Tag Archives: can’t bite my tongue

Mass at 5

Warning: According to my Blog Advisory System, this post is rated RED for The Touchiest of All Touchy Subjects. I wrote it last week but did not have the heart to publish it because I was worried about losing readership. In the end though, I have got to do what feels right by me and I apologize if when you get to the end you are like, WTF? I did not sign up for this!

My 8-year-old, Mr. Monk, cried during his Religious Class last Saturday because he wanted to attend Mass and his parents, we, have not managed to take him on a regular basis.

Mr. Monk, unlike his elder brother, is prone to taking things 100% and to the extreme. He takes everything that people say in, personally and seriously. He obeys authority figures (his parents not included, alas) with a fervor: whatever they say, you have to follow. He had already come home crying before that because the priest had told them, “Your parents promised to bring you up Catholic and they have to bring you to Mass every week.” Because that’s not how we operate in this household, he has been really troubled. The other shoe has dropped. This twice-a-year-Catholic thing is not going to work for him.

He really wants to BELIEVE, and there is no compromise. He seems to have a hard time understanding “grey areas”. To be 100% honest with myself, I’m worried. Now that Mr. Monk is convinced this is the right way (because OTHERWISE why would we, his parents, send him to RE every Saturday morning?!), he perceives my being a non-Christian as an anomaly. He brings up my being non-Christian more often than I am comfortable with since ideally, I would have liked it to be a non-issue, the way it has been with his older brother.

I do not agree with everything the Catholic Church has to teach and I am not sure about the whole “Immaculate Conception” thing (and I will simply leave it here). Out of respect for my spouse, I do not discuss Jesus with our kids. The old testament part, however, I have no problem discussing it with them, myself being an English Lit major in my youth and all.

I wish, with all due respect to my marriage, that I had given more thoughts to this whole Interfaith thing before I said yes. I did not expect it to be so complicated since I am agnostic; I had expected it to be conflict-free since, heck, I believe in every god, deity, fairy, spirit there is. Growing up in a Chinese society, I was immersed subtly and not so subtly in Buddhist and Taoist teachings and beliefs. The concept of Karma has been driven into my subconsciousness since day one. More importantly, there is no judgement passed. No concept of Sin. No concept of Grace. No threats of going to hell for non-believers.

Back to the story about last Saturday… After RE, the Catechist, Mrs. G (G being curiously a common German Jewish surname) told me, “I could tell that he was trying to be brave, but he was crying and said that he didn’t go to Mass… but he wanted to…” Because in my previous email communications with Mrs. G I had told her how much I appreciate her openness and how she made me want to bring the kids to Mass even if I have to do it by myself (since my husband travels a lot), she gently pointed out, “This is great and just gives you more incentive to bring him to Mass!”

We ended up talking about Interfaith families and how I didn’t realize it’s going to be more complicated than I have expected. I stopped short of telling her I am uncomfortable with the Church because of the whole anti-gay, anti-abortion stance. I simply asked her, “The church. This church. The sermons are not too ‘radical’ right?” She got what I was trying to ask, and she wrote me an email:

I’m obsessing about our conversation (I do that sometimes!)… God makes everyone perfect in His eyes. I can only tell you that the Catholic Church does not teach that they are damned or bad. They see all people as sinners in need of God’s forgivenss, so really we are all in the same boat… Mass is not a time where anyone delves into the “tough” topics like, homosexuality, divorce, politics, etc. It is a time for worship and praise of God. It is a time to come together as a group of people from all different backgrounds, circumstances, and “sin” status (Ha!). There will be no finger pointing. No one will look at you and say, “Clearly, she doesn’t know what the heck’s going on.” You don’t have to pretend to, so don’t worry! Your boys will help out. They’re wonderful people because YOU care so much about their development. Religious or not, you are bringing them up in the right moral way. You are sharing and showing the love that God has for each and every one of us… yes, you too! God loves agnostics too!

