Baltimore love…inspired by “The Wire.”

I’m watching “The Wire.” Yes, I know I’m about a thousand years late, whatever. Anyway, when I mention to anyone that I’m watching it, I get three common reactions:

1. “That show is fantastic.”

2. “Stringer BELL!!!!!”

3. “Dude. I’m NEVER going to Baltimore.”

Fair point. If my only exposure to Charm City had been the depiction presented by “The Wire,” I’d probably find it distasteful as well. However, as a faux-native (because really, life in the suburbs doesn’t count as true residence in a city, even though we suburbanites like to claim that it does), “The Wire” is stirring up all kinds of nostalgia in me. There’s something delightful about my native city’s most recognizable landmark being not an amazing skyscraper or beautiful skyline, but a huge red neon Domino sugar sign. It’s such a symbol of the people! I mean really, the Empire State Building is lovely, but I don’t know anyone who actually works there. But pretty much everybody who’s not diabetic has sugar in the pantry. And that pretty much sums up my general feeling about Baltimore: nothing fancy, not very healthy, and totally personal.

I’ve been a defector from B’more since college, and lived in Chicago since I was 22. So I’m no expert on Baltimore culture in the here and now or as an adult. Nevertheless, my recent exposure to my native city via premium cable has me longing for certain Baltimore cultural hallmarks. And I’d like to share them with all those haters who, after watching “The Wire,” claim that Baltimore looks like one of the middle circles of hell.

1. Diners 

A city has a serious issue when the restaurant called The Chicago Diner is…wait for it…VEGAN. Chicago, you need watch some Barry Levinson, or just stop pretending you know what a diner is. Anyone who has been to the Towson Diner, or the Double T, or the ode to utter wackiness that is the Paper Moon, can tell you what a real diner entails. If it doesn’t have a revolving dessert showcase, endless coffee in beige cups and saucers, formica counters and tabletops, and 24-hour service, then it’s not a diner. Period. There is nothing that can beat a grilled cheese sandwich and a chocolate shake at 2am on a Friday, especially when you’re 17 and shrouded in ennui with no other legal place to be outside your own house. Maybe some of the charm has slipped away since everything went smoke-free, but a Baltimore diner is still the best place in the world for an adolescent to vent her late-night angst to her equally angsty friends. Poor Chicago teens. You have no idea what you’re missing.

2. Camden Yards

I will never knock Wrigley Field, having lived mere blocks away from it for years. I love Wrigley’s knockaround, dilapidated charm as much as the next girl. However, Camden Yards is a real treasure, one that combines the tradition of Wrigley Field with the structural soundness of US Cellular, and adds an architectural beauty that no ballpark can rival. It’s gorgeous. I went to a PROM there, for crying out loud. I didn’t grow up in a sporty family and therefore my visits to Camden Yards were few and far between, but the very sight of it coming off Route 95 into downtown always gives me that warm and fuzzy feeling…adjacent purple monstrosity notwithstanding.

3. The Baltimore O

No, I’m not talking about baseball this time. I’m talking about a sacred vowel. Anyone who has spent time chatting with a true native of Baltimore has been given the priceless gift of seeing just how far the letter “o” can really go. B’more folk don’t merely pronounce words with a long “o”; they chew on them, like a big wad of bubble gum. They use their palate and tongue in a way that makes the letter “o” sound vaguely Australian, with a good dose of blue-collar steelworker thrown in. Where Minnesotans round out the long “o,” Bal’mer folks put it through the wringer. My choir teacher damn near lost her mind trying to train the Baltimore “o” out of our pronunciation; it warps the national anthem beyond belief. But I cherish it every time I hear it, and even after 15+ years, sometimes it still creeps in when I say words like “phone” or “home.”

4. The 8×10

I have no idea what this grungy little music club is now called; I know they changed the name, but I really don’t care. All I know is that crowding into the old 8×10 to hear whatever little no-name bands who were working their way through the mid-Atlantic music scene was pretty much the highlight of my young life. There were other venues as well, but none of them beat the 8×10 for its tight fit, seedy interior, and covert charm. You can keep your arenas. The 8×10 is the perfect hole in the wall…whatever it’s called now.

