fix their own bike. Most people will never learn to fix their own car. And fixing a bike takes a few minutes, maybe an hour. Putting a new transmission in our car took all day.

Mango uses the word "freedom" when talking about riding a bike. He talks about how biking is "coloring outside the lines." It's outside the box, maybe even outside the rat race. It doesn't confine you to following google maps to get to your destination. It frees you from consuming the world's resources, unplugs you from the grid for just a little while. Biking allows you the freedom to stop and say "hello" to your fellow commuter, to not just move from "one climate controlled environment to another" (Mango's words again), but to actually experience the world and interact with it. Biking means being out in the world in a way that you cannot be if you're commuting in a car.

This is what attracts me. It's the simplicity, the living and breathing of real life, the interaction with the world and fellow human beings.

I also love it that Mane sleeps really well at the end of a "biking" day.

So what am I doing about it? As a homeschooling experiment, Mane & I are going to keep track of the errands we run, the places we go every day, and where we could go bike. We're going to keep track of how much we use the car, and how much we use it when we didn't have to use it. It isn't to make anyone feel guilty. It's to raise awareness, to play with the possibilities, to increase our dependence and our freedom. I have blocked out an hour and a half each morning on my extremely flexible homeschool schedule for getting out and getting active. Building biking into the plan will hopefully turn it into a habit...and then a lifestyle.

Earth Hour 2009

This post is cross-posted at Peregrin House, the homeschooling blog...



Saturday night we participated in Earth Hour. We turned off the lights from 8:30-9:30pm and sat around the kitchen table telling stories with grandma & grandpa, who live upstairs. Mango set a recorder on the table, and now we have some fabulous recordings of grandma and grandpa telling stories. Mane was enchanted by the candles and by the quiet, warm atmosphere. It really was beautiful and made us want to have Earth Hour every night.

However, on Sunday morning we spent some time researching the carbon emissions of candles or oil lanterns versus electric light bulbs, and we found that even a single candle may give off more carbon than a 60 watt light bulb. Mango says we need to stick with using candles only occasionally for ambiance. They're not a better environmental alternative. What *is* a better alternative is turning off lights whenever we don't need them, unplugging cell phone chargers when they're not in use, turning off the computer when we're not using it, turning off the receiver amp when we aren't listening to music, and using the city bus and our bicycles more.

Mane spent some time on the Earth Hour Kids website, and then we watched a NOVA movie on global warming and more energy efficient choices. We heard all about electric cars, solar panels, wind farms, and reforestation. The options are all so expensive right now, and, with kids, we have to focus on the things that are within our reach. So, we're helping Mane remember things like turning off lights and reminding her that if we all work together, we can make a difference, which was a key message of Earth Hour.

We also spent some time reading about how a group called Engineers Without Borders is working on helping to replace oil lanterns in developing countries with solar powered LED lanterns. It's a good example of how technology can be used to reverse some of the negative effects that earlier technology created...and how environmental concerns interplay with world economics and poverty. Because people in developing countries are less likely to have electricity, they're more likely to use kerosene lanterns, and this contributes to health problems from soot and carbon monoxide, as well as the more global problem of greenhouse gases and global warming. The article we read even pointed out how reading is difficult with less light, making it harder for children to get an education, and, if they do read by the light of the kerosene lantern, they're more likely to get sick from the lantern emissions. It's strange how something as simple as lighting can have such a huge effect.

What struck me most about Earth Hour, though, was the number of places where lights seem to serve very little purpose, yet it was such a huge deal to turn them off Saturday night. Of special note was the Coca Cola billboard in New York. Do we really need to light up billboards at night? Isn't it enough to see them in the daylight? Also, several bridges, including the Golden Gate Bridge, turned off their "decorative" lights, leaving only the necessary lights to help people drive safely. What are we doing leaving all those lights on all the time anyway? The lights were turned off on the pyramids in Egypt, the Colosseum in Rome, and the Eiffel Tower. I can understand lights for security reasons, but the sheer volume of lights is questionable. It left me wondering how much we could "save" in terms of CO2 emissions if we all gave some hard and careful thoughts to which lights are really necessary.

