by Roxanne -

Technology Changes Us

Technology brings much that is wonderful and good into our lives. However, used thoughtlessly, it can make us less than who we should be or less than who we are.

Social media formats such as FaceBook can help us stay connected and can be a way to develop richer and deeper relationships in real life — or, and this happens all too often — it can be a way to avoid deeper relationships or face to face encounters in real life. Social media and technology devices can make us more isolated and lonely – unable to enjoy solitude or deeper relationships. Connecting deeply with ourselves – enjoying solitude – and connecting deeply with others are both learned skills, afterall.

Sometimes I am asked why I have chosen to study for my Doctorate in Ministry rather than a Ph.D. This is why. Like a Master in Divinity, a Doctorate in Ministry develops the whole person including relationships, not just the mind. This is an important distinction.

We are who we are as persons because of the kind of relationships we have. We form our personhood with the depth and richness of healthy relationships we bring into our lives. On this website there are many posts about focusing on healthy relationships and minimizing unhealthy ones. There are many posts on examining genetic or “family” relationships to verify that they really are healthy and life giving.

Meanwhile, social media formats like FaceBook can all too easily minimize real connections with real people in real time. While this makes life easier, it also makes us feel less. Experiencing all of our feelings, both pleasurable and painful, is what makes us human. Developing the capacity for real joy means that the capacity for experiencing deeper pain emerges too. In the end, this is what makes us compassionate, gives us depth and helps us see reality as it actually is – rather than through the limited eyes of privilege.

To learn more, watch this enlightening, short TED video on what psychologist Sherry Turkle, who has studied the effects of social media, has to say here.

Once again, edit your life. Be thoughtful about the kind of social media and technology devices you use. Know why you use them. Monitor how they effect you and your relationships. Be prepared to make changes and eliminations if necessary.

You may also like InnerPeace – “Family Only” Idiocy, and The Dangers of Obedience and Compliance.


by Roxanne -

The Fourth Dimension

 

Photo NASA Photo Journal

We know what it means to see the world in two dimensions. The children’s book Flat Stanley and the 1884 story by Edwin Abbott, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions help us to understand life in a two dimensional world. Of course we know what a three dimensional world is like because that is the reality we experience. But what does the fourth dimension look like? What about the fifth dimension? Step into another dimension and see what it’s like here. This is a fun link for school kids on winter break or parents who need a break from winter break 😉

Your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions. Albert Einstein.

Originally published December, 2010.

by Roxanne -

National Poetry Month

Photo: Poets.org 2012 poster

Did you know that April is National Poetry Month? I didn’t,but I love the poster. How nice to designate an entire month to remind us of the importance of poetry in our lives. Almost everyone remembers a poem that touched them or affected them in some way. As a teenager, many of us may have picked up a pen ourselves and created poetry that expressed what we were feeling.

I’m especially fond of poets Rainer Maria Rilke and Mary Oliver.

by Roxanne -

Estrangement – The High Cost of Leaving or Living?

Photo Scenic Buena Vista.com

This article is about the high cost of leaving ultra-orthodox Judaism. It could have been entitled “The High Cost of Living.” My family of origin wasn’t from this religious tradition, but my experience of being pushed away was the same. Perhaps you have also experienced something similar in your life or know someone who has?

Ultimately we each must choose whether or not to live an authentic life – meaning who we really are on the inside matches how we live on the outside. Unfortunately, our call to live an authentic life and the expectations of our family or culture may be quite different.

To be “loved if” means there is a condition attached. We will be loved “if” we don’t rock the boat, “if” we don’t challenge the status quo, “if” we live a certain lifestyle. But the reality is that love has no conditions. Where there is a condition or “if” attached then it isn’t really love. Love means being accepted as we are for who we are – no exceptions.

Nevertheless, I may choose to not be around a parent or child while they are drinking or engaging in some other destructive behavior. But to reject the behavior is not to reject the person.

My family of origin operated under the “strict father” model. For myself and my siblings there was also the unspoken threat of being abandoned. It actually came true in my case. I really was cast out – while a minor, but imagine the devastating effects this would have had on my younger siblings who witnessed it.

What I remember growing up, is that it was impressed upon us that the most important virtue was obedience. Really? The most important virtue is obedience? When I became a parent I realized how strange this was! The virtues I wanted for my own children were honesty, kindness, generosity, curiosity and compassion. Only time will tell if my family will choose to adopt different values.