5. Crab feasts

It really is a shame that I can no longer enjoy crab anywhere other than Maryland. But after you’ve been to a crab feast, there’s just no going back. I love the ritual of it all: newspaper on the table, mallet at each place, stacks of paper plates, rolls of paper towels…and best of all, the meticulous step-by-step method of tearing an innocent shellfish to shreds. In no other realm have I ever expended so much effort to ingest so little food, yet few true Marylanders will contest the awesomeness of a good crab feast. You can never have too much Old Bay.

5a. Utz Snacks

Speaking of Old Bay…GOD , I miss Utz. Frito-Lay can’t hold a candle to these mid-Atlantic salty snack gurus. They’re best known for their Crab Chips, but I have yet to come across a bar-b-que or sour cream and onion chip that comes close to Utz’s formula. I used to pound a big grab of Utz from the Royal Farm every day after high school, so that might be one reason why I love them so much; they taste like the promise of free time. None will ever compare.

5b. National Bohemian Beer

Oh, boy, what a beer! It’s the mark of a true working-class city to have its own brand of crappy beer. Like Old Style, Natty Boh has little to recommend itself by way of taste. Its charm rests entirely in its local production and its delightful one-eyed mascot, Mr. Boh. My cousin Dave has a t-shirt with the Utz girl and Mr Boh gazing at each other with heart-shaped eyes. Pretzels and beer, a match made in heaven, but consummated in Baltimore…which is, of course, the Land of Pleasant Living.

6. The Senator

The Senator Theater in Baltimore is a national landmark, and for good reason. There are few movie theaters nowadays where you can sit in the balcony. The joy of the Senator is purely nostalgic, but it packs a powerful punch, from its gorgeous foyer to its huge theater with red velvet seats. Barry Levinson, good Baltimore boy that he is, usually premieres his movies there, which gives the place an uptick in cache. But mostly I just love the idea of sitting in a truly old school movie theater. I wonder if they ever caved and got cup holders.

7. BERGER COOKIES!!!!!

I’ve saved the best for last. The Berger cookie is truly a work of genius: a soft shortbread cookie, about an inch and a half in diameter, absolutely smothered with rich chocolate fudge. Seriously, the ratio of fudge to cookie is about 2:1. I know full well that if I eat more than two I’ll regret it for the rest of the day, yet time and again I find myself working through a third cookie, unable to resist its siren song. Unfortunately they don’t stay fresh for long, even in an unopened package; when I brought three boxes back to Chicago I found them getting moldy on top a week later. There’s too much moisture in the fudge. So I just have to enjoy them while I’m there.

Naturally this is not a comprehensive list. And given the fact that I haven’t lived there full time since I was eighteen, I know there are all kinds of grown-up charms in Baltimore that I just never really got the chance to sample. But I feel pretty good about my compilation, in that it fairly represents my undying love for a city that doesn’t have the greatest reputation. This is not to place any rankings regarding my current home vs my town of origin. I love Chicago, no question. It’s where I became a grown-up, and it’s awesome. But when I watch “The Wire,” I know that deep down, I’ll always be a Baltimore girl.

Don’t Believe Everything You Think.

I was driving to work today behind a car that sported a bumper sticker that read “Don’t Believe Everything You Think.”

I’m not a big fan of bumper stickers in general. First of all, they’re all but impossible to remove, and like tattoos, there are few things that I believe in strongly enough to want permanently imprinted, whether on my body or on my car. This is particularly true with regard to ideological stuff. Are you really going to continue to feel the exact same way you do right now, like, forever? There’s something kind of sad about seeing those “Yes We Can!” stickers now, all dirty and worn and frayed, somewhat like the sentiment they express.

Another issue with bumper stickers I have, is the question of how efficacious it is to make a proclamation regarding what you believe to be intrinsically true and foundational to your understanding of life, and slap it on the back of your car. It makes you feel like you’re doing something significant, aligning yourself with an affinity group of like-minded believers, but really it doesn’t signify anything other than the fact that you dropped a buck fifty at some store on a sticker and took the ten seconds necessary to stick it to your bumper. It reminds me of the time in ninth grade when I got voted “Most Environmentally Conscious” because I had a pencil case that sported the phrase “Don’t Pollute Our Oceans.” I took that award with a fair dose of shame, knowing full well that the girl who was starting a campaign to get recycling containers in the cafeteria and copy center got a pretty raw deal.