I fell in love with Mrs. G right then and there, despite her being a devout Catholic, and I decided to take the kids to the Mass at 5 o’clock that day.

THIS I could deal with, I thought to myself.

If all Christians were open to a calm discussion with open stance the way Mrs. G is, I could stop worrying about this whole Interfaith thing. Maybe they are. Maybe it is not as complicated as I thought. Maybe it is just me.

Unfortunately for me and for my sanity… at the end of the Liturgy, the second Intercession offered by the Deacon was “Let’s pray that the anti-abortion law will be upheld, they are fighting for it in D.C. right now, that we will continue to uphold the sanctity of life.”

I was completely caught off guard and could not believe my ears. Did he really say the “A” word when there were so many children present? I am not the sheltering kind of parents but I certainly do not wish to have to explain to my young children what abortion is. I was also utterly confused because of the “anti-abortion law” that he mentioned. As far as I know, Roe vs. Wade still stands. Did I miss something? Was I caught in some twilight zone?

When I went home, I realized I was an idiot because that day, January 22, marked the 38th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe vs. Wade decision, and two days before that John Boehner introduced the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act” that would codify the Hyde Amendment by permanently prohibiting taxpayer funding of abortion across all federal programs.

And yes, I believe, this is the touchiest of all touchy subjects that will convince many Christians to vote against Democrats no matter who is running for Prez on the GOP ticket in 2012. This country’s future is going to be fought over the right to our wombs. Imagine that.

I am so friggin' confused myself!

I made this Venn Diagram for a post more than a year ago and, I have to admit, I am still as confused as ever. Back to Square One. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.

WTF Wednesday: Blast from the Past

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I recently remembered that I have kept my computer files from the last century somewhere on the hard drive and went looking. I came upon a Letter to Nobody that I wrote in 1997 documenting an interesting encounter that I have since forgotten.

What surprises and delights me is that I sounded just as sarcastic, bitchy and “stabby” thirteen years ago. I have not changed one bit!

Yet another excuse for me to use my favorite sign from The Bloggess

Another just as delightful realization dawned on me: A letter to nobody yet with an imagined audience somewhere out there? An innate, almost pathological need to (over) share, to tell my stories? I guess I am destined to be a blogger all along. Or perhaps it’s the other way around: I should be grateful that blogging came along and saved me from a life in the joint from having stabbed someone. It was bound to happen if not for this.

My Stories
June 25, 1997

As you all know, I have had several “interesting” experiences as an Asian woman in this country. But tonight I hit the jackpot. . . I thought I might share it with you all. I hope you “appreciate” this story as I do.

I went to Brookstone in the mall with my husband this evening. We were looking at different things and I wandered away from him. (My first mistake?) I was looking at a finger blood pressure measurement machine when the salesperson sneaked up from behind.

“I see, you are taking your own blood pressure,” he said.

I wasn’t interested in the gadget, so I didn’t respond to him.

“Do you not understand English? Are you with the man over there?” he said loudly and slowly.

So before he even heard me speak, he assumed that I did not understand English.

“Oh, man, I can’t believe this is happening.” I thought.

I tried to give him a good comeback. So I took a deep breath, sighed, without looking at him,

“No, I do NOT understand English.”

He laughed. Ha ha.

Now, most normal human beings would just take the hint and leave me alone, but not my salesperson. He continued,

“Oh, you do NOT understand English VERY WELL. Not only do you understand me fine, you also got the joke.”

I was wondering which part of his remarks could be the joke. I was also frustrated because he did not get MY “joke”.

“Are you looking at the electric toothbrush also?”

He took down one of the electric toothbrushes displayed on top of the blood pressure taker I was looking at and started explaining how the thing works. Again, I wasn’t really interested.

“Are you not understanding me? Do you understand enough English? Are you following me here?” he out of nowhere drew this conclusion about me.

I asked myself, “Is it because how I look? Is it because how I dress?”

I have to admit that he caught me offguard. I couldn’t believe that someone would say something like this out right to me. I was so surprised that I forgot to get offended.

