Tamarind Mem / Portrait of Indian Women in Two Generations

A friend recommended this book by an Indian-Canadian writer to me even while saying that it was full of bitterness. Indeed, there is bitterness. But I loved it as it spoke to my woman's heart. The themes involving traditional women's lives in India over several generations dovetailed for me with the series currently available on Netflix: "Stories by Rabindranath Tagore." Tagore was a famous Indian writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, the first non-European to do so. He keenly observed facets of the lives of women in the contexts of the Hindu caste system, marriage customs, and aspirations for education, change and modernization. I read "Tamarind Mem" through the Tagore's lens which I had just acquired, but I also read it simply as a woman.

There are, first of all, the issues connected to arranged marriages. The central character, the Tamarind Mem, is a young woman who is married off to a complete stranger in spite of her vocal protestations and desire for advanced education and independence. She has always had a sharp tongue, something that seems common to many Indian women in stories. Considering the distresses suffered and the lack of power in traditional situations, it is no wonder that the women resort to using their mouth to provide many tongue-lashings. Tamarind Mem is not happy. Her daughter is not happy. She is an unhappy woman making everyone unhappy. The somewhat older man she was married off to copes somehow, but is distant. He provides no friendship for his wife, no talk, no intimacy, while he proves to be a wonderfully warm father and storyteller. There is a split in his personality. The woman's upbringing also does not allow her to approach him in a more relaxed or playful way.  There is only Dharma, duty.  Spouses don't call each other by their names. One of the men says this: "A woman is for bed and breakfast."

The wife's isolation from her husband is crushing her. She is indeed bitter and she is often nasty. Through the book we learn to see the damage she does but also learn to understand her.

Many problems are connected to Indian customs. We see here a sensitive critique of these customs. But also, the difficulties of coping with lack of communication, of being cooped-up in a house, the crushing disappointment of failing to form a deep relationship with your husband, abandonment in marriage, lack of vulnerability in the most intimate of relationships, are universal. The pain is raw and palpable.

Her daughters seek out different paths in different lands, escaping the limitations of living in Indian society.  Tamarind Mem, however, also seeks out a different life and contentment after her older husband dies.

Women's clothing at the Olympics and Song Lyrics for Small Children

Women and clothing.  Women and shame.  Women and honor.  Women and honor killings.

The evil West.  Lyrics of Songs.

An article in the National Post by Mireille Silcoff about the columnist's young child and the lyrics the little girls sings at home, having picked them up at camp and other places, strikes me where I care a lot.  She writes well, as usual.

http://news.nationalpost.com/life/what-do-i-do-when-my-four-year-old-thinks-a-song-about-keeping-your-genitals-tidy-for-visitors-is-a-ditty-about-bananas


Since I have grown into adulthood, a few decades ago, I have felt that there has been a war on the family.  This began in my mind when the stores began staying open on Sundays, women began working at marginal jobs at all hours, the orginial "precariat", and people went to the mall instead of to church.  Really, store hours seemed to me the thin edge of the wedge. We all are now only consumers, first and foremost.

In the eighties, our clothes were a little weird with shoulder pads and huge glasses and such, but they were neither overly modest, uncomfortable, confining nor provocative.  It seemed to me that the revolution  happened to my daughter's generation.  When the Spice Girls began performing the way they did, all the little girls wanted to look like them.  The clothes in the stores seemed transformed overnight to imitate these scantily clad idols.  How did this happen all at once?  As Silcoff says:  they began to look like very small prostitutes.  We went from dressing like a princess or a bride to dressing like a woman at a bar looking for action.  What the hell happened?  Now we had to start fighting about clothes with our daughters in the stores.  ("This is your back-to-school outfit?"  NOT.)

Meanwhile, the images traveled around the world and one can sometimes hardly blame the Islamic backlash. We were somehow powerless to control the way our culture was evolving, but they tried their best to stop theirs from going down the same road.  The Islamic culture warrior was born.