Still, when I saw this particular sticker, I had to give props to the driver for picking a slogan that might actually somewhat be doing its purported job. I read it, and my brain did a little flip. Perhaps it hit me more than it might other people, because one of the questions I regularly hit my students with is the question of what they actually believe. Just the other day I was chatting with a sophomore about the Nicene Creed, and the veritable laundry list of dogmas that we rattle off every Sunday in Catholic Mass…some of which are actually pretty incredible. Consubstantial with the Father? One holy, catholic, apostolic Church? And perhaps the most fantastic of all, the resurrection of the body? Does anyone ever stop to think what that even means? Especially now, when we’re all still trying to memorize the new and improved translation of the Creed, which contains just enough small alterations to totally throw us off our game. I’m still reading it straight from the insert in the hymnal, and it’s been almost two years now.

But more immediately, this sticker brought to mind the little problem we’re encountering on Capitol Hill, as two parties are locked in an ideological impasse. I have to actually stop myself from reading the articles in the Times and the Post, because they’re really starting to freak me out. It’s hard to continue to make assumptions based on what we perceive to be general sanity and responsibility, when each day reveals less and less of either on the Hill. I read an article on Tuesday in which hardline Republicans asserted that a default would really be no big deal. I mean, all those top-tier economists, how can they know it’ll be disastrous? It’s never happened before, right? We’re America! We’ve got TONS of money!

It seems pretty clear at this point. The Emperor officially has no clothes.

I guess this bumper sticker’s suggestion to be more selective with regard to beliefs just seemed to highlight the issue of ideology, how it can be used, for good or ill, to stir things up and create change. Right now the Tea Party ideology feels a bit like the Doomsday Device from “Dr Strangelove,” which would blow up the entire planet if anyone anywhere employed an atomic bomb. It’s an awful feeling, to be at the mercy of someone else’s ideals, especially when they don’t line up with your own. But even if you do agree with Tea Party ideology, you’re gonna blow up with everyone else if they flip the switch. Which brings me to the big question…how do you decide what you really believe? Because if you really believe something, you’re going to need to stand by it, even in the face of opposition. With regard to Obama and the Democrats, I’m glad that they’re  sticking to their ideals, and I think capitulating to Republican demands at this point would set a disastrous precedent for political negotiation tactics in the future. But I have to say, as the days pass and we get closer to that deadline to raise the debt ceiling, this standoff gets more and more unnerving. That’s the point of it, I know. But it doesn’t make it feel any better.

One of my old bosses, a priest at St Clement, once told me that America is a country full of opinions. People in our society are so quick to come to conclusions and assert them as their tried and true opinion, whether those conclusions have been tried and true or not. I have no idea how long and critically the Tea Partiers and their constituents have been mulling over their understanding of the role of government in American life. And I know that the fact that my opinions and beliefs run counter to theirs makes me a poor judge of the integrity of their thought process. But I’ll say it anyway: I wish they’d do a lot more thinking, and a little less believing.

 

Pope Francis’s Idea of Rigorous Catholicism

I’ve been keeping my eye out for any negative responses to Pope Francis’s interviews from the past couple of weeks. They’ve been hard to find, which doesn’t really surprise me. Most responses fall into two categories: those who see his statements as a wonderful and revolutionary breath of fresh air, and those who claim that he’s just repeating what popes and the Church have been saying all along. But at long last, I finally found a critical article, which you can check out here.  This guy Rod Dreher is a former Catholic who has joined an Orthodox church in recent years, because he felt the Catholic Church was too sentimental and self-serving, and not challenging enough. Some may think that’s crazy talk, that the Catholic Church is the strictest church around, but I don’t think his statements are without substance. I too have encountered experiences in the Church which focus on self-acceptance and self-care, and have gone very light on catechism or instruction. It sometimes frustrated me too, especially when I got to university, and realized how little solid knowledge I actually had on Catholic teaching.

