today was my last day going to the place i volunteer, sarah's circle, before the summer ends. SC is a drop in center for homeless and low income women, and i've met some great ladies:

rosemary, who likes romance novels
sharon, who is a carpenter and an artist, who made me a rosary with a little green on it, for the irish bostonians.
brenda, who came from the south
norma, who told me "the seventh deadly sin is the reluctance to change"
mary, who told me everyone's business ("that one just acts like that so she can get her crazy check")
geraldine, who quieted tempers
jj, who told her real name to people who earned it
bunny, who couldn't leave behind the man she loved, who said she'd show me how to crochet
and lynn, the first one i ever talked to, who called me boston, who gave me a hug today, who fought with me about baseball (white sox vs. red sox), who gave me a list of sights in boston to take pictures of.

these are the few i was lucky enough to talk to -- thanks, ladies.

study break!

i think it's hard to call it a study break when i'm not really studying -- but what can i say, i've always been a rebel. i finished my history paper on thursday, and here's what i found out about how covenant women was affected by feminism:

they weren't.

but there were a few closet rockers hiding out in amongst the rest of them so that was cool to see.

here's something else that's cool to see:

I taught this guy everything he knows

so i'm doing this paper the work of Covenant Women (a women's group in my denomination) during the years of 1966-1976 or so. i found some interesting quotes. here's one in particular:

Many of our conflicts concerning femininity are false conflicts. A woman chooses not between a career and a family, but for being a person. And a man chooses not an aggressive career woman or a meek homemaker, but a full person who seeks after wholeness wherever she is.
Covenant Companion, Jan 14, 1966

i also attended a feminist/womanist/latina gathering of sorts at a professor's house the other night, and we talked a lot about this label of "feminist" and how people perceive it and what the cost of claiming it is. i myself have been struggling with why people find it so threatening -- i mean, i know why people find it threatening, especially men, but it's really not. it's about a pursuit of wholeness, an encouragement by society of that pursuit, an affirmation of life, as Elsa Tamez would say. what's frustrating is that a pursuit of wholeness causes segregation for me as a woman, causes hesitancy in relationships for others, turns on a switch in my brain that shocks me everytime someone talks about their "fellow man" or tells someone else to "grow a pair" or i hear suspicion or uncertainty in my own seminary about a Christian's woman's role as equal partner in the home, or as a leader in the church, or i see young girl's magazine stressing and restressing the importance of appearance.

i am a Christian, i am a woman, i am white, i am a feminist, i am an activist. how do i make these things work together? how do i affirm life (my own and others') the way Christ affirmed life?

crunch time

mystics paper due on monday.
history paper due thursday.
that's just the assignments we're thinking about.
there is no motivation.
whatsoever.
as evidenced by my presence on this blog, and myspace, and random other sites i haven't visited forever but which i won't turn off.

if you can't come and physically remove the internet from my computer (and really, if you did that, i'd kill you, so don't), please offer some words of encouragement. tell me: you can do it! stay on course! stay strong! press on!


(and ok, i wouldn't kill you. i might weep a little though.)

finally! alaska

day 1 we went up to hatcher's pass, where supposedly you go sledding. but it was pretty much white out conditions so we didn't do anything. here's a picture of katie's dog norm running in the white out (there are mountains behind him):

















when the sun burned off it was pretty amazing. this is my "wild God" picture:

















day 2 was the hiking/puking/peeing day on a little mountain they call baldy. here i am just about as far as i made it,
















and this is how i got down:

the peak behind me is where katie, katie's mom, and katie's aunt got to


















day 3 we hiked some more, and saw moose poop (but no moose) (but i've seen a moose in Maine):

















day 4 we hiked up the butte (like a hill to Alaskans, but a pretty good walk for me). This is a view of pioneer peak
















and a view of knik glacier (way in the back ground)

















day 5: this is me shooting some clay pigeons: this is momentous, probably the first and last time you'll see me holding an actual gun.

















day 6 and 7 we hung out with the fam -- easter sunday and all -- so no pics -- but an amazing trip overall.

fun with tunes

Put your music player on shuffle.
Press forward for each question.
Use the song title as the answer to the question.
No cheating!


How am I feeling today?:
sweet mistakes (ellis paul).

Will I get far in life?
don't speak (no doubt).

How do my friends see me?
there's gotta be more (stacey orrico).