We seem to honor things by lighting them all day and all night (the pyramids, for example, and the statue of the Virgin Mary in Rio de Janeiro), which raises a myriad of other questions for me. Why? Why do we do that? Do we think the pyramids know they're being honored with lights all night long? Why is it so disrespectful for them to sit in darkness? Perhaps they want to rest at night, too. I don't have such a hard time thinking about turning the lights off on the pyramids, but I cringe to think about turning them off on the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington D.C. (I have no idea if the lights were turned off on monuments in D.C., by the way). Why is that? Why do a feel that it's disrespectful to turn out the lights on the list of names? It's not really. It doesn't dishonor the dead to let the names rest a while, especially when nobody is there and the people have left this life long ago.

Earth Hour gave us plenty to think about. I have at least three other blog posts floating around in my head, but this seemed the simplest to get down in type right now. If this is simple, I don't know how I'll ever get to the rest. ;) ...stay tuned...

Culture, Tradition, Ritual, and Legacy

Vespera has been practicing the art of Mexican cooking, much to our delight. I couldn't help but smile when I saw the small stack of leftover homemade tortillas on the counter this morning.





Ever since Vespera joined our family, I've been much more aware of the role that food plays in family and culture. Honestly, I think American culture in general has lost the art of good food. I have always felt that I have so little to give in terms of culinary tradition. Now I'm getting very good (thank you very much) at things that aren't even my own cultural foods - salsa, enchiladas, mole... I don't even know what my own cultural foods would be anyway.

My great-grandmother immigrated here from Germany, but she refused to speak German to her children because Germans were not very highly regarded in the States at the time (during the first world war). She spoke very little English. So, she spoke very little to her children at all. She may have passed along some traditions, but I've never heard the stories, and I've never seen a recipe. I did not grow up with a sense of what it means to be German, though nearly all of my family on both sides came from Germany.

It's strange, isn't it? ...the way that culture seems to get lost after the first few generations in the United States. And we give way to the Minnesota tater tot casserole.

I don't know where I'm going with this really. I think it speaks to the importance of creating family traditions and rituals where none exist, creating a sense of heritage for our children. I want to teach both of my children things that they will teach their own children someday. I want to leave a legacy that gives them a sense of belonging, of having come from somewhere. I want them to have a family heritage. Vespera has that already from her first family. I hope to give her something just as rich from this family.

I think that, in many ways, this is why God had so many rules for the Israelite people. They needed a sense of communal identity, of belonging and destiny. They needed to have markers of their identity as a people set apart. That cultural sense of tradition and identity holds people together, gives them a format for passing on spiritual teachings to their children. It's easy for those things to get lost without a ritual and a tradition.

It's fun and kind of crazy that Mane is growing up with this amalgam of homegrown traditions from Mango and I AND some chunks of Mexican culture, too. We read some traditional Hispanic stories, cook Mexican food, listen to Spanish music, and practice a little Spanish language. I often wonder what kind of person she'll turn out to be having had such a rich experience.

I don't want to sound as though we have no tradition or ritual in our family. That simply isn't true. It's just that most of those traditions have been created by us right here in this family and not by previous generations. One of my favorite times of year is right now...Advent. I've posted in previous years about how we began the tradition of celebrating Advent, lighting candles, hanging ornaments on a Jesse Tree (wreath), and keeping an Advent calendar.

The Advent candles:


The wreath this year:


The Advent calendar:


Thanks for following along with my ramblings. I've missed blogging here, as Peregrin House gets most of my attention right now. I hope to be back with some other musings later today or tomorrow.

Hope and Peace and Joy, the first 3 candles of Advent, to all of you!