For some reasons, these wars are waged on the front line of women's clothing.  Personally, I was raised in Germany and there was not much problem with people going nude.  We wore bikinis and loose summer tops and nobody thought anything of it. So it's not the amount of skin per se that poses the problem.  It is how it is presented and when and where.  Is there skin because it is more comfortable for sport?  Is there skin because you have a thing for nude bathing at a nude beach?

Is there skin because you want to be provocative? And how does someone interpret provocative skin?  If you get a woman drunk in a bar, that is wearing more or less clothing, and then have sex with her that she can't remember, or can't remember inviting you to have, you have most likely "raped" her.  It is a tricky thing and scary thing. In my days, I would not have found myself in such places or drunk, but noways, it seems the norm for young adults to wear themselves out with use of substance and hanging around parties and bars. You mix in scantily clad, and the situation for our girls has become very hazardous.  You can't blame any parent for freaking out about these scenarios.  The damage to women and girls is unspeakable.  It is not acceptable.




This image became iconic last week during the Rio Olympics.  The German women played in bikinis.  The Egyptian women played fully covered.  The German's won the match.

Personally, I don't find either outfit obscene or provocative.  And as Hamed Abdel-Samad says:  we should just be glad, the Muslim woman gets to play volleyball.  Just that should be celebrated.  I see his point.

Still, if I was required to play in such a covered outfit, I would be furious.  This has got to be so hot.  I hardly like to have longer hair, as it makes me feel too hot.   If I had to be covered in a hot country, or any country, I would call it oppression not modesty.  I want to feel the air on my temples, the wind playing with my hair, the breeze around my neck, the cooling effect of the perspiration being carried away. As someone said, they would not subject an animal to such suffocating conditions.

I have seen Muslim women, at the mall, shopping for clothing, with shimmering things attached to their headscarves, like roses and hearts, that advertised them as available for dating.  Is this less modest, less enticing to a man?  I am not a man, I can't say.  I don't think it's a great idea to walk around with the bust hanging out. As a woman, I don't really like to see that on other women. At the beach, fine.  I don't have to stare at them.  In public, where we interface a work, etc., not nice.  Keep your bust to yourself. That's basically it.  Keep your private parts covered in public.  You really want to be part of the meat market?

There are images of women in India.  The Hindu women wear beautiful robes that cover and are still designed to get the air moving around the body, to keep cooler. I'd love to wear such lovely fabrics.  The Muslim women in India, have this tight fitting thing around their heads and necks that look like torture. It would be enough for me not to convert to Islam to have to wear such a thing.

Still, overall, I think that the West should come up with some sense of propriety without blaming everything on women.  This is communicated through our movies and songs, our outings and manner of speech.  The transgender movement contributes to this misunderstanding of women as carriers of certain body parts and voice tones.  There is so much else to womanhood that needs protecting and nurturing and valuing.  We have all lost our way.

Ok.  There, I have blogged something.

International Women's Day

I'm not much into "days", but let's give it a shot.

I have been spoiled.  I had a great father and mother, a prosperous upbringing, a good education, a stable marriage, wonderful hobbies, and last but best a faith in Christ that has supported me through a variety of trials.

As a woman, I marvel, though, that after all this time and all the books that are written, that it is still so hard for men to understand women, and probably vice versa.

This comes through even when speaking with LGBT individuals.  When Jenner poses as a dolled up woman and wants to be called a "woman", he has absolutely no idea what he is talking about--just for example.

And this is how I know that the Bible is true.  Even though it was written down by men, it knows what it is about.  That's all I am going to say right now.  I have work to do.

Also look at this:  http://www.firstthings.com/article/1998/02/004-women-of-renewal-a-statement

Friday morning's quick thought / about the kitchen

Men and Women and Food and Fire, in and out of the kitchen:


Jesus Christ said that he himself is the food, the meal.  In it we have forgiveness of sins and community.  Someone did the cooking and he did serving and foot-washing.

In our days, who precisely does the cooking--has become something of a women's equality issue.  The women who have a raised consciousness have got themselves decidedly out of the kitchen.  We are so busy, we get our food at the drive-through window at McDonald's and we wonder how everyone has got so obese.