Where will I get married?:
this is my world (hootie).

What song is the story of my life?
circle of life (lion king).

What was high school like?:
motown philly (boyz II men). "doin' a little east coast swing"

How can I get ahead in life?:
one thing (finger eleven). if anyone wants to know about the one thing, that'll be $25

What is the best thing about me?:
more than words (extreme).

How is today going to be?:
learning to fly (tom petty).

What is in store for this weekend?:
ms. fat booty (mos def).

How is my life going?:
redemption song (bob marley). actually, pretty darn perfect

What song will they play at my funeral?:
robin hood theme (robin hood -- disney). me & my stupid collection of disney

How does the world see me?:
kiss the girl (little mermaid). well, i kind of like this disney one. =)

Will I have a happy life?:
Jesus walks (kanye west).

What do my friends really think of me?:
i just can't wait to be king (lion king).

Do people secretly lust after me?:
One (u2).

How can I make myself happy?:
karma (alicia keys).

What should I do with my life?:
the bare necessities (jungle book).

Will I have kids?:
not in nottingham (robin hood).

What is some good advice?:
you don't know how it feels (to be me) (tom petty).

What do I think my current theme song is?:
meant to live (switchfoot).

What does everyone else think my current theme song is?:
play that funky music white boy (wild cherry).

What type of men/women do you like?:
yesterday (beatles).


that's it -- i will leave the rest of the commenting up to you.

dumb babies

once a bunch of us were sitting around talking about babies. my friend liz said that she was not into breastfeeding and i said that breastfeeding is better for your baby's brain development (or something) and she said "well, my baby will just have to be a little bit dumb then."

so this morning i was reading the Anchorage Daily News and came across this headline: "Study links poetry and lower achievement test scores." naturally i read on, and this is what it had to say (this is from the Washington Post orginally, so if someone without dial up wants to link to it, that'd be great. i don't have the patience):

"Fill your house with books if you want little Billy or Beth to grow up to be an academic all-star. Shakespeare is good. But stay away from poetry [side note: since when is Shakespeare NOT poetry? maybe they're thinking poetry equals e.e. cummings "anyone lived in a pretty how town" or whatever that is. anyway.] -- it may dumb down your child.
A research team headed by demographer Jonathan Kelley, of Brown University and the University of Melbourne, analyzed data from a study of scholastic ability in 43 countries, including the United States.
The researchers found that a child from a family have 500 books at home scored, on average, 112 points higher on the acheievement test than one from an otherwise identical family have only one book -- and that's after they factored in parents' education, occupation, income and other things associated with academic performance.
The researchers say a big home library reflects the parents' dedication to the life of the mind, which probably nurtures scholastic accomplishment in their offspring.
They also found that not all books are created equal: 'Having poetry books around is actively harmful by the same amount,' perhaps because it signals a 'Bohemian' lifestyle that may encourages kids to become guitar-strumming, poetry-reading dreamers."

in the great words of my friend liz, "well, my [kids] will just have to be a little bit dumb then."

don't get bored

i will make a huge post about alaska when i get back -- but here i am on dial up and using up katie's parents phone line, and i want to put my pictures on too, so it's just not the best time.

but to give you little morsels to tide you over:
1. hiked like every single day, and wore the same clothes
2. peed in the snow on a mountain, creating this neat little skinny hole that goes all the way down to the bottom
3. lost many, many games of ping pong
4. saw the northern lights
5. threw up half way up a mountain, and then KEPT GOING, like the wonder woman i am
6. still didn't make it all the way up, because met the rest of my party coming down
7. saw a glacier (from a distance)
8. went to a house concert
9. shot skeet with the house concert performer (first time holding a real gun)
10. joined in at "supper club" with katie's family.

everyone must go here

here.
go.
no, don't ask questions.
just go.
right now.

weekend recommendations

Movie:










Event:








Medieval Female Mystic:

your friends. your life. your facebook.

so this morning i got an email from facebook.com inviting me to join the group for the national sleepout i'm participating in (tothestreets.org). i had forgotten i even made a facebook profile, but it turned out i had, obviously, and i think it was because my friend dubie told me to check it out and you can't check it out unless you have a profile.

the funny thing is, when i looked on it, i had a message, from a one "Christopher Tinglof" at West Point. i've never met a Tinglof i'm not related to, so that was a trip -- except he could be related to me. but he doesn't look like me.