Belize

Since I have been so uninspired to write lately, here's an excerpt from an e-mail I wrote about the trip I just took to Belize for a friend's wedding:

What did I think of Belize? Hard to say. I didn't see a lot of it...mostly just from the air. ;) I think it was what I expected. I knew it was small, though I had imagined Belize City to be bigger. I figured it would bear some similarity to Mexico, which it does. Having been a British colony doesn't mean a lot. Puerto Rico is technically part of the U.S., too, but it resembles many developing nations.

I had a few moments while I was there wondering what Vespera would have thought if she was there. Back home here in Minneapolis, it's impossible to miss the sharp contrast between the consumers (typically "white" people) and the service workers (often Hispanic). It's especially noticeable when we travel. So often hotels are filled with "white" people & staffed by minority ethnicities. Since I was, indeed, visiting Belize it totally makes sense that the service people (restaurant servers, housekeepers, etc...) would be Belizean & the tourists would be primarily Euro-American. I noticed the contrast, though, and it brought up some mixed feelings for me.

Belize is most definitely beautiful! I would love to see more, meet the people, listen to the music, eat the food. I'd like to go in further, to notice the differences between Belize and the surrounding countries. I was fascinated by the bits of history ya'll shared with me. ...and I wanted to see some monkeys!

ESL

ESL: That's "English as a Second Language," for those of you not in the know.

Funny Story -

Background info: Vespera's first language is not English, but she speaks English nearly perfectly, including idioms. Novio also speaks English as a second language, and, although he's learning VERY quickly, his English does not include figures of speech.

So, Novio was over last week, and Vespera said to him, "You rock my world!" : )

I was walking by and said, "Wow. That's a really nice thing to say."

Novio replied, "Yes, if you know what it means."

So, I found myself standing there explaining to my teenager's boyfriend what she meant when she said, "You rock my world."

Spanish

I'm going to just say the cliches. I have to get them out of my system, ok? Spanish is the most beautiful language. Truly. It rolls off the tongue in a way that English almost never does. Now granted, you can say things very, very specifically in English. Spanish has fewer words, tends to be less specific. But, it makes up for this in beauty, in emotional expression. You have to put your heart into your words to get at the specifics. Maybe this is why I find Spanish music so powerful. You can tell the specifics, not by the actual words, but by the inflection. It's not a tonal language, yet if you use the whole range of emotional expression available to you, you can say much more than the words actually say. I suppose this could, perhaps, be said of English also. But, there's something different about Spanish. So much of it sounds sensual, juicy, full, brimming. English words do not suffice to describe Spanish.

I love it, and Mango love this, that Spanish has ONE word, meaning "with you." Contigo. Go ahead. Say it. (cohnteego) And "with me." Conmigo. (cohnmeego) My favorite Spanish words. You see, in Spanish one has to use the familiar form of the verb to say "with you" or "with me" as one word. If one is speaking formally, one must say, "Con Usted" or "Con Yo." But, informally, familiarly, it's one word. And such lovely words. I don't know why I feel this way. I just do.

Reflections on the Bible and Immigration

Excerpt from an e-mail to a friend:

My thoughts about immigration have been long in forming and they still aren’t totally developed yet. I did a searched of Old Testament law the other day just to check out whether there were any policies about letting people in or out of Israel. I mean, Israel was a theocracy, the laws given by God. I think it’s a pretty good standard, though I don’t claim to understand all of it. In any case, there aren’t any laws or regulations about securing borders. But there are mandates to care for aliens and temporary residents and to treat them as citizens or native-borns. And that only seems right and humane to me. We destroy families, leave children parentless, leave mothers and children in poverty when we randomly deport people. This is not right. Not to mention the psychological, emotional and relational damage that comes from tearing apart families. This doesn’t even cover the arguments about what people of illegal status are contributing to out country. It’s sick and wrong to treat them as second class citizens. Immigration policy fails to really look at these people, to look them in the eyes, see their faces and hear their stories. It treats them like numbers and statistics. I serve a God who loves people individually. And I intend to do the same. And to fight for them as real human beings. It isn’t about foreign policy or the economy. I believe that if we treat people right, God will be in our midst and we will be blessed. And I’m sorry that I cannot separate my church and state for the sake of this argument. I believe that my faith has everything to do with my politics. Though I don’t think politics should get to say anything about my faith.

