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Why I Don’t Vote Only on the Issue of Abortion

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Let me begin by saying that my desire is for every baby conceived to be born healthy.

Growing up and throughout the first half of my twenties, I believed that anti-abortion legislation was the best and only significant way to do accomplish this. I also believed it was my duty as a Christian to advocate for those lives above all others. In the last six or so years, I have changed my mind on both counts. 

First, let’s talk about the effectiveness of anti-abortion legislation.

I want to thank everyone who responded to last week’s post, including those who corrected some of my errors. Your comments encouraged me to research further for this week’s post. One of the things I have learned is that the year before Roe V. Wade was passed, there were over 600,000 legal abortions in the US (not accounting for those performed by unlicensed doctors or attempted by the women themselves). The Supreme Court has had a majority of Republican justices for 49 of the past 50 years, including when Roe was decided, yet Roe has not been overturned during this time. Even if Roe was overturned, it’s estimated that it would only reduce abortions by 14% or so, and there’s no guarantee that even a full bench of Republican justices would ever choose to do this. Now, 14% of abortions is still a lot of lives. But at 14% efficacy, Roe V. Wade is not the lynchpin piece of legislation that both Republicans and Democrats portray it to be, and I also portrayed it to be last week.

Data tells us that fewer abortions are occurring now than at any point since 1973. A combination of factors are responsible, including comprehensive sex education, affordable contraceptives, widespread affordable healthcare, affordable childcare, paid maternity leave, reduced cost of adoptions, and other economic policies. These factors help reduce the number of abortions because women either don’t have an unplanned pregnancy (due to eduction and affordable contraception) or they feel financially and socially supported enough to care for the child they unexpectedly conceived (affordable healthcare and childcare, paid maternity leave). All of these factors help to significantly reduce the number of abortions, no “what ifs” of Supreme Court seats required. Yet most of these factors are not part of conservative platforms, which means a big piece of the puzzle to promoting life is left out of their anti-abortion strategies.

If you’d like to see how such factors reduced the number of abortions in 2 states, watch this clip from Skye Jethani:

Beginning at 7:37

Next, let’s talk about our responsibility to unborn lives.

A few years ago, my aunt and I were talking about the 2016 election over lunch. When I told her who I had voted for, she said “What about abortion?” I told her an abbreviated version of the above, and that I believed the Democratic party does more to reduce the number of abortions through their holistic approach than anti-abortion legislation from the Republican party. She shook her head and said, “I can’t do that. I just feel like God’s going to hold me accountable for all those unborn babies.”

I asked her to clarify: “You personally?” She said yes, then she said, “I believe God is going to hold me accountable for all those little babies who don’t have a voice.”

After a moment, I asked her, “What about the other children who don’t have a voice?” When she didn’t answer me, I said, “What about the children on a schoolbus in Yemen who were killed by a missile purchased from the US? Are you responsible for their deaths?”

She shook her head, bewildered. “I haven’t heard about that,” she said.

“Whether or not you’ve heard of it, your voting choices led to their deaths at least as directly as to the abortion of a fetus,” I said. “What about the children being kept in cages, separated from their parents, and not provided clean diapers or regular food or vaccinations? Some of them have died, and others are so traumatized that they don’t recognize their parents when they’re returned to them—are you responsible for that? They don’t have a voice, and neither do their parents because they’re in cages too.”

“Cages?” she asked, looking at me again.

“Yes,” I answered. “Cages. It’s been all over the news.” When she didn’t react, I said, “There was a little girl who was shot in the head by police officers while she was asleep on the couch in her living room. And Sandy Hook was full of children who were murdered in their classrooms. Do you believe God is going to hold you personally accountable for their deaths?”

After a minute, my aunt, a little lost sounding, said, “I haven’t thought about that.” She considered a few seconds longer, then repeated, “I’ve never thought about that.”

Maybe you haven’t either. 

Growing up, I was taught in my church that abortion is so heinous that is supersedes all other issues, which means that there was only one Christlike way to vote: for conservative candidates (Republicans) who support anti-abortion legislation. Also while I was growing up, I asked God to break my heart for what breaks God’s heart. In the years since I asked that of God, I have learned that yes, abortion breaks God’s heart, but much more breaks God’s heart than abortion alone. Many more people suffer and die than unborn children. So why would I vote as if those are the only lives God cares about? 

I’m not saying that we Christians as a whole or individually are not responsible for those unborn children who might be aborted in a clinic that remains open because of how we vote. I’m saying there are many other effective avenues for keeping a child from being aborted—more effective than what overturning Roe V. Wade (as uncertain as that possibility is) would maybe accomplish. I’m also saying that we are responsible for many other children’s deaths and traumas, too. I voted for Obama in 2012, and so I am responsible for the families harmed by the forced separation policy he enacted among immigrants. The cages and neglect, however, are new.