On the other hand, when we do have time, we love to have an outdoor BarBQ, with the men usually "manning" and supervising the cooking of the meat.  This has always been mainly men's work.
And this sort of event is the very height of summer, vacation, being happy with friends and family.
When the men cook the meat and the women make the salads and deserts, entertaining is much easier.

No doubt, kitchen work has been a grind in the past.  But I also remember having good chats at the sink doing dishes by hand.  One washed, another dried and a lot of ground got covered while working side by side.  This has been lost, too.  We have dishwashers and we have got no time to do dishes, either, any more.

It can be demeaning, though.  I remember visiting a friend, as a girl, and the father was sitting in the living room watching TV, while the mother worked and brought him beer, as he called for it.  This may not have been as bad as the optics were for me that day, as I gladly bring a cold beer to a tired man, who deserves it at the end of his day, etc.  But certainly, we know of some tyrants who behave very badly, are demanding, rude and insensitive, all the while never returning a favor or serving anyone else.

On the opposite spectrum is the man who does not want anything done for him.  He won't ask a favor and won't thank you for one.  He is an island to himself.  The whole communal thing is not truly for him.  This can be very disappointing for a nurturing soul who has allied herself with him.

Maybe this is why, in the olden days, we spent so much time inculcating good table manners, shared duties, helpfulness and consideration, all around meal preparation, serving and consumption. Flexibility is good, and I myself have gotten a bit too lazy to clean my own lettuce now that you can buy it ready to eat.  Pre-cleaned lettuce, at this point, seems to me the ultimate in indulgence.  One used to make lettuce for a whole family at one time.  Then it was worth the trouble.  Now I can make a salad just for myself in a minute.  Scary in a way.  Comfortable in another.

Sometimes all this even makes you feel guilty for spending time on meal preparation.  Suzy home-maker his wasting her day baking cookies and making coleslaw.  On the other hand, if you are making some gluten-free, superfood and do it with mind-fullness, you now could also call it "meditation".  This would be the epitome of all goodness and worthwhileness, especially if you are doing for yourself.

Which brings us back to Jesus Christ being the food.  There is a spirituality in eating and meal-preparation. Even the smoke of burnt-offerings were pleasing to God.  Abel's sacrifice of blood and meat were accepted by God.

What do we get out of this?--Maybe, spend the time you need to prepare meals of whatever complexity you desire.  Do it with gratitude, joy and meditation.  Remember that the Lord himself is taking care of you, and that he ate, too, not counting himself too high and mighty to lend a hand or provide the food.  On the other hand, also, he told Martha to get out of the kitchen and make the word a priority.   Something for the spirit, something for the body, something for the community, something for God.

Enjoy it, as Solomon said.  And he knew what he was saying.



 

Why do women cry?

This below came across my FB stream.  I liked it. quite a bit.  It could be seen as a bit sappy, but I think it  profound. Usually, not much gets written about women which is sensible or sensitive.  And now it will be politically incorrect to distinguish male and female.  This, in spite of all that has been discovered recently about "brain sex", how the male and female brains differ significantly.  "Male and female he made them."

A little boy asked his mother, "Why are you crying?" "Because I'm a woman," she told him.

"I don't understand," he said. His Mom just hugged him and said, "And you never will."



Later the little boy asked his father, "Why does mother seem to cry for no reason?"

"All women cry for no reason," was all his dad could say.

The little boy grew up and became a man, still wondering why women cry.

Finally he put in a call to God. When God got on the phone, he asked,

"God, why do women cry so easily?"

God said, "When I made the woman she had to be special.

I made her shoulders strong enough to carry the weight of the world, yet gentle enough to give comfort.

I gave her an inner strength to endure childbirth and the rejection that many times comes from her children.

I gave her a hardness that allows her to keep going when everyone else gives up, and take care of her family through sickness and fatigue without complaining.

I gave her the sensitivity to love her children under any and all circumstances, even when her child has hurt her very badly.