Race - Part 1 - Who am I?

An on-line community that I have been a part of with some regularity since Mane was small is having a discussion about race. It's an organized discussion with writing assignments and such. This seems like a good place for me to wrestle with my thoughts. So, the first assignment went like this:

"But who are you? When you look in the mirror, who stares back at you with eyes full of wonder, mystery, and knowledge? If you had to describe yourself, what community, race, or cultural terms would you use for yourself? When other people or institutions in the community describe you, what racial terms do they give for the complexity of your lived experience? Do you use the same descriptions as others? If not, why do you think there are differences?"

When I look in the mirror I check out the bump on the ridge of my nose and the freckles all over the place. I see someone who looks a lot like my mom. Some days I'm really happy with what I see and some days not-so-much. I'm struggling to find that place for freedom where I don't worry any more about whether I look young or old or beautiful, where who I am matters more than how I look.

If I describe myself in terms of community, I'd say that I live in an ethnically diverse neighborhood with some wonderful people who have been support and love and encouragement to me. I, sadly, wouldn't describe myself as a member of a church community, as it has been more than difficult to establish ourselves in any community of faith.

I am of European descent, particularly German and Swedish and Irish. My great-grandmother immigrated to the U.S. when she was 9 years old, shortly before World War I. She refused to speak German to her children, and she knew very little English. So, she didn't really speak with them at all. I would say that my family has identified much more by occupation than ethnicity. I come from a family of farmers. Sometimes I am reminded of this when I run into the cultural traditions of Mango's family - a family of more educated professionals.

To be honest, I am not fond of being "white." This is another thing I'm trying to work through. I want Mane to be proud of her heritage, not trying to become something else. My family gave me very little sense of cultural heritage, and I have to be intentional if I want to pass something of a cultural heritage on to Mane. Vespera's experience is rich with culture and fraught with the hardships of racism and discrimination. Being her mother has caused me to pause much more often in reflection on culture, ethnicity and race. Here is an excerpt from an e-mail I sent to a friend last week:

"The attitudes toward Hispanic people are pretty heated all over the U.S. right now. The kinds of things I tend to deal with are people's attitudes about immigration. AND the total neglect of Hispanic people in discussion about racial tension and race relations in our country. People in the U.S. view "race" as a black-white thing, as though everybody else does not exist. The science museum here just did a "race" exhibit, and I was surprised by how much I had trouble with it. As a rule, I don't use the word "race" at all, except when I'm specifically talking about the tensions in our country that have to do with skin color. The rest of the time I talk about ethnicity and culture. I was surprised that the science museum called their exhibit "Race," though that was what they were getting at - skin color, I mean. Anyway, being in such close proximity with another culture has made me think about how we humans like to be with people who are like ourselves and what that means. I don't necessarily think it's good or bad. It's the way we are. And I'm frustrated with the way adoptive parents are encouraged to find ways to connect with people of their child's cultural origins. This can lead to a lot of artificial self-serving relationships. Authentic relationships are much harder to come by and cannot be forced. I've thought a lot about how not to be just a "spectator" of another culture but, instead, how to embrace that other culture in appropriate ways. I don't want to exploit, and I don't want to act like something I'm not. It's all a big jumble in my head. It's a difficult topic, and, in some ways, I feel that I don't even have the right to say much about it since I am of European descent."

I get frustrated with my "whiteness" and, perhaps, my lack of cultural identity. It drives me crazy to check off the box that says I'm white on applications for things. White is not an ethnicity or a culture. It's a color - not to mention that white & black are not technically the color of skin of anyone I know. Mane has grown up describing herself as pink. And our neighbors call themselves brown. Vespera calls herself brown. These are actual colors of skin, and if we tried to name all the colors accurately we would run out of words. There is simply more diversity in the world than that.