We as the Christian community in the United States are responsible for the children who will never be born because their mothers were forcibly sterilized while detained. We’re responsible for the children whose records were erased and their parents can no longer be found. We responsible for the children poisoned by the water in their taps. We’re responsible for the children in NYC who have lost a parent to COVID-19 (there are now more of them than there were who lost a parent on 9/11). We’re responsible for the children who have died in mass shootings. We’re responsible for children who face wildfires and rising oceans and food scarcity. 

Let’s recap. A single issue vote is intended to help elect a Republican president who may have the opportunity to appoint Supreme Court Justices, who might have a case come up which challenges Roe, and who may eventually be part of a majority that chooses to go against SCOTUS’s previous ruling to overturn Roe. As controversial as the law is, it has been federal law for 50 years. That’s a lot of “ifs” required to justify a vote based on the single issue of anti-abortion legislation. Meanwhile, a lot more can be done immediately to reduce the number of abortions through widespread access to healthcare, comprehensive sex education, and community support for crisis pregnancy centers and domestic violence shelters. Additionally, many more lives are at stake than the unborn who might be aborted. A lot more people are voiceless than just those children.

If you, like my aunt, have never considered how far your responsibility to love your neighbor as yourself reaches—how many lives you bear responsibility for—I hope you will before Nov. 3.

Is your choice the best and wisest choice to promote life, mercy, and justice, and to act out your love for God and for others? If you believe the answer is yes, go with God and vote in that way. But please, don’t cast your vote based on only one issue, on only one set of lives possibly being affected out of all those who are at risk.

Padding the Point

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When I was a senior in college, I was chosen for an abbreviated study abroad trip to Egypt for two weeks to study politics. While there, we visited an area of Cairo known as Garbage City, populated primarily by Christians. All of Cairo’s garbage comes to this neighborhood, and the residents recycle something like 98% of it. We went to a factory which employs women to wash cloth, make paper, and sew products. In the gift shop, I bought a box of blank cards made of recycled paper, each decorated with embroidery of daily life. Women carrying bundles on their heads, jumping fish, trees, camels, swooping birds. 

I believe I started with a set of 12, and I have 3 left. I gave card to my brother-in-law this year for Father’s Day, as I believed he would appreciate this connection to Christians a world away. I gave a card to my boss one year for Boss Appreciation Day. When he commented that he wished he could use the card again, it was so lovely, I made a note for myself and gave him two cards the next year, one with my thanks for his work as my supervisor and one blank for him to use as he wished. I’m not sure what happened to the others. I remember designs that are no longer in the box and I hope they blessed the person who received them. I kind of wish I’d kept a list.

I do remember the first person I gave one of these cards to. You know when you feel like you should really like a person, but somehow you just don’t? There’s nothing wrong. They’ve never been in any way hurtful to you. Everyone likes them, gets along with them. Even so, something about them doesn’t sit easily with you. Something about their presence, and how you feel in their presence, makes you shy away from instead of embrace their company. I had one such person in college. I didn’t want to be a jerk, so I did my utmost to like them. And sometimes it went fine. And sometimes I felt that all-over itch I couldn’t explain and ghosted for a while.

It was her birthday, and a very good friend of mine was best friends with this person, so my friend roped me into a joint birthday gift. She had the ideas and most of the execution, so I only had to offer polite opinions and pay for half. Then we went back to my apartment to wrap it. But we needed a card (or maybe just I did). I didn’t have any on hand, so I ran to my bedroom and found this box from Egypt, still wrapped in it’s crinkly clear plastic bag. I picked out a card of two women walking with bundles on their heads. It was one I liked, one I felt she would like. Still, this card was precious to me, and the first one I’d give away, so I felt a morsel of ungenerous unease at parting with it to her.  

I gave it anyway. I knew that morsel didn’t have a point, or a reason. This card might have even been an attempt to make up for the feelings I didn’t have for her, but felt certain I should. 

I filled the card with the story of its creation, since that was largely why the card was precious. However, I also didn’t want it to look like I didn’t know what to say to her other than Happy Birthday, not to her and not to her best friend sitting on the other side of the coffee table from me. 

Happy Birthday was all I knew to say. That was the point. But it needed padding. And I really did want her to have a good day. And, as I remember, she really did. And she was so effusive about the card that I became more generous with opening my hand to give them away.

I’ve been thinking about times when I haven’t known what to say, or how. Last week I drove to work numbering my points for an email I’d have to send when I arrived. I replayed an old conversation in my head while working in the yard, trying to come up with a better outcome. Lately, I’ve been talking myself through a conversation I’ve yet to have, wondering if it’s really best to have it at all. I’m wondering if there’s a good way it can go, wondering how I can keep to my convictions if the other person reacts badly. 

I don’t think a pretty card and a story will help in this case. But my point definitely needs padding.

Comets

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For a couple more nights, the comet NEOWISE will be visible in the hours just after sunset, near the horizon to the northwest. This comet with only discovered in March, and won’t cross paths with the earth again for something like 6500 years. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity for sure.

The last comet this bright to pass by the earth was the Halle-Bop comet in 1997. I remember it. I learned about it in school, and I loved astronomy. I asked my mom if she could wake me up that night so I could see it. She wasn’t happy about it. But she did it. 