I gave her strength to carry her husband through his faults and fashioned her from his rib to protect his heart.

I gave her wisdom to know that a good husband never hurts his wife, but sometimes tests her strengths and her resolve to stand beside him And finally, I gave her a tear to shed. This is hers exclusively to use whenever it is needed."

"You see my son," said God, "the beauty of a woman is not in the clothes she wears, the figure that she carries, or the way she combs her hair.

The beauty of a woman must be seen in her eyes, because that is the doorway to her heart the
place where love resides."

Diaconate / Christian Women Leaders / Love

The role of women in the church is always divisive discussion material.

A book seems to have become available on the diaconate in the early and medieval church.   It is said to be a "fascinating" study, but there seems to be no summary of it available, and the book is not inexpensive...

There definitely needs to be a discussion around vocations.  I will be looking for it.




At the same time here are lists of 200 contemporary Christian women leaders and writers in Canada and the United States, -- with whom I can't say I am familiar.  One suspects that a few of them are not orthodox in their outlook, but the basic message of Love and Welcome has to be paramount.

I did watch this video by Becca Stevens:  http://vimeo.com/77794246.  " Love is the Most Powerful Force for Social Change."

We need to occupy ourselves with this subject matter.  We cannot be catechists without having love in Christ at the center.   And orthodox women can't be the only ones who don't get to say something. 

Thinking about the thinking while knitting / Meditation/ No need to go to the Himalayas

The cowl featured in the last post is almost finished, due to the addictive nature of the knitting process.

While I was sitting there thinking the following over and over as I went:

"yarn over, slip one, knit two together, pass the slipped one over, yarn over, knit three,
yarn over, slip one, knit tow together..."

--for 210 stitches in the round, I realized that the state of consciousness I was achieving must be the elusive emptying of the mind that Eastern meditators try so hard to accomplish. It is completely mesmerizing.  I can go on for hours and not even think about food.  It is completely relaxing and yet completely absorbing.  I once read a book about a man from Canada who went to some Himalayan Buddhist monastery to learn to meditate.  The book might have been something like:  The Buddha laughs.  The Canadian sat there and sat there trying to learn to meditate and think nothing.  It was really tough and he got really constipated with all the sitting and eating of nothing much besides rice.

So my recommendation is, if you have trouble meditating and emptying your mind, try a long repeating lace pattern.  I am serious.   yarn over, slip one...   The repeating knitting instructions were my mantra.  The result was a cowl plus stopping the monkey brain, as they say.   It's a good thing, but at some point you have to stop and get some real work done.  It's hard to put the lace work down.  "yarn over, slip one..."

When women sit together over their handicrafts, it is also not so nicely called a "stitch and bitch".  In those sessions there also happens something akin to what my Quaker friend (enemy) says to me:  "We just sit together and when someone is inspired, then they say something." -- It's just like with the crafty women.  My sister-in-law from Swabia says in the village where she comes from this is called a "Vorsitz", which is a play on words.  A "Vorsitz" is mostly a committee meeting of important people, like the church or town elders, or in the olden days, the men sitting in the gate...  Now, with the crafts, the women sit outside in front of their houses, together, in the evening, getting this handiwork done and doing some gabbing, of course.  As I said in Swabia, that's the "Vorsitz"--a little nicer than "stitch an bitch", indeed.  The word  "Vorsitz" adds a certain playful dignity to the affair.

But, truly a lot of counselling does get worked on in such meetings--important matters of life and death and illness and faith and husband and children and cooking and the neighborhood...  They are very human and very healing get-to-gethers.  It makes one wish one lived in different times, where people sat around outside darning sock and such.  But no, we all have to go to yoga now.

I'm joking.  I wish I were in some kind of core strengthening exercise, now that my back is out. (Hexenschuss).  Only so much time for everything.  I will make some more cowls, but I will try to pace myself.  Two rows or 420 stitches only per day, now.  Self-control is in order.