Silence.

He kept on saying something else. I wasn’t listening. I was laughing. I turned to him with a smile,

“You know, right now I really feel like grabbing something and hitting you with it.”

I ended my line with more laughter.

“I’d better leave here now,” I said, not moving.

At this moment, my husband approached us and asked me what happened.

“Oh, I was just being too helpful and she said she wants to hit me with something,” the salesperson said with a laugh.

Then he turned to me and said, “I know how you feel.”

Do you really? I was thinking.

“I feel the same way whenever I go shopping,” he added.

So isn’t that curious? He feels like an Asian when he goes shopping!

A simple message that’s going viral because we are tired of keeping silent…

No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and nobody should go broke because they get sick.

In honor of the Bard’s birthday, prithee, we should channel Katharina from The Taming of the Shrew…

So, how do you explain Roe vs. Wade to a 10-year-old boy??

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Am I a bad mom? Sometimes I worry that in an effort to bring up children that are progressive, tolerant, self-aware, and self-reliant, and to make sure that they become “contributing members of a civil society” in the future, I may have pulled a cloud over their childhood. If they are fortunate enough to not to know about “the world out there”, who am I to ruin their parade by telling them the “truth”?

So my 10-year-old had to do a research report on this presidential election. One of the projects was to interview a democrat and a republican, ask them this one question: “What do you think a Democrat (or Republican) believes?” I felt bad for putting our loved ones on the spot: voting is a private matter, in my opinion, and sometimes the true reason someone votes for this party vs. the other is for that person’s conscience to know, and their conscience only. The people we ended up interviewing over the phone, surprisingly or maybe not so much, gave similar answers with regarding to almost everything: such as “A democrat/Republican believes that the middle class should receive tax reliefs.”

The differences we learned from our friends and families are, based on their own subjective opinions of course, “A Republican believes in a smaller government, whereas a Democrat believes in more taxes,” and “A Democrat believes in equality in all people and the responsibilities of the government to come to its people’s aid when they are in need.”

What strikes me the most was the fact that women from both parties see “Roe vs. Wade” as the main dividing line that separates Republicans from Democrats: one mentioned that Republicans believe in the “Right to live”, the other, Democrats believe in “Roe vs. Wade”. My son, being 10 years old, naturally had no idea what they were talking about, and our friends and families, bless their heart, naturally did not want to go into details.

So, how do you explain Roe vs. Wade to a 10-year-old boy?

This was why I woke up with self-doubt for my ability to be a good mother this morning: I actually gave it a try last night by giving him a general description of what Roe vs. Wade was about. How successful, I am not sure. My son understandably was disturbed by the concept of abortion, which I didn’t go into too much detail of course. He does not even know how women become pregnant yet, oh my goodness… {{surge of more self-doubt}}

At one point, I could see in his face his regret for supporting the Democratic Party (i.e. Obama in this election: he thinks Obama is the man, and the democrats will bring equality to the society, without me or my husband steering him either way… in fact we were quite puzzled by his interest in this election since we didn’t talk about politics in front of the kids until he himself showed interest in the topic… ) And I was upset with the teacher’s naivete in giving them the homework assignment: how does one talk about this presidential election, I mean, really talk about it, without getting into a discussion on the two sides over the “Roe vs. Wade” issue? How am I supposed to explain to my 5th grader, who despite his uncanny maturity still hugs stuffed animals at night?

I know a lot of people would argue that this is the reason why there shouldn’t be abortion allowed, period, if you don’t know how to explain such a procedure to a child. This way you don’t even need to explain it. To me, this is the reason why the issue of abortion should not be made to hijack the public political debate. It is a personal choice, and yes, I believe that women should have the right to choose. It is ironic to me that Republicans, for all their push for a smaller government, desperately want to extend their control over private matters such as gay marriage and this, and leave public health care issues to strictly between “patients and their care providers”…

The Absence of Alternatives

My therapy sessions…