I don’t remember her waking me. I remember stuffing my pajamas bottoms into my boots, pulling on a sweater, and following my mom out the side door and into the back yard. I don’t know if we carried a flashlight. We didn’t need one. The moon was bright, the ground was grey, and the sky was milky. I shivered as she brought me to the place where the tall trees along the embankment parted and we looked up at the fuzzy grey ball that I’d never seen before. I couldn’t see a tail. It looked a lot like a smudge on a photograph. 

I spent a lot of time stargazing in those days. Not that late at night, of course. But in the summers, my dad would take my brother and I out in our 12’ aluminum john boat to watch the phosphorus jump in our wake and to zoom under the stars. Those were some of my favorite times of my childhood. I’d tilt my head back and count the stars, teach myself their patterns even when I couldn’t figure out how to apply the constellation maps I’d looked up to what I was seeing. Orion was my friend, and my means of orienting myself to every other constellation I could manage. And this grey smudge was unlike anything I’d seen. It was unique. It was bright. It was a little disappointing. No bright tail, and smaller than I’d expected. And I was only going to see it once, maybe just this once in my whole life. 

And Mom had woken herself up at something like 3am in order to bring my outside to see it, and that made it brilliant, even if nothing else did. And I remember it. 

So thanks, Mom.

I’ve been sneaking looks out the window for NEOWISE for over a week. I’ve been in the yard and the driveway. One night about 10 o’clock, Tyler and I drove all over our neighborhood, looking for a high enough hill, a clear enough angle, where the street and house lights or the distant glow of a town didn’t obscure our view. I’ve been trying to figure out a way, another spot in town, but I haven’t managed to come up with one so far. Not when the comet is this close to the horizon.

I’m going to keep trying, but in case I don’t manage to see this comet, now or ever in my lifetime, I hope that you can. 

Thinking Adoringly

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While listening to the radio on my drive to work one morning, the morning show hosts shared advice from psychologists about ways to take better care of yourself during this prolonged time of isolation and increased worry and anxiety. And as people who have been pushing for social justice (especially we white people who aren’t used to the prolonged and sustained fight) begin to slow down, to need a rest, I remembered these few minutes listening to the radio.

Their advice included getting outside for prolonged periods (at least 30 minutes) every day, and spending extra time on whatever self-care you engage in to help yourself feel nurtured. Then they shared a piece of advice and basically called it ridiculous. The advice was to spend time after your shower rubbing lotion into your skin and thinking adoringly about your body. 

They mocked the advice, pantomiming “oh I adore you, body” and laughing. They never pulled it back together to consider what this advice could be getting at that they were missing. And that’s been bothering me, because touch starvation is a very real mental health concern. The disabled communities have talked about touch starvation, meaning a lack of meaningful touch in their lives, for years. When the only touch you experience is utilitarian, or when you are not touched by another human at all, you may feel depressed, anxious, stressed, and have difficulty sleeping.

It’s so strange to me that until last Thursday, I hadn’t touched anyone other than my husband since the first weekend of March. But I have touched another person meaningfully and often enough to stimulate the parts of my brain that need meaningful touch. My husband is touch-oriented in how he shows love, just as I am.

Before we got married, I lived with a roommate, but we rarely touched. Many of my single friends live alone, and they have expressed symptoms of touch starvation in the past few weeks. Most have pets, which help, but isn’t the same as a human touch. Weighted blankets also simulate touch in the way your brain needs, and I’ve followed the advise of several disabled advocates by recommending them. 

The advice I heard on the radio may have angles I’m not familiar with, but it’s obvious to me that it can help combat touch starvation. By touching your skin and thinking positively about your body, you’re helping to stimulate those parts of the brain which needs meaningful touch. Thinking positively may not sound adoring, but as our dietary habits break and reform almost weekly, certain medications become rare, and we are often alone and wearing sweatpants, and as COVID numbers continue to climb but our community is reopening, it won’t hurt to add a little extra oomph to those positive thoughts about our bodies. 

Aren’t you so grateful for your heart, which works so hard constantly to keep you going? I mean, constantly. Just like your lungs, but don’t think about those too hard or you’ll only be able to think about your breathing, and I want you to think now about your hand. Isn’t your hand amazing? Look at it! Really, look at it. You can do incredible, intricate things with your hands. Catch a salt shaker before it falls off the counter. Knead dough. Perform surgery. Wave goodbye. Throw a kiss. Hold a fist. Isn’t that wonderful?

You have a foot. And an arch made of strong bones. Think about how graceful that arch looks.  And your skin! Keeping you all together, complaining a little when too hot or too cold, though it does its best to handle things on its own. Look at all those tiny, fascinating hairs. They lay down in patterns. Have you noticed? My brother has three crop circles of fine hair on his arms. And your skin is made up of the most gorgeous, intricate hues. 

You are extraordinary. You are made in the image of God, and no one is more or less alike to God’s image than you. A little adoration wouldn’t be amiss.