Opening your heart / Munsch / Women

In looking up some famous men from the 19th century, yesterday, I came upon this little sentence regarding Edvard Munch, painter from Norway.  He painted  "The Scream", for example.   


Munch was highly influential, particularly with the German Expressionists, who followed his philosophy, "I do not believe in the art which is not the compulsive result of Man's urge to open his heart."


He was having something of a breakdown when he painted "The Scream".  He also painted Nietzsche, whom I feel I need to perhaps read in primary source material, fairly soon. 





We see here, Nietzsche with a nice little village in the background featuring even a church.  What baffles me ever again is that men of the 19th century felt so much that art and the expression of feelings had to exist in contradiction to the church and "bourgeois values".

I like Munch's saying--"I don not believe in art which is not the compulsive result of Man's urge to open his heart"-- but I am beginning to think that men who struggle so much with this emotionality or lack of it in their world or in art have some trouble seeing where it exists.  A kind of blindness or deafness, all the while trying to see and hear.

Women come by it more naturally or easily, I think.  Was Munsch married.  It does not look like it from the Wikipedia.  Nietzsche wasn't.  His flame was also a revolutionary and refused to get into the yoke.

This below, is a thing I wrote for my women friends, and attached is a note one of them sent back to me.

Women Friends, Pearls of Great Price

Old friends are the most precious pearls,

grown splendid through the years,

with time and patience,

in the womb of friendships’ stresses and comforts,

in coffee gatherings and baby showers,

aerobics class and Bible study,

where the beauty and the grime of life was laid bare,

and analyzed, held up to the light and laid back down or put to rest,

all while our children flourished, and sometimes not,

our marriages matured, or sometimes died,

our households kept on top of, or not so much,

our careers, the moving targets in the mix,

squeezed in barely—though we were supposed to be

modern women(—what the heck).

Whatever  all happened, great and small,

we  became wiser, dearer, polished for each other 

and through each other.

We have no people who have stood by us so long

and  steadfastly,

who did not shrink

from our blood and tears,

our disasters and triumphs. 

After our own mothers and fathers,

no human beings have had this much compassion for us.

You are incomparable.

Jesus is the pearl of great price,

the very best companion

and most important possession, 

God of compassion and sacrificial love.

But you come soon after him.

You are exquisite, each in your own way.

Brigitte, Dec., 2012

“Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.”  Isaiah 49:15.

A woman friend sent this note in reply: 

They Teach It at Stanford

In an evening class at Stanford the last lecture was on the
mind-body connection - the relationship between stress and disease. The
speaker (head of psychiatry at Stanford) said, among other things, that one
of the best things that a man could do for his health is to be married to a
woman whereas for a woman, one of the best things she could do for her
health was to nurture her relationships with her girlfriends. At first
everyone laughed, but he was serious.

Women connect with each other differently and provide support
systems that help each other to deal with stress and difficult life
experiences. Physically this quality “girlfriend time" helps is to create
more serotonin - a neurotransmitter that helps combat depression and can
create a general feeling of well-being. Women share feelings
whereas men often form relationships around activities. We share from our
souls with our sisters/mothers, and evidently that is very GOOD for our
health. He said that spending time with a friend is just as important to
our general health as jogging or working out at a gym.

There's a tendency to think that when we are "exercising" we are
doing something good for our bodies, but when we are hanging out with
friends, we are wasting our time and should be more productively
engaged—not true. In fact, he said that failure to create and maintain
quality personal relationships with other humans is as dangerous to our
physical health as smoking!

So every time you hang out to schmooze with a gal pal, just pat
yourself on the back and congratulate yourself for doing something good for
your health! We are indeed very, very lucky. Sooooo let's toast to our
friendship with our girlfriends. Evidently it's very good for our health.

Forward this to all your girlfriends – and stay in touch! Thanks
to all the girls in my life who have helped me stay healthy, happy, and
feeling very loved.        

Two posts on women serving in the church

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzepEydG0Y4&feature=share

http://authenticfrontiergibberish.net/2012/01/05/argue-4-wo/