Dreher speaks from his own experience, which I can’t refute–it’s his, after all. Yet some of the conclusions he makes about the Church and the issues she has faced in recent decades seem pretty misguided to me. Here’s his take on the scandals:

The contemporary era of global Catholicism began in 1959, when the newly elected Pope John XXIII sought to “open the windows” of the fusty old Church to the modern world by calling the Second Vatican Council… The coming decades would see a collapse in Catholic catechesis and Catholic discipline. The so-called “spirit of Vatican II” — a perversion of the Council’s actual teaching — justified many subsequent outrages.

In 2002, when the clerical-sex-abuse scandal broke nationwide, the full extent of the rot within the church became manifest. All that post-Vatican II happy talk and non-judgmentalism had been a facade concealing what then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — later Pope Benedict XVI — would call the “filth” in the church. Many American bishops deployed the priceless Christian language of love and forgiveness in an effort to cover their own foul nakedness in a cloak of cheap grace.

Okay, WHAT??? If I’m not mistaken, this guy is implying that the fallout from Vatican II is responsible for the corruption of the Church in the succeeding decades. This claim is incredible. Yes, the news of the scandals broke in 2002…but to imply that the changes in the Church that succeeded the second Vatican council actually CAUSED the corruption in the Church is ridiculous. Clerical abuse, sexual or otherwise, did not start in 1963. Nor did clerical cover-ups. One might make the claim that the changes in the Church after the council were the catalyst that would empower victims to bring their terrible experiences to light, rather than feel forced to hide in the shadow of the power of the hierarchy. Without Vatican II, those scandals may never have  been addressed at all, which would have been much better for the Church’s PR, but a thousand times worse for its people.

But I digress. Back to Francis. Dreher expresses concern that people will take the Pope’s words as license to just keep doing whatever they’re doing, rather than the challenge that would be necessary to truly embrace the cross. And I get that. It hasn’t escaped me that in an incredibly lengthy interview, the comments that have been far and away the most cited have been Pope Francis’s statements regarding the Church’s excessive emphasis on contraception, abortion, and gay marriage. Which in itself is ironic, since he’s saying that we should, you know, TALK ABOUT OTHER THINGS EVERY ONCE IN AWHILE. But people are interpreting those statements as the Pope implying that Church teaching on these matters is too strict, and that we should abandon it. And that’s simply not true. The very same week of his interview, the Pope got up in front of a group of Catholic gynecologists and spoke fervently against abortion.

If we’re thinking that Francis is a softie, that he’s going easy on everyone and denying the sacrifices and challenges that are part of Catholic living, well, then we’re reading him wrong. The interview Pope Francis gave in its entirety is not a “get out of jail free” card for libertines and lax Catholics. I personally think that Francis is actually issuing a clarion call for greater rigor in Catholic practice than what we’ve encountered in recent years. It’s just that the rigor takes a different shape than that of orthodoxy in matters of sexuality. He’s calling us to the experience of true encounter with the other, particularly with those living in poverty and on the margins. It’s not enough to be a nice person, to put some money in a basket or set up an electronic funds transfer for your parish, or even to follow the rules of the catechism to the letter in one’s personal choices. If that’s all you do, then you’re not being Catholic in the world. If you really want to be Catholic, YOU HAVE TO TALK TO POOR PEOPLE. You have to open your eyes to not only the poverty that pervades our culture, but the people who live in that poverty. From his interview:

“When it comes to social issues, it is one thing to have a meeting to study the problem of drugs in a slum neighborhood and quite another thing to go there, live there and understand the problem from the inside and study it. There is a brilliant letter by Father Arrupe to the Centers for Social Research and Action on poverty, in which he says clearly that one cannot speak of poverty if one does not experience poverty, with a direct connection to the places in which there is poverty. The word insertion is dangerous because some religious have taken it as a fad, and disasters have occurred because of a lack of discernment. But it is truly important.”

If there’s one point that Francis has been absolutely insistent about, it’s that you have to talk to people. You have to respect people. You have to set aside your desire to judge people and write them off according to some societal assumption or political party line. You have to love them. And to love them, YOU HAVE TO ENCOUNTER THEM.