Do your best to take good care of yourself. 

Why I Quit Watching Police Procedurals

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It’s propaganda.

Wait, let me back up. 

So, think of your favorite police shows. “CSI.” “Law & Order.” “Chicago PD.” “Castle.” “Rizzoli & Isles.” “Blue Bloods.” “Rookie Blue.” “SWAT.” “The Wire.” Maybe you love some “Dragnet” and “Hawaii 90210” and “Brooklyn-99.” Consider the crime genre more broadly and you’ve got “Bones,” “NCIS” (all 3 of them), “White Collar,” “Blacklist,” and many more.

In the crime genre, you as the audience follow officers and detectives and FBI agents and their favorite zany scientist and researcher side kicks to solve crimes and see dangerous criminals put in jail. The characters are full of nuance. They’re generous, well-explored, and interesting. You watch them fall in love and deal with normal adult problems and concerns. You applaud when they use offbeat tactics to get the job done, protect others, fight to make their hometowns and cities safer. 

But what are we really seeing?

We’re seeing a lot of white people. We’re seeing stereotypes about crimes, criminals, and people of color. We’re seeing a lot of guns, a lot of violence. We’re seeing high-speed chases. We’re shown fully realized, predominantly white characters as the heroes, the good ones. Even when they make mistakes or get into trouble, we see them as whole people and so are sympathetic, and so easy to excuse. If an officer steps out of line, a peer always pulls them back in. All the criminals are bad or condescendingly misguided. Basically everyone arrested in convicted, and those who are arrested for crimes they didn’t commit might be upset, but they don’t suffer anything. And the hero detectives always keep digging to get them exonerated and for the real criminals to be found. The community is also safer after every episode. Cops are depicted as a stabilizing influence. And then you have the tough ex-cop, the lone wolf sheriff, the marshal with true grit who ignores the conventions and rules. For these well-loved characters, violence is forgiven because of the justice in their hearts.

So what aren’t we seeing?

We aren’t seeing nuanced representations of people who commit crimes. We aren’t seeing the history of economic depression, forced poverty, and racist institutions that are informing these neighborhoods or the lives of the people in them. We aren’t seeing police officers held accountable by one another. We aren’t seeing what happens to the families of the person arrested. We aren’t seeing their legal fees, their job loss, the hole in their community even if the person arrested is later revealed to be innocent. We aren’t seeing that police are trained to build a case, not to discover the truth. We aren’t seeing innocent bystanders who try to share information but are accused instead.

We aren’t seeing the predatory and entirely subjective bail bond system, which disproportionately affects communities of color. We aren’t seeing the number of innocent people who plead guilty, just to get out of prison and back to their families or jobs. We aren’t seeing their children taken into state care because their parents were arrested. We don’t see racist profiling. We don’t see harassment. We don’t see roads to rehabilitation. We don’t see false reports by vindictive, racist white people. We don’t see abuses of power. How many women and children are abused by their police officer relatives? We don’t see that the rogue cop’s violence bred this violence that’s befallen the town. We don’t see innocent EMTs gunned down in their own homes. We don’t see men pinned to the ground and murdered over $20. 

We don’t see George Floyds. Or Breonna Taylors. The Sandra Blands. The Philando Castiles. We don’t see the Amy Coopers either.

We do see a lot of Chauvins. And their ubiquity makes is easy to ignore or wave away the threat and shock of actual police violence, even when real violence and harassment are caught on camera. 

And what does this do to us? 

It teaches us to be sympathetic and trusting of police. It teaches us to criminalize the presence of people of color, especially black people, in spaces we white people consider white. It desensitizes us to violence committed by white people in uniform.

It lets the same people say “You can’t make me wear a mask to protect other people” and a week later say “If they didn’t want to be arrested they should have been home before curfew.” I’ve yet to see a single NRA member go to protest military presence deployed against civilians, which I thought was why they needed those AR-15s. And the one white person in a flack vest (wrongly sized) who did show up with an assault rifle, and was caught on camera, was politely guided away by police.

The scripted crime genre tells overly simplistic stories that lie about our world and our neighbors, who has power and why. It tells us that certain crimes are always wrong, that there’s always another, legal option that the criminals didn’t take. It teaches us that law and order is preferable to justice and fairness. It teaches us that property and conveniences are more important than human lives. It teaches us the lie of bootstrap moralism and ignores the history of violent protest in this country. It teaches us that bad things only ever happen to other people, weak people, people over there who look like them.

The rise of cop shows and movies coincided with an increase in petty crimes in the ’70s through ’90s. And, like the rest of TV, the stories were sensationalized over time. TV isn’t a representation of reality, but those stories still effect how we see the world and the people in it. 

We are not wiser for having watched the crime drama for 50 years. We are not better prepared to protect ourselves against violent crimes. We are not wiser about the types of situations which require police mediation. We haven’t been prepared for the many more situations which can be resolved in ways that neither bother the police nor endanger the lives of our neighbors. 