This article could also be entitled: The high cost of leaving “the Clan” or “the Tribe” – any tribe, family or group. Another title could be “the high cost of rejecting fideism” – external authority – in this case the authority of family.

Many Christians are unaware of the heresy of fideism. Fideism is a heresy defined as “blind obedience to any external authority.” Ultimately, as adults, the only authority we must follow – are truly obligated to follow – is God within the deepest interior of our own hearts. Any external authority, be it religious, governmental, parental or even medical, can never be the reason for making a decision. We have the responsibility and accountability as adults to learn all we can from those we trust. Then we must make our own decisions.

In healthy relationships participants are encouraging and supportive. There isn’t a demand to control or judge, rather a desire to stay connected. Healthy relationships involve mutual listening, offering support – but ultimately allowing other adults to make their own decisions. Then those decisions are respected. Is your family like this? If so, you’re lucky. If not, you may have to create a family of choice that can provide healthy support in your life.

In the article, those rejected by their families, experienced something different when they were embraced by others. What they found was that healthy, loving relationships do not judge, but want the best for us and that can only be determined by us. No one else can judge what is best for another adult, except that adult. Others who truly care about us know that being true to oneself may mean being flexible and moving into a new life.

Reality, life, God is compassionate. Every instance of suffering we encounter can be an opportunity for growth, transformation and new life. Sometimes being freed from the tethers of unhealthy relationships – or relationships that are toxic for us – allows us to fly.

Photo Rituals Of Healing.com

This post was originally published 1/18/11. You may also like Lent: Into the Desert and InnerPeace -Watch Your Thoughts.

by Roxanne -

Are Women Human?

On this International Women’s Day I will suggest Catharine MacKinnon’s book Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues. Catharine MacKinnon, a Minnesotan, is an international lawyer at the Hague. Her background is impressive. However, last fall I heard her speak at the University of Chicago and I can attest that she is even more impressive in person.

“MacKinnon is the Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School.[3] In 2007, she served as the Roscoe Pound Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.[4] MacKinnon is a highly cited legal scholar.[5][6] She has frequently been a visiting professor at other universities and regularly appears in public speaking events.”

She writes of the necessity to define women’s rights and the systemic denial of them:

Regarding the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence Against Women (Convention of BelĂ©m do ParĂĄ) she explains it explicitly states that women have “The right to freedom from violence notably includes ‘the right of women to be valued and educated free of stereotyped patterns of behavior and social and cultural practices based on concepts of inferiority or subordination’ (9).

Further, “Women are half the human race. To put the individual accounts in context, all around the world, women are battered, raped, sexually abused as children, prostituted, and increasingly live pornographic lives in contexts saturated more or less with pornography. Women do two-thirds of the world’s work, earn one-tenth of the world’s income, and own less than one-hundredth of the world’s property. Women are more likely to be property than to own any. Women have not even been allowed to vote until very recently and still are not in some countries” (21, italics, author’s, stats from United Nations, The State of the World’s Women 1979 quoted in Burns H. Weston, Richard A. Falk and Anthony A. D’Amato, International Law and World Order 578-580 (1980) footnote 12, p 291).

She observes that the violence against women is a war and we need to recognize it as such.

“ To be on the bottom of a hierarchy is certainly different from being on the top of one, but it is not simply difference that distinguishes the two. It is, in fact, the lesser access to resources, privileges, credibility, legitimacy, authority, pay, bodily integrity, security, and power that makes the two unequal. The issue here is not entirely how to make access to those things nonarbitrary, because the situation we are confronting is anything but simply arbitrary. It does have an inner logic. The issue is systematic male supremacy and how to end it.” (74).

Women have the power to demand and make systemic change.

“The idea that these acts violate women’s human rights has been created by women, not by states or governments. National laws seldom effectively recognize that women are violated in these ways and sometimes even make them criminals for being raped (having sex outside marriage) or having abortions (resisting forced motherhood). Women across cultures have created the idea that women have human rights, refusing to believe that the reality of violation we live with is what it means for us to be human – as our governments seem largely to believe.” (181).

“Women have created the idea of women’s human rights by refusing to abandon ourselves and one another, out of attachment to a principle of our own humanity –  one defined against our context and our experiences.” (181).

Are women human? Not according to state, national and international laws that allow ongoing violence to women around the globe. Not as evidenced by the systemic abuses against women perpetrated by educational, religious, social, cultural, corporate and governmental institutions run primarily by men.

But we can and will change that. We are half the world.

You may also like New Books, and A Fine Balance.