“The Son of God became incarnate in the souls of men to instill the feeling of brotherhood. All are brothers and all children of God. Abba, as he called the Father. I will show you the way, he said. Follow me and you will find the Father and you will all be his children and he will take delight in you. Agape, the love of each one of us for the other, from the closest to the furthest, is in fact the only way that Jesus has given us to find the way of salvation and of the Beatitudes.”

Living a Catholic life means being in relationship with Jesus, and Jesus lives in the people of the world, especially in the poor and marginalized. Pope Francis has made personal choices that eschew his own comfort, prestige, and even safety, so that he can be with people. Time and time again his actions show that he loves people, and he loves people because he loves God. There is no other way to Christ in this world than through encounter. Yet true personal encounter becomes more difficult all the time. Communication has become so much less personalized in the digital age. It’s easy to avoid encounter, and risky to embrace it. True personal encounter is arguably the greatest challenge of our time. Pope Francis is issuing a mandate for us to meet that challenge head on, and to make personal encounter our first priority.

Rigorous? Hells, yeah. And that’s why I like him.

Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2013/09/29/im-still-not-going-back-to-the-catholic-church/#ixzz2gb91FfMG

Shuffling into a blog

It’s a little awkward to create an intro post after I’ve already posted something else. But I’ve never been one to stand on ceremony, and yesterday the Breaking Bad thing just had to happen. So there you go.

I’ve considered blogging for a long time, like six years, and haven’t done it for a number of reasons. Most immediately, I resent technology and resisted the idea of trying a new form of it (yeah, like blogging is so new, but it’s new to me, so whatever). But the deeper, more pervasive reason for my resistance was that I didn’t want to post anything that wasn’t earth-shatteringly good, and so I was just waiting for that perfect idea to come along. This mentality, as all writers know, is kryptonite to good writing. Fear of writing crap paralyzes my brain, and keeps me from writing anything. So I haven’t been writing.

On Sunday evening, I was leading a spiritual formation session for the students who work as peer ministers in the Catholic Campus Ministry office at DePaul. We started with a Lectio Divina of Matthew’s account of the baptism of Jesus. I like Matthew’s version of this story, because in it John the Baptist protests when Jesus asks to be baptized. “I need to be baptized by you,” he says, “and yet you are coming to me?” (Mt 3:14) This can be a real issue in pastoral ministry for a lot of people, the feeling of inadequacy, which can prevent one from doing any ministry at all.  In the reflection periods of the Lectio, students spoke about humility, about needing to receive God in their lives, about the mutuality between John and Jesus, which was all great. One student whom I work with in spiritual direction announced her revelation that she’s not perfect, and that it’s okay. As a young woman who has struggled with alcoholic parents and issues of codependency and perfectionism, that kind of acknowledgment was actually a really big deal.

This student’s revelation stirred me up. My own imperfections and my fears of inadequacy as a writer have kept me from creating anything for a long time now. Reading the blogs of some friends and colleagues, I shrank inwardly, thinking I’d never measure up to their levels of intellect and spiritual wisdom, and I should leave the publication of spiritual musings to those more gifted than I. Sure, I’d write stuff here and there, but my pieces were few and far between, and I didn’t really share them. Six years of non-blogging adds up to quite a few potential posts that never took form. They all could have been total crap. But some could have been really good. It seemed like a waste, of thoughts and writing and, maybe most importantly, the joy I would have taken in creating those posts. And if I’ve learned anything in recent years, it’s that joy should not be wasted. 

So about the title. “God Shuffled His Feet” is the name of an album the Crash Test Dummies put out in 1993. The title track tells a charming story about a group of people in the Garden of Eden who have a picnic with God on the seventh day of creation, and ask him random questions about life and heaven. God answers them, but his answers make no sense. And they just sort of stare at each other, waiting for someone to say something, and, well, God shuffles his feet.

I’ve always loved that song, because it totally echoes the internal spiritual dialogues I have, trying to figure out answers to the questions that are so important, and so impossible. I put them out there, and wander around in mental circles, and sometimes feel like I’m getting somewhere, but most often not. Yet I have to keep asking them, even if I wind up just shuffling my feet. So that’s the hope of this blog, not to get any answers or say anything definitive about the mysteries of life and God and purpose and meaning, but just to shuffle through them, and see what arises. I guess I’ll see how it goes.

And for those who are interested, you can check out the song here.