So, I guess I wouldn’t describe myself in the terms that other people use to describe who I am. I am a mother, lover, friend, Christian, family therapist, childbirth educator, woman, neighbor, activist. I am German, Swedish, and Irish with a messy family history. I hold within me the characteristics of those cultural groups without thinking about them. I am a collector of diverse traditions. Someone learning to cook and sew and garden. Someone gathering spiritual traditions from various traditions. Someone gathering family traditions from the same. I am me.

Biblical Thoughts on "Aliens"

Although most immigrants I speak with are not fond of the word "alien," this is the word used in our English translations of scripture for people who were not Hebrew but were living among the Hebrews/Israelites. For the sake of Biblical study, I'm using the word "alien" today.

"When an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him. The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the Lord your God." Leviticus 19:34

"For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien, giving him food and clothing. And you are to love those who are aliens, for you yourselves were aliens in Egypt." Deuteronomy 10:17-19

"Do not deprive the alien or the fatherless of justice, or take the cloak of the widow as a pledge. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you from there. That is why I command you to do this." Deuteronomy 24:17-18

"You are to distribute this land among yourselves according to the tribes of Israel. You are to allot it as an inheritance for yourselves and for the aliens who have settled among you and who have children. You are to consider them as native-born Israelites; along with you they are to be allotted an inheritance among the tribes of Israel. In whatever tribe the alien settles, there you are to give him his inheritance,” declares the Sovereign LORD." Ezekiel 47:21-23

The Barbie Dilemna

Mane is 5, and she LOVES barbie. I have so far not allowed barbie to live in my house, but I'm starting to think about the pros and cons. The typical cons I hear about barbie are as follows:

* Barbie is ridiculously proportioned and may lead some little girls to develop bad body images.
* Likewise, supporting the industry that makes Barbie allows the industry to continue to make ridiculously proportioned barbies.
* There are tons of barbies in the world and their continued production leads to more plastic trash in the landfills.
* Barbie is materialistic - focused on clothes & accessories.

Ok, so Mane has neighbor friends who have what seems like millions of barbies. They've gotten them mostly from thrift stores, though a few were gifts. For me, this solves the plastic production/landfill issue. I know I can get used barbies at almost any thrift store, along with whatever accessories I might be inclined to purchase without contributing to the further production of said plastic toys.

And, I guess the materialism is something I see with most toys. American Girl is the same way. You can go as far as you want with buying accessories. And Calico Critters. And Groovy Girls. And Only Hearts dolls. They all have tons of clothes & accessories available if you are going to buy into the materialism. Barbie isn't alone in that respect. It's similar to what I was saying in my post about freedom. Buying alternative toys doesn't necessarily free you from materialism.

I grew up playing with barbies, and, although I have also dealt with my share of body image issues, I have never thought of them as related to barbies. How I felt about my body had a lot more to do with my experiences with real live people growing up.

And I really did love playing barbie. My play with them was very involved. There were epic sagas. They had names and personalities. My mom and my aunt had made clothes for them, and my mom made furniture out of wood blocks & carpet scraps. My dad built them a closet.

I guess I don't like them in my house because I don't find them aesthetically pleasing...at least not any more. How's that for a snobbish response? I don't have a problem with Mane playing with them at other people's houses, as long as I don't have to have them strewn about my house with their clothes and shoes and handbags. But...I *would* love those cute little calico critters, even if they were strewn about my house. So, I think the issue really is aesthetics. But, aesthetics for me and aesthetics for Mane are two very different things.

So, I guess I'm torn. I loved playing barbies. Mane wants to have barbies. But, I think they're ugly. They're plastic and weirdly shaped, and they don't move well. Soooo, could somebody please make a cute alternative for barbie? Only Hearts dolls won't do because she wants to play with grown-ups. That's a major lure of barbie, I think. She likes Kelly dolls (Barbie's little sister, who is allowed to live in my house because she isn't ridiculously proportioned and ugly), too, but she always has to choose one to be the mom and one to be the dad because she wants to play "family" stories.