They do not teach us to be better neighbors or people. They do not teach us to question the almost unilateral authority of the person with the badge and the gun. They do not teach us to speak up when we see a coworker mistreating evidence, harassing a witness, or kneeling on an unresisting man’s neck. They do not teach us to hold those with this tremendous power over life and death to a higher standard or behavior than ordinary people. They do not teach us the empathize with a dying, begging man. They do not consider if rubber bullets and tear gas are overly aggressive responses to people throwing water bottles and rocks.

The ends do not justify the means. 

The only answer to a dirty cop, or a bad cop, is not another cop. Neither is the answer a zany squad of funny detectives. 

Yes, police officers, FBI agents, sheriff’s deputies are all humans. We know that. The TV shows and movies and books make that very clear. But the people they target are also human, and that’s what cop-positive media neglects, if not actively works against. And you only have to look at how armed white people who showed up at the Minnesota state house two weeks ago to protest closed barbershops were met by law enforcement, versus how unarmed and peaceful Black Lives Matter protestors were met by law enforcement to see that the policing system is unfair.

When I say the crime drama is propaganda, I mean it meets that definition. According to Merriam-Webster, propaganda is “ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one’s cause of to damage an opposing cause.” 

Here’s an article about how “Dragnet” was propaganda for the LAPD, inventing the idea that police are a stabilizing force in communities, despite evidence to the contrary.

This article documents the shift in public opinion about police departments from “Dragnet” on. 

Here’s an immense article about the normalization of injustice because of “television’s scripted crime genre.” 

This article in the Washington Post details how police censorship shaped Hollywood, with anecdotes from “The Wire.”

Here’s an article analyzing how police are always the sympathetic main characters.

If police are helpers and protectors, who are they helping? Who are they protecting? With the videos I’ve been seeing lately, it’s pretty obvious to me that white people are the only ones consistently being helped and protected. Not that police officers haven’t also been filmed in these past few days macing white children and firing at white people watching the police pass by from their porch. On the LAPD police scanner yesterday, an officer encouraged a colleague to “shoot the motherf*ckers,” referring to protestors, and was immediately admonished, not for encouraging fellow police to shoot at protestors but for saying it on the scanner.

The white driver of the semi that deliberately drove into crowds of peaceful protestors sitting on a bridge was let go without charges because he had gotten “frustrated.” Police officers are on camera shoving women, including white women, with unconscionable vehemence. We also see white people using their bodies as shields, because they are so much less likely to be treated violently than black people are.

Law enforcement has been filmed deliberately firing bullets coated in rubber, pepper bullets, tear gas, and pellets at people’s heads, which has caused an outcry in other countries. This morning, South Africa urged American law enforcement to practice restraint, reminding them of what we hope they already know: rubber bullets and pepper bullets can still be lethal. Last night, my husband and I stayed up later than we intended watching the remnants of a protest in Washington DC. While we watched, a black officer hiding behind a line of fellow officers with riot shields, intentionally maced the cameraman.

What have the police departments, by and large, done when faced with people, largely black people, protesting police brutality? They have behaved brutally. 

Many of the departments photographed “taking a knee” with protestors maced the crowd 45 minutes later. They wanted a photo op to make themselves look good. Which is why I don’t trust these “good cop sightings” either.

Excessive force killed George Floyd and prompted these protests, this rebellion against authorized violence against black people, and it has largely been met with scenes of excessive force. Again and again, police escalate into violence, police meet peaceful crowds with tear gas and mace. And again and again we see that the people setting fires and destroying windows are white people, even known white supremacists trying to undermine the movement’s efforts.

I’m no longer putting those stories and stereotypes about the police into my head. They are lies. They are propaganda. They hurt people. And they hurt us all.

Justice.

Black Lives Matter.

My Favorite Masks

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My favorite masks are, of course, the ones that fit me best. That are most snug on my face without squishing my nose. They are soft and comfortable. And they also need to be thick. 

Tyler and I have two surgical masks and about a dozen homemade masks, but as I don’t own a sewing machine they were not made by me. Our mothers each made one. My mother sent a couple that were given to my dad and ordered a few for us, and I ordered six for us from Etsy. Of all these, the one that fits me the best and seems to be the best quality is this the woman/teenager size from ZhenLinen on Etsy.

I wear masks at work whenever I’m not in my office, when in drive-thrus, and when I have to go to the grocery store. Basically, any time I’ll be anywhere near another person, I wear a mask to protect myself and others. Below is a simplified, but effective info graphic about how masks protect you and others: 

I’d planned to talk more about masks, but yesterday, a good friend and her husband, who is a front line healthcare provider, were accosted while grocery shopping for wearing masks. I’m still an incandescent pillar of fire over the disrespect of this horrid woman, who butted herself into their lives and their day and their physical space because she didn’t like that they were wearing masks. My friends are both white. Imagine how much worse this entitled, selfish white woman would have been if they hadn’t been white also.

