I caught the story at the end of this evening's news: earlier today an 18-year-old young woman named Samantha Larson became the youngest American to summit Mt. Everest.

Not the youngest American woman. The youngest American. Period.

With this climb, she's successfully summitted the highest peaks on each of the seven continents.

Is there anything young women can't do?

(You can read the LA Times' account of her climb or check out Samanta Larson's blog.)

I receive a web-based monthly magazine from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) that "explores contemporary issues of interest to young women."

The May issue included an article on commercial sexual exploitation, which I would like to share with you here (click on the highlighted phrase above to link to the article).

In Jen's post from the other day, she mentions "trying to navigate the space between virgin and whore." So much of women's--and increasingly men's--sexuality is defined by extemes: you are either a prowress or a prude. This is not a helpful way of talking about human sexuality. Our society tends to stress the former (prowress), while the church--even if only by keeping silent on the subject--stresses the later (prude). We are often left by ourselves to navigate the space in between.

What do you think is the church's role in helping its members--and especially its young women--develop a healthy sexuality? How can the church combat commercial sexual exploitation in the process?

Read the article and share your thoughts...

Labels: human sexuality, religion and sexuality, sexual exploitation, sexuality and church

A couple of years ago, I made the transition from working predominately with women to working also with boys and young men. And, I’ve got to say, I don’t think women would stand for being treated like a teenage boy. In the past few months, I’ve become increasingly worried about the state of men in the world. I’m worried about the young boys growing up without positive male role models. I’m concerned that the young minority men in my community dream of growing up to be sports stars or drug dealers. I’m upset that real men can’t cry. I’m annoyed that in spite of my enlightened views, I, too, have a too narrow definition of masculinity.

As a feminist, I’ve talked before about trying to navigate the space between virgin and whore, and claiming my identity as both an emotional and rational creature. As a woman, I believe that I have options and choices. This complexly confident person I have become is due in large part to all the kinds of Womanspace I have found.

I worried because I don’t see a similar space for the young men in my community. As far as the women’s movement has gone to saying women can do anything men do, we have not yet reached that moment where society says men can do anything women do. Men have deeply coded behaviors for work, sex, and family, and these expectations have not drastically changed in the past thirty years. Indeed, it seems that quite the opposite has occurred: we expect even more out of them. Society expects that men bring home a big paycheck and expects them to put in quality time at home. They are expected to treat women as partners, but they still need to be gentlemen and open our doors.

I’m also tired of sitting back and watching men take it. I’m tired of seeing the same old depictions of what it means to be a man. I’m tired of masculinity being tied up with sports, sex, drugs, or being a computer playing, nose in a book, financial analyst nerd. I know that this is such an incomplete depiction of men! From my father, to the boys I used to date, to my coworkers and friends, I have seen how hard it is to grow up male and how much more there is to men than they are willing to let on. And yet, while I feel men ask for my respect, they do not ask me to change my idea of what it means to be a man.

I think it’s time for a real men’s movement. Not an ideology that is going to narrow the definition of what it means to be male, but a movement that will let men be more complicated. I want men to move past the frat boy limits of what Manspace is and find a place where a boy can decide what kind of man he will be and find men to help him on that journey. I want the young boys I work with to find a man who will show them another way to be a man and give them the tools they need to succeed at something other than drugs and violence. And I, for one, will support that kid however I can – whether that’s watching the basketball game over a beer, offering my silence so he can cry, or giving him a separate space to claim his masculinity with others far better suited to give guidance. As the new NNPCW t-shirt says, “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”

While on my way to church a few weeks ago I was listening to an NPR report, it was a very interesting story about the “end of the Mayan Calendar”. Thousands of years ago the Mayans accurately predicted December 21, 2012 to be the Winter Solstice. To give you a little more information on this report and event I will quote Jim Papp and have you read what he has written:

On this day a rare astronomical and Mayan mythical event occurs. In astronomic terms, the Sun conjuncts the intersection of the Milky Way and the plane of the ecliptic. The Milky Way, as most of us know, extends in a general north-south direction in the night sky. The plane of the ecliptic is the track the Sun, Moon, planets and stars appear to travel in the sky, from east to west. It intersects the Milky Way at a 60 degree angle near the constellation Sagittarius.
The cosmic cross formed by the intersecting Milky Way and plane of the ecliptic was called the Sacred Tree by the Maya. The trunk of the tree, the Axis Mundi, is the Milky Way, and the main branch intersecting the tree is the plane of the ecliptic. Mythically, at sunrise on December 21, 2012, the Sun - our Father - rises to conjoin the center of the Sacred Tree, the World Tree, the Tree of Life.
This rare astronomical event, foretold in the Mayan creation story of the Hero Twins, and calculated empirically by them, will happen for many of us in our lifetime. The Sun has not conjoined the Milky Way and the plane of the ecliptic since some 25,800 years ago, long before the Mayans arrived on the scene and long before their predecessors the Olmecs arrived. What does this mean?
Due to a phenomenon called the precession of the equinoxes, caused by the Earth's wobble that lasts almost 26,000 years, the apparent location of the Winter Solstice sunrise has been ever so slowly moving toward the Galactic Center. Precession may be understood by watching a spinning top. Over many revolutions the top will rise and dip on its axis, not unlike how the Earth does over an extremely long period of time. One complete rise and dip constitutes the cycle of precession.
The Mayans noticed the relative slippage of the positions of stars in the night sky over long periods of observation, indicative of precession, and foretold this great coming attraction. By using an invention called the Long Count, the Mayans fast-forwarded to anchor December 21, 2012 as the end of their Great Cycle and then counted backwards to decide where the calendar would begin. Thus the Great Cycle we are currently in began on August 11, 3114 B.C. But there's more.
The Great Cycle, lasting 1,872,000 days and equivalent to 5,125.36 years, is but one fifth of the Great Great Cycle, known scientifically as the Great Year or the Platonic Year - the length of the precession of the equinoxes. To use a metaphor from the modern industrial world, on Winter Solstice A.D. 2012 it is as if the Giant Odometer of Humanity on Earth hits 100,000 miles and all the cycles big and small turn over to begin anew. The present world age will end and a new world age will begin.
Over a year's time the Sun transits through the twelve houses of the zodiac. Many of us know this by what "Sun sign" is associated with our birthday. Upping the scale to the Platonic Year - the 26,000 year long cycle - we are shifting, astrologically, from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius. The Mayan calendar does not really "end" in 2012, but rather, all the cycles turn over and start again, vibrating to a new era. It is as if humanity and the Earth will graduate in the eyes of the Father Sun and Grandmother Milky Way.

So what does this mean for us? Is this the end? How were the Mayans able to accurately predict this event thousands of years ago? All of these questions have been streaming through my mind since hearing this report. What I have learned from this is that I don’t know what will happen on this day, but until that day, maybe I should take a little advice from the Mayans and pay more attention to my surroundings and try to stay true to the earth, be more kind to it and all who live in it. I doubt the Mayans would have been able to pay attention to the earth as well if they were writing a blog, listening to music, chatting online, researching schools that my friend whom I am chatting with tells me about, making a flier, and getting ready to go running all at the same time as I currently am.

My goal this summer is to spend at least half of an hour every day away from my computer, phone, books, people, and other distractions, be outside and just listen to the sounds of nature, of myself, look inward, look outward, and take time to just think freely and be centered.