*sigh* *shrug* Thanks for letting me vent. Any thoughts?

Sleep Research

Some interesting tidbits (my own writing is in green):

"Human biological clock makes a turn in a cycle of about 25 hours when there is no clue to know the passage of time. However, the earth rotates in a cycle of 24 hours, repeating light and darkness. " (http://www.societies.cam.ac.uk/cujif/ABSTRACT/020825.htm)

"For most of evolution humans have slept clustered together with friends, animals, parents and children. In traditional societies, according to Worthman, communal sleep is considered safer since there is always someone there to help in case of an emergency. In these societies people find that group sleeping reduces the risk of spirit loss, which is especially common when a person dreams.

Recently, studies have shown that this type of sleeping, called co-sleeping to contrast it from the solitary sleeping patterns of people in modern societies, has real physiological benefits. James McKenna of the University of Notre Dame reports that babies in many countries outside the United States sleep next to or in the same room as their parents. He notes that infants who sleep alone slip into abnormal patterns of very deep sleep which prevents them from waking during an episode of apnea. " (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0ISW/is_2002_July/ai_87719989)

"Recent research suggests that sleep patterns vary significantly across human cultures.^[8] The most striking differences are between societies that have plentiful artificial light and ones that do not. Cultures without artificial light have more broken-up sleep patterns. For example, people in these cultures might go to sleep far more quickly after the sun sets, but then wake up several times throughout the night, sometimes staying awake for several hours. The boundaries between sleeping and waking are blurred in these societies. Some observers^{[attribution needed]}slow sleep believe that sleep in these societies is most often split into two main periods, the first characterised primarily by "" and the second by REM sleep. This is called segmented sleep, which led to expressions such as "first sleep," "watch," and "second sleep" which appear in literature from all over the world." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep)

I have to say that this last quote from wikipedia is fascinating and somehow appealing to me. I love the way my house feels when I walk around it in the middle of the night and everything is peaceful and sleepy. I love how close everybody feels on my block when it's late on a still night. I can lean off my balcony and and talk to my neighbor halfway down the block almost without raising my voice. I love the intimacy of talking in the middle of the night. What I wonder is how the different sleep patterns affect the relationships between people. Obviously, without artificial light, people aren't really doing anything when they're up in the middle of the night except maybe talking and thinking, maybe walking or small tasks that can be done by the light of moon or fire.

I have to clarify that I don't like to have to get up in the middle of the night. I *do* enjoy an unbroken night of sleep...yet, on the nights when I've been up for a while in the middle of the night there's something appealing about it...not when I have to be up, but when I am just up.

Also, I need to clarify that the last quote is from wikipedia, and I'm still looking for more scholarly sources. If anybody out there knows books or resources about the anthropology of sleep, I'd be interested.

Here's an interesting sleep project:
"The Uberman's sleep schedule revolves around forcing yourself to rely on six twenty to thirty minute naps spread throughout the day for your daily dose of sleep. I stuck to thirty minute naps, currently having them starting roughly at 2 AM, 6 AM, 10 AM, 2 PM, 6 PM, and 10 PM every day."
(http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/4/15/103358/720)

Ok...here's something other than Wikipedia saying the same thing:
"Indigenous cultures that do not rely on artificial light differ greatly in their sleep patterns from those that do, according to Prof. Roger Ekirch, author of At Day's Close: A History of Night-time. They have what's called "segmented sleep" patterns where they wake several times during the night, sometimes for long periods at a time. Ekirch theorizes that artificial light's influence on sleep cycles has contributed largely to the rise of sleeping disorders in industrialized nations." (http://shl.stanford.edu:3455/TenThings/1735)

Sleep

I have long thought about sleep, human sleeping habits, and the anecdotal stories of sleep I know. Since I'm rather sleep-deprived myself this morning, I thought it would be a good day for my promised post on sleep. :)

I started thinking about sleep when I was in college. I went from being an early-riser, who can go to sleep early & rise early and loves the site of the morning mists, to a lover of the midnight hours, writing poetry in the dark, sipping coffee and talking philosophy late into the night.