They weren’t hurting her or affecting her at all by wearing masks, but this woman felt like she had the authority to lecture them about wearing their masks in public. She proclaimed both the CDC and the WHO to be spreading misinformation (which I’ve also seen on my Facebook timeline and judged you sharers harshly for). This woman declared that they didn’t need to wear the masks, as if she is more trustworthy than those organizations and more knowledgeable than my friend, who has personally cared for COVID-19 patients. And when this healthcare worker patiently explained his job and expressed that the masks were primarily for her protection, she declared he should just stay home, as if he doesn’t need to run errands and buy food, just like she does. As if he isn’t human. 

You can’t share videos of crying nurses, order takeout because that restaurant donated meals to hospitals, and get a warm feeling at every commercial applauding healthcare workers then accost people in the grocery store, demanding they remove their protective masks. Even if my friend hadn’t been a healthcare worker, those masks don’t hurt other people. They are a personal choice, like a rain jacket during a hurricane. Even if it isn’t raining right where you are personally standing at that moment doesn’t mean you know more about the weather than the person in the jacket. And their rain jacket isn’t bothering anyone else anyway.

While we’re on the subject, the global pandemic isn’t over just because you’re bored. And it isn’t over simply because you’re ready for it to be. 

And if all of that isn’t good enough for you, just mind your own damn business.

If you think masks trample on your person liberties (I can only assume you don’t wear a seatbelt either), don’t trample the liberties of the people who choose to wear them. Those people are human, like you. They might be providing an essential service, like scanning your groceries or delivering your meals. They might be the very ones who intubate you when you have bilateral pneumonia from COVID-19. They might even be the last human beings you see if you die in the hospital from this disease. 

Stay home. Wear masks when you must to go out. And, at the very least, mind your own business.

Quarantine Cravings

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Tyler and I have now been working from home for 3 weeks and physically isolating ourselves for 5. The last restaurant I sat down and ate at was the Taco Shed in Warner Robbins, which I experienced for the first time with two friends on Saturday, March 7. I dearly miss both my friends and the tacos and chips and salsa I devoured that day. And I dearly miss the pleasure of going out to eat, of trying something I would never have combined in those ways, and paying other people for that pleasure. I’ll be tipping far more than 20% for the rest of my life.

As I was writing last week’s posts, I noticed a Wendy’s commercial that made me so irrationally angry I wanted to punch something. In crisp 4K, slow-motion, the commercial displayed a chocolate Frosty being released into its cup, the gorgeous brown crystals aligning to, in a very tight shot, curl just so at the top. And I yearned for a Frosty to the point of fury. Which, I immediately decided, deserved its own blog post.

When I lived in England for 4 months, my longest uninterrupted stint abroad, I craved two things: waffles and chocolate Frosty’s. When I landed in Newark, my gate was literally directly across from a Wendy’s. I almost started crying. I thanked God with my whole heart for this immense blessing. 

I walked directly to end of the line, waited my turn, then told the cashier I wanted a number 1 and the largest Frosty she could legally give me. To her confused face, I said I wanted a Frosty in the biggest possible cup, pantomimed a container approximately the size of a large popcorn bucket. After a beat, she punched in my order, and I moved down to the end of the counter to wait. Also waiting was a wonderful ten-year old girl and her mother, who I’d chatted with on the plane. When they learned I had a 7-hour layover, they invited me to join them for lunch—or whatever this meal was. We sat on the floor together, and I dredged my fries through my Frosty, a novelty activity to them. I inhaled my ketchup-drenched burger and relished every single bite of that Frosty. 

You may be asking why I don’t hit up the Wendy’s drive-thru today. “It’s only shelter-in-place, and the police aren’t stopping people. Drive-thru is still allowed. It’s food so it’s an essential service.” Except that I have plenty of food here in my home, the ability to make more, and plenty of ice cream even. So my going to Wendy’s would be nonessential.

However, on Saturday, I ran some ear savers I’d crocheted to a friend who’s a health care provider. After talking in her driveway for a while and ensuring the new ear savers were a good size, I headed back home. It was after 2pm and I hadn’t eaten lunch yet. After conferring with Tyler, I stopped in the Wendy’s drive-thru. I felt giddiness as well as dread as I ordered what my husband had texted me, then asked for a number 1 and a large Frosty.

The fries weren’t as fresh as I’m used to. The burger was just above lukewarm. I suspected both had been sitting out for at least a few minutes. But the Frosty. The Frosty was divine.

I’d love to hear about the quarantine cravings that have been hitting you!

Commercials in the Time of COVID-19

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Over the past week I’ve noticed a shift on TV. It started when Tyler and I were watched an On Demand episode of “Good Eats”, because I much prefer it to Sports Center without live sports and the “My Cat from Hell” marathon had ended. A commercial featured a black woman in golden choir robes muttering under her breath for the soloist to hurry up. A blue-polo’d Best Buy employee pops in beside her, whispering conspiratorially that they offer next-day delivery “on all kinds of gifts.”

The soloist was singing the final phrase of the “12 Days of Christmas” and the snowflake graphics around the Best Buy logo made it clear this was a holiday commercial. So why was it on at the end of March? 