but then i looked up North Park people, and there are a ton, and for a second i thought i could fill out a new profile and have all these friends, but then i felt overwhelmed (much like in the kitchen yesterday) and just closed out the site. i wrote Christopher Tinglof back though.

everything turned out ok

except for a few grains of crunchy rice, the dinner was a success.

in addition, i got a phone call from one of my former youth group students tonight. unprompted, he said "Christina, you're the coolest Caucasian I know. I want to thank you for coming into my life."

that was way better than a successfully cooked crockpot meal.

plus!

how do you even know when a crockpot is working!? this one doesn't have a light or anything!

fellas, if you want a "traditional" little wifey who's going to cook and clean for you, don't come near me. i'm a slob with good-flavored mush.

good flavored mush

peeps, i'm trying to do this slow-cooker chicken thing for a small crowd that's coming over tonight, and i'm really scared it's going to fail. first, i have never tried slow cooker meal before. second, it called for 3 cans of cream of mushroom soup condensed, and i only had two cans, NON condensed, and one can of cream of chicken (also non condensed). third, i read the reviews AFTER i started the recipe, and they were all like "good flavor, but mushy!" FOURTH, my roommate walked in and was like "milk? why are you adding milk? won't that come out weird? milk comes out weird in a crockpot" and i was all "the recipe called for it, see, SEE????"

good gracious this is going to be a mess. it'll be like bridget jones diary when all of her friends came over and ate that blue soppy soup. i'll have to make everyone promise to still be my friend when it's all over.

how much do i love dancing?

so much. in fact, i always make my friends from boston go out dancing, even though no one really likes to dance as enthusiatically as i do...i think they do it just to humor me, much like when we go bowling. someone said to me once "i've never seen someone dance as energetically as you do while completely sober." which may not have been a compliment, but i'm taking it as one.

anyway, a seminary friend had a little dance party in her apartment tonight with some funky african music, and i had a good time. it's been a long time since i got down.

church update

after going to Al Green's church in Memphis last week during Sankofa, i kind of took Torgo's advice. i didn't go Quaker, but I went to Reba Place, which is a Mennonite church. it was cool, but my problem isn't with the first time i go to a church, it's with the second and third time. really, it's with my attitude. i have a shopping list for what i want, and i don't think that's the best way to go about it. finding a church home isn't (or shouldn't be) another consumeristic venture (finding a boy, however, that's another matter). anyway, i have an appointment with the women who was my spiritual director for a class we took last semester -- she was incredibly helpful in figuring out some crappy stuff that was going on last year, so i'm hopeful she'll help me figure out this Debbie Downer attitude I have towards going to church.

oh, did you want to hear more about Al's church? yes, he sang. "one day at a time, sweet Jesus." yes, in falsetto. and there were people there from all over the world (literally: Japan, Sweden, New Zealand, Canada). i kind of thought it would be this lavish place on a main street, but it was this little podunk church off the beaten path in a neighborhood. and just about 60% of the people there that day were visitors. and Al Green totally called out this woman who came in late. she was trying to sneak in and he says "Sarah, i thought you weren't going to make it today."

get on board, children

Sankofa is a Akan word that means "We must go back and reclaim our past so we can move forward; so we understand why and how we came to be who we are today" (don't you wish one English word meant as much?)

the sankofa class at the seminary is one done to promote racial righteousness/reconcialiation -- whites are partnered with people of color and we take a trip down south to revisit famous landmarks and museums from the civil rights era. the museums were as museums are, but i really liked seeing the actual places -- the 16th st. church in Birmingham Alabama (where we were stuck for a day and a night while our bus was in danger of exploding), where the bomb killed those 4 girls, Medgar Ever's home.