In graduate school I wrote a paper about co-sleeping, and I became more interested in human sleeping habits and arrangements than ever. Co-sleeping, also known as "the family bed" by many, involves family members, other than spouses, sharing beds. For us, this involved sharing a bed with Mane until she was 3. (Then she moved to a mattress on our floor. Then she moved to her loft bed when she was 4. Then she started sleeping on the couch at 4.5, where she still sleeps now....more on that later.) Co-sleeping fosters attachment, easier nighttime nursing, and none of that cry-yourself-to-sleep business. It looks beautiful in theory.

Then Mane was born. And I found that nighttime nursing involves MUCHO sleep loss...or, at least, very broken sleep. Then I started hearing theories about broken sleep...how people never used to sleep 8 hours straight in early societies. It's sort of a modern luxury to get uninterrupted sleep. Yet, somehow, all our experts are telling us that uninterrupted sleep is essential to good health. Could it be that if we slept in other ways our bodies would adapt? If we stopped being resentful about interrupted sleep, might we find that broken sleep works just as well? Try as I might to make that theory work, I still felt pretty sleep-deprived for much of Mane's early life.

Yet I am sure that getting out of bed was not the answer. Co-sleeping allowed me to stay in bed, only semi-conscious, while attending to Mane's nighttime needs. I was more rested than if I'd had to fully awaken and get out of bed to attend to her. And Mane has thrived from the attachment bond created by knowing that we will always be there to take care of her. We didn't leave her in a dark lonely room to cry alone, and we never will. And it hasn't turned her into a shy, dependent, clingy child, either. Quite the opposite. She is outgoing and thrives in new situations. She has a great deal of confidence.

So, what I find interesting is that people all over the world sleep with their children, yet it is such taboo in our culture. People believe that you have to get your children out of your bed or they'll sleep there forever. Yet...um...we get married and then begin sleeping with our spouse in our adults years and don't think of this as a sign of dependence or poor sleep habits. I think it's good and healthy to help children adapt to all kinds of sleep situations. As Mane got older we moved her to her mattress on the floor because there wasn't enough room in our bed. And we were elated to have privacy in our own room when she moved into her loft. We're still pretty happy with her sleeping on the couch rather than with us. Because she learned to sleep with us, though, we can take her camping and on trips all over the place, and we don't worry that she won't sleep. She can sleep anywhere as long as we're around. Now she'll even sleep on other people's couches. :) Children who are trained to sleep in a dark quiet room in their own bed with no people around from a very early age have trouble traveling. It's just true.

Research tells us that being around other people helps babies regulate their breathing & sleep pattern at night, perhaps reducing the risk of SIDS.

And my theology studies tell me that God is a God of relationship and community. We are created in the image of God and have a deep need for connection with God and with other humans. Those monkey studies tell us that mammals need real connection in order to thrive. You can't deprive a monkey of an attachment figure and expect it to live.

When we sleep we are at our most vulnerable. And so when we sleep with others it demonstrates our trust, and it nurtures the bond of deep connection between people.

So, I think Mane sleeps on the couch because it's in the middle of our small house, and she feels a certain connection with everybody that way. Mango brings her to sleep with me when he gets up early in the morning so that he doesn't wake her up while he's getting ready for work. And this works for us. She sleeps on her own...but connected...for much of the night...and then she gets some snuggle time with me in the morning until I sneak out of bed about an hour before she gets up.