Because this was On Demand, I saw the commercial again a few minutes later, and this time I paid more attention to it than I had to the show.

I’ve been complaining privately for a few weeks that the ads on TV seem to belong to a different universe, certainly a different era. In the ads, people gather for dinner, sharing fries with their family members. They high five strangers in a sports bar. They meet up with a friend for a brisk walk in the pollen-overrun park. Rooms-to-Go, Home Depot, and Kohl’s urge us to come out for their big sales. Most commercials call for an immediate action, like a trip to go shopping or to go out to eat, and neither are part of this world anymore. I’m not treating myself to Applebee’s after work and I’m not shopping for furniture. I’m not introducing any friends to a Big Mac. I don’t live in that world, or era, anymore. And neither does most of the country.

Last week, however, the commercials that companies seem to have rushed through production began to enter the rotation. Rather than shoot something new, Best Buy pulled out their holiday ad to let us know they’ll deliver online orders tomorrow. The timeliness of the message, for the first time I can remember, was valued so highly that the dated decor and set up was ignored.

The voiceover in one commercial assured me that eventually we will all gather for dinner and safely clink glasses again. A recent Domino’s commercial featuring a pants-less, sock-sliding dancer was reedited so the emphasis was on no contact delivery instead of trackable delivery.

Certain channels are using infographics on 5-second spots to remind us to distance ourselves and wash our hands. Channels are running marathons of their most popular shows and movies (where people hug and shake hands like it’s nothing!!!!! *starts hyperventilating*). Most don’t mention the coronavirus or COVID-19 by name. They merely refer to “the current crisis” and say our social bonds are so important, “especially now.” 

I’m glad that the ads have begun to reflect our different, still-changing reality. It feels less dystopian, less disconnected, less depressing. I want those ads to acknowledge our collective reality, since I know they’re speaking directly to me. Yet I find this somewhat ironic, as I also want to escape the pandemic in what I’m watching and reading. I’ll abide absolutely no stories or movies about hospitals, police, missing people, war, or death. I’m not interested in Marvel movies or Fast & Furious. I would rather eat nothing by PB&J for a week than to watch Avengers: Endgame. I want to be comforted. I want to laugh. Movies and shows and commercials that used to do so don’t anymore.

Live sports would be great to let my mind sink into, but of course we don’t have that outlet, so it’s zany baking shows and books I’ve already read and Sarah Bareilles music videos and animal shows centered on zoos and aquariums. It’s Mythbusters and Moana. It’s Animal Crossing for a lot of people. Nothing competitive, no high stakes. It’s more timing sitting on the couch, doing nothing, and more time looking out the window at whatever’s out there. It’s far more time researching bread baking and liking people’s social media posts about bread baking. It’s dancing Tic Tocs and threads of favorite songs. It’s a lot of quarantine memes.

It’s so strange to know that so much of our usual lives has just… stopped. 

And, of course, so much changes so quickly, yet at different rates in different places. While drafting this post, NYC residents got push notifications asking that everyone with healthcare experience volunteer for hospital shifts ASAP. Reality in NYC is different than mine in Macon, GA. It’s different than in my hometown of Beaufort, SC, which is just beginning to shut down, but I’ve been working from home for two weeks. My cousin in Oklahoma is moving to Georgia this week, and it really is like traveling into a different, more frightening world the farther east she goes.

To a degree, this has always been true. Flint still doesn’t have clean drinking water. The Navajo reservation never has. Three of my friends have had and are recovering from COVID-19. Thousands of people have lost loved ones to it already. The main thing that unites us now is how not normal things are, and how uncertain and frightening that is. And if we can’t even acknowledge that much, that things are not normal, I won’t even consider buying what you’re selling.

Have you seen a commercial that was clearly released or reedited in response to the pandemic? What was it advertising?

Joy in Self-Isolation

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Here is a list of things bringing me joy in these isolated days:

  • Cuddling with my husband as we wait for our alarm to go off
  • Waking up every morning to my cat nuzzling my hand so I’ll pet her ears 
  • Playing Stardew Valley for 3 hours every week with 3 of my best friends
  • A 5-second commute to work
  • Open blinds throughout the day
  • Every single pair of sweatpants I own
  • Finding new, delicious ways to cook
  • Learning new, interesting things about my Instagram friends
  • Grapes
  • Apples
  • Orange Juice
  • Long phone calls with my mom
  • Daily cat videos with my husband
  • My cat walking into my office and flopping onto her back so I’ll get up and pet her
  • Sitting on my front steps after work
  • Sara Bareilles’s “Gonna Get Over You”

Being a Millennial in the Pandemic and the Church

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Millennials are defined by our memories of and experiences in 3 major events during our childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood: 9/11, sustained wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Great Recession. And now we’re adults, many of us with kids and mortgages, in a pandemic. 