But the best part was meeting Hollis Watkins, a former member of SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), who is now doing leadership training and community organizing in Mississippi. he's not a young sprout anymore, but honestly one of the coolest people i have ever met in my lifetime. the civil rights movement is glamorized in a way, and it makes it hard for people to fight injustice today. racism today is more subtle and nuanced, more dangerous, as Hollis told us, because the subtle nature allows people to exist in a state of denial. but because today's freedom fighters are not leading marches (as much) or pushing dramatic boycotts or getting shoved off lunch counters, it's not getting as much attention. he also talked about lessons that could be learned from the movement, like working intergenerationally and encouraging indigenious leadership. he was also so freakin' humble, i didn't know what to do with him. amazing.

and he closed by singing with us:
get on board, children, children
get on board, children, children
get on board, children, children
let's fight for human rights

mechthild is kinda cool

so for my history requirement at seminary i'm taking medieval female mystics at a seminary in evanston (about 20 minutes away) and these mystics are something else -- they were being subsersive within a pretty constricting system, mostly by using accepted doctrine and theology and adding their own flavor to it. hildegard, the first mystic we studied, talked about virtue all the time (they're all big on chastity), which was done, but envisioned the virtues as women, which was NEVER done. the women would also talk themselves down, call themselves lowly, because if they were too confident, men wouldn't read their stuff. so we've been wondering in class how much of their self-depreciation is real and how much is just to get a wider audience for their work.

anyway, mechthild (and, really, is there a cooler name possible?) is big on relating to God as a lover -- indeed a lot of her stuff reads somewhat like a romance novel -- which she did on purpose. she was also a poet, and a lot of her work is in poetic form, which is exciting for me. here's one i like:

Book I, 8
The Most Lowly Praises God in 8 Things
O you burning Mountain.
O you chosen Sun.
O you full Moon.
O you bottomless Well.
O you unscalable Height.
O you brightness without measure.
O Wisdom without ground.
O Mercy without restraint.
O Might without opposition.
O Crown of all honors!
The most lowly person you ever created praises you.

i'm going to have some weird dreams

if you haven't seen Grizzly Man...i don't know whether i would tell you to see it or not to see it. quite possibly the strangest movie i have ever, ever seen.

i have to start exercising

i'm going to alaska in april! with a good friend who has to go home, and because she's a resident of alaska, gets a $60 companion fare. and i get to be the companion. i told her i want to go hiking in the tundra, so it's time to start getting in shape. i'm also glad she has all that mountaineering-special-north-face jacket kind of stuff, because i don't, and it would be embarrassing to try and go hiking in the alaskan bush with my winter jacket, which looks like a burgundy sleeping bag.

whenever i try to go out into nature it's funny. i love the woods, don't get me wrong, and if i am choosing to vacation, i'd rather it be out in the middle of nowhere (since i'm in cities all the time) but i'm pretty clueless. narrative example:

at my college, we had to do some sort of outdoor orientation, and when i was looking at all our options i thought to myself "hey, i can do a thru-hike!" at the same time thinking "what exactly is a thru hike?"

i had to buy all my supplies, including a monstrosity of a frame pack that was leftover from when Eastern Mountain Sports used to rent frame packs. it was external, so it made me look like a hippie, especially when i filled it and walked through my neighborhood.

ok, i didn't really do that, but i did fill it and go to the closest place to hike near my house (a "hill" that takes 20 minutes to summit).

and not that there's anything wrong with being a hippie. or a hill.

but anyway! then i bought a stuff sack for my parents' old school sleeping bag (cloth, olive green on the outside and a duck pattern on the inside). it didn't matter that this wasn't the type of sleeping bag to be stuffed, because i didn't really know how a stuff sack worked. i rolled my sleeping bag up and tried to fit it in the sack. not surprisingly, it didn't fit. so much for stuff sacks i said to myself.

when we actually started the trip, there i was, cut off jean shorts ("make sure you don't wear jeans!" our leaders said to us the night before -- but those were all the shorts i had -- city people don't wear shorts!), gargantuan frame pack, rolled sleeping bag hanging from the bottom. next to all these other first years who obviously had done this before, as evidenced by their sleek internal LL Bean fram packs (sleeping bags inside, apparently, in their stuff sacks), their swishy Umbro shorts, and their Nalgene bottles (dudes, i had never HEARD of Nalgene! or North Face! or Umbro! or stuff sacks, fergoshsakes!)

as it turns out, i wasn't the slowest hiker, but all that meant is that while one leader was at the front of the pack with everyone who knew what they were doing, the other leader was at the back of the pack with the SLOWEST person, and i was by myself in the middle, red faced, hair frizzed out from sweat and rain (cuz it rained the first few days) (i looked like a lion).

but i did it. and i made it.

and in just about a month i'll be doing the same thing (only slightly better) in the alaskan tundra!
wahoo!