Only recently have I begun to realize Vespera's need for physical connection with people. She came from a house where she slept with her sisters. She has her own bed here, of course. She tried having Mane sleep with her once, only to end up on the floor because Mane wanted to take up the whole bed. Vespera sat and talked with me in the beanbag last night with her head on my chest, playing with my fingers, just like Mane would if she were sitting there. And she always responds positively to having her hair stroked or her back rubbed. I commented to Mango that other night that most "American" children, especially at the age of 16, would be resistant to physical affection. It reminds me that I want to raise Mane to be demonstrative with her affection. Be able to hold your child as a teenager gives you one more tool to foster the connection when they are most likely to be unable to bridge the gap between you in any other way. When they are feeling so out of sorts that they don't know what to say or how to be close to you, a head-rub, back-rub, foot-rub maintains the connection. The human touch can still be there when words fail.

A bit of history...

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
—Emma Lazarus, 1883 av JC

Be Nourished

I wonder if it's a uniquely American thing to have such a love-hate relationship with food. Americans, in general, are so easily satisfied with cheap food, fast food, junk food and so disconnected from real food, slow food, good food. Obsessed with being thin, so often overweight, and always in search of the perfect 5-minute meal.

We have been on a food journey for the last several years. A few years after Mane was born we started eating almost entirely organic. The difference is huge. Everything tastes better. We eat whole grains ...better for the body and more filling. It's partly an environmental mission, both the external environment of the world and the internal environments of our bodies. It's also an economic mission, supporting organic farmers, fair trade, small farms. It's an economic sacrifice for us, in hopes that it will bring about change in the larger community. A perk is shopping at the co-op, which always smells great and is small enough for me to let Mane walk around. People know us there. One of the clerks has a son Mane's age. We were pregnant at the same time.

As most in the organic foods community can tell you, convenience foods are still available to the organic consumer. Mac and cheese still exists, as do canned soups, microwave dinners, and french fries. Organic doesn't necessarily mean healthy, and it doesn't mean that we've slowed down and learned anything about food.

This is something we've learned from Vespera. Really good food is a process. The time we sacrifice for good food is repaid in something more nourishing than flavor. Caldo is a good example. Boil and season the chicken, chop and add veggies, taste, adjust the seasoning. Chop more veggies to serve cold over the top, lime wedges, avocados, cabbage, tomatoes, peppers, onions. Warm the tortillas. Serve in big bowls, everyone gathered around slicing their avocados, squeezing the limes, dipping tortillas. It's a ritual. It is not eat-and-run. It isn't a perfect 5-minute meal. It is nourishment. Body and soul.

If you ask Vespera, food doesn't taste as good if it isn't home-cooked. If the lingering smell of it doesn't fill the house. Partly, the food is better for the anticipation. You will soak and blend and strain and boil the chilis, and you will wait gladly when you know that mole is in the making. Though your stomach growls, you will not demand a simpler meal. You know what you are waiting for. You can do your homework better knowing mole is on the way.

And when we all come to the table and perform the ritual of dishing the plates, slicing the tomatoes over the top, crumbling cheese and spooning cream, we are nourished, knowing that our food is slow and real. There's something in the familiarity, once you know how it's done, that feels like home and comfort.

Being American, I had no idea how important food could be. And, I think, that somewhat strained relationship Americans have with food makes us hesitate to love food. Loving food is associated with obesity. It means you like to eat a lot. Loving food in other cultures, though, has a lot more to do with quality, ritual, familiarity. It means that sometimes you eat a lot, but, often, just a little is satisfying. And the look on Vespera's face when I get her family's timeless recipes right is worth every single priceless minute I spend in the kitchen.

It isn't that I love to cook, though sometimes I really do. It's that there's something in the process that is so much more rewarding than quick food.

I laugh, too, when I think of a saying I once heard and heartily agreed with. I heard that we should eat 90% for nourishment and 10% for pleasure, or something like that...meaning that we are too focused on dessert, and we need to learn to eat foods that are better for us, even though it isn't fun. I think this attitude of denial is why obesity is so rampant. I want to tell people that it's ok to love food. Find a way to cook it that makes it so good you can hardly stand it. That's going to take time. It's going to be slow food. But it is going to be worth it.

You will be nourished.