In a lot of ways, I think millennials are uniquely suited to doing the good and hard work of this time, which so far include sacrificing social pleasures for physical isolation, patroning small local businesses that may not survive the crunch, and educating our parents and grandparents about the seriousness of the threats we’re facing. We’re used to combing through the buzz of overstimulation and over information on the internet for credible sources and realistic outcomes and expectations. We’re also used to begging older generations to listen to us, trying tactic after tactic to try to get them to understand our perspective and value others’ welfare above their own comfort or routine. We habitually use the internet to remain connected with others. And we’ve become accustomed to reality suddenly, dramatically changing for the worse. We grew up on dystopian fantasies and we learned our lessons.

We are also accustomed to being lied to by people in authority, including our parents, our instructors, our bosses, and our highest elected officials. Our parents lied to us, if unintentionally, about how the world works and our place in it, then denied us access to power while blaming us for our trauma. Our instructors insist we’re lying and demand obituaries to prove our absences while also losing assignments, not sticking to the syllabus, and repeating the same demeaning diatribes as the generations before them. Our bosses lie to us about benefits, our value to the company, and even our value as human beings.

Elected officials have lied about who was responsible for 9/11, who are our enemies, what people think, what’s best for us, who we can trust, and certainly about their motivations. Our current president has lied about…everything. And we’re pretty good by now at sniffing those lies out. Most millennials I know skip his portion of the now daily COVID-19 briefings to avoid the racist comments, misinformation, and lies. And now the president is saying some of us will have to die so that rich people don’t become a tiny bit less rich. Smells rotten to me. 

So we value stories and art and entertainment, and we do what we can to support the people who give us that. We look for stories of real people before believing what authorities tell us about the virus, its spread, and what we should do about it. We organize to help others. And we have to keep reminding news agencies and the world at large who we are (25-40 year olds) and who we aren’t (college students on spring break).

There are selfish people who think they are invincible in every generation, ours included. But we aren’t the ones on beaches despite warnings (and why aren’t those beaches already closed?).

Our spring break is working from home while trying to keep our kids on task for their e-learning.

Our spring break is developing online learning for the students we won’t see in person for the rest of the school year.

Our spring break is visiting the grocery store for our elderly neighbors on the way home from an underpaying job.

Our spring break is staying at home, hoping our disability or underlying condition won’t be a death sentence as we watch the president tell us we might have to die and as our caregivers dismiss our concerns.

Our spring break is spent delivering dozens of pizzas a day for less than minimal wage.

Our spring break is a day off from the hospital where we’ve volunteered to care for COVID patients because we are young and healthy and childless.

I see many of the same tension for us millennials in churches. We generally see loving their neighbors as a radically different process and value system than the ones we’ve been taught.

Loving queer people, for example, isn’t accomplished by excluding them or by instructing them, with pitying expressions, that they are hell-bound. And we believe this regardless of how we interpret biblical references to homosexuality, which in biblical times referred to predatory pedophilia, not the identity, lifestyle, and loving relationships implied by the word today. We are more likely to know openly queer people, and our love for them makes this issue far from theoretical.

As another example, to millennials, using funds responsibly and in Christ-like ways means handing out money sometimes, not only food, regardless of whether the person has “earned it” or is “worthy” of it. Their being children of God, human beings, makes them worthy of kindness and dignity, makes their suffering intolerable to our understanding of Christianity. We certainly won’t agree to buying yet another set of cushioned chairs for the one hour a week we’re going to be using them. We don’t believe that the only issue worth voting on, the one that *ahem* trumps all others is abortion. If we are responsible to God for the lives of those unborn children who might possibly die as a result of legislation passed or withheld by a person who we voted for, then we are equally responsible to the children kept in cages and denied flu vaccines, to the children killed on a schoolbus in Yemen by a US drone attack, to the children starving in refugee camps, and to our own children, who are taught to run in zigzags to avoid active shooters and who the president sees as acceptable losses in his efforts to save the stock market.

These understandings are largely excluded from the wider church. When voiced, they are largely ignored or vilified. We don’t habitually engage in useless endeavors, so few millennials continue pounding on those doors of power and influence that have been shut to them for their “radical misunderstandings of the Bible.” So most Christian millennials are faced with 3 choices: conform, shut up, or leave. I’ve done all three, most recently “leave.” 

We can hardly leave the country, though. And even if we could, what’s to say any other country would want us? We were told that the racists in power would eventually die off, and we should be patient for change. Instead, we see segments of our generation and Gen Z radicalized. And still we can’t protect our children from gun violence and can’t convince our grandparents not to go to church or to lunch afterwards during a pandemic. 

It’s a grim life that’s prepared us so well for the present pandemic.

Amidst my own dizzying anxiety, I’ve learned a lot from watching older generations face this pandemic. In particular, where I’ve rushed to react quickly and decisively, whether in terms of vegetables or workplace demands, my more mature colleagues have taken a more reasoned approach. They are optimistic for their own emotional well-being. They are careful. And most are generous. 

We aren’t prepared to sacrifice as a society for the sake of that society—all our experiences thusfar have discouraged it—and now we’re being asked to. We’re even required to in order to save lives. I deeply hope that every generation, including my beloved and jaded one, manage to do so.