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“Tonight.”

Last weekend, on my way to a church in Tampa, I decided I’d listen to America’s top songs for the week on the radio. I don’t like to admit it, but I’m a semi-closeted sucker for pop music and shows like Ryan Seacrest’s are how I find new songs. But while I drove, I didn’t discover my next embarassing mp3 purchase. Instead, I heard an interview with Enrique Iglesias after Seacrest played the vocalist’s new song “Tonight.” The chorus goes like this:

Here’s the situation / Been to every nation / Nobody’s ever made me feel the way that you do / You know my motivation / Given my reputation / Please excuse me, I don’t mean to be rude / But tonight I’m loving you.

I have long had little to no reason to assume my value system meshes with that of any of today’s pop song writers, so I was pretty sure “tonight I’m loving you” was pretty edited. In Seacrest’s interview with Iglesias, I learned I was right. In the explicit version of the song, “tonight I’m loving you” is “tonight I’m f***ing you.” Seacrest explored the effects of the song’s shock value with Iglesias. He asked what the vocalist’s family thinks of it. His grandma sings it around the house, he said. And his college-aged little sisters love it, and he’s fine with that, he said, but on one condition.

“As long as no guys sing it to them.”

While he’s pretty clearly crackin’ a joke, I am sure — as the sister of my own brother — he’s only half kidding. And since I don’t know Enrique, I also don’t know how likely he actually is to go up to a new girl to say something like “By the way, I’ll be f***ing you tonight.” What I do know is that the song, like lots you’ll hear on the radio, wraps a destructive message in a pop package. It permits the practice of lust which, in the words of Jason Evert, “can’t wait to get” while “love can wait to give.” And these songs, through speakers and ear buds, are delivered directly to a generation whose culture cares far more about making a profit than it does about a person’s wellbeing. And the things done and said to get us to spend our money are so embedded in our culture that we see right past the ploy and buy into it.

This is why women buy tickets to see rappers like Eminem despite lyrics like “If she ever tries to f***ing leave again, I’ma tie her to the bed and set the house on fire.” It’s why there are more guys who objectify women than there are people who set them straight. It’s why Enrique Iglesias, whether for real or solely in a song for profit, can sing a song that says “please excuse me, I don’t mean to be rude” for treating a woman like she’s a penis receptacle, and then say other guys better not do it to his sisters.

It is rude. And there is no excuse.

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Forgiveness.

Over winter break, I watched a movie called Amish Grace for the third time. And for the third time, I wept while I watched it.

This is partly because it’s a Lifetime movie and I cry during appx. 55% of Lifetime movies. (Don’t judge me.) But it’s mostly because it’s based on a book I finished reading last week that is based on a true story that moves most of the people who hear it.

On the morning of Oct. 2, 2006, a 32-year-old man named Charles Carl Roberts IV backed a pickup truck up to the front of an Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Penn. Inside, the book says, students said the Lord’s Prayer and sang songs before their teacher taught them. Roberts, who the students likely recognized as a local, non-Amish milk truck driver, went in with a plan and a set of guns. Out of veangence toward God for a death in his family, he shot 10 students. Then he shot himself. He and five girls died.

News of the tragedy spread quickly. The world grieved with the Amish and wondered how anyone dared violently intrude on the peculiar world of a peaceful people. In the hours after “the Happening,” which is what the Amish people in Nickel Mines call the shooting, law enforcement officers investigated. Journalists reported. Five girls fought for life in hospitals. While it went on, some Amish people paid a visit to the house nearby where Roberts had lived, to have a word with his widow and parents.

They could have started a shouting match and threatened revenge, insulted the shooter’s name or spit in the faces of his family. They could have, but they didn’t. They expressed forgiveness for Roberts and sympathy for his family’s loss. A few days later, they — including parents of some of the girls who died — went to his funeral.

The authors of Amish Grace explored the Amish community’s countercultural ability to forgive. They dissected the mercy in effort to detect whether it’s possible or just an act. It, they discovered, is possible. And in Amish culture, it isn’t uncommon.

One of many stories that prove it in the book is about a 17-year-old, non-Amish boy in the 1990s. He, who lived in Lancaster County, Penn., sped up a hill on a quiet road in a fast car. When he came over the top of the hill, he came upon a horse and buggy, occupied by a young, newlywed Amish couple coming home from their honeymoon. The boy decided to pass the buggy rather than slam on his brakes. And as he began to barrel by it in the lane beside it, the buggy turned in front of him. When it and his car collided, the woman in the buggy died.

Days after the accident, the woman’s family asked the boy to come to their home for the woman’s wake. He did. What happened that day and afterward is unheard of almost anywhere else. The woman’s family, including her widower, hugged him and forgave him. They cried together. Then, they kept in touch. In each year after, they shared meals and conversation. The boy became a man who got married. When he did, members of the Amish family were guests at his wedding. The man helped his Amish friends when they needed it. The Amish helped fund a mission trip the man took with his wife. To this day, the families are close.

This, in the same United States where we hold a grudge against the guy in line in front of us if he pays for his food with a check. Where blood boils all day because the person who delivers our newspaper didn’t show up. Where “if only we knew where the guy lived” who put the ding in our driver’s side door. Where we berate and belittle servers in restaurants when what we get isn’t what we ordered.

Forgiveness, wrote the authors of Amish Grace, is “deeply woven into the fabric of Amish life” and “inspiring as it is, is not easily transferable to other people in other situations … How does one imitate a habit that’s embedded in a way of life anchored in a five-hundred-year history?”

I don’t have the answer. But forgiveness, once said Martin Luther King, Jr., is “not an occasional act. It is a permanent attitude.”

It is an attitude I want to see us adopt. To learn more about the book Amish Grace, click here.

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“Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior”

According to Yale Law professor Amy Chua, Chinese mothers are superior to western ones.

“A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids,” she said in an essay that appeared in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal. “They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it’s like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I’ve done it. Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do:

• attend a sleepover

• have a playdate

• be in a school play

• complain about not being in a school play

• watch TV or play computer games

• choose their own extracurricular activities

• get any grade less than an A

• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama

• play any instrument other than the piano or violin

• not play the piano or violin.”

In the essay, an excerpt from her new book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, Chua uses the phrase “Chinese mothers” loosely. She’d say the way of a “strict” western parent pales in comparison to the strictness of authoritarian Chinese mothers who, for the record, aren’t necessarily from China. In the west, she said, parents are obsessed with self esteem. They assume their children are fragile. Chinese mothers, she said, assume their children are strong. In effort to assure that her children are the best and that they grow up to be people like Yale Law professors, a Chinese mother demands perfection via “rote repition,” hours of practicing musical instruments and hours of practice academic tests. Additionally, Chua says that in the process, Chinese parents can get away with what western ones can’t. A Chinese mother, for instance, can call her kid a fatty if he or she is overweight. She can call her daughter garbage if the kid disrespects her at a dinner party and she can revoke her daughter’s right to get up from the piano bench to go to the bathroom until the song she’s practicing is perfect (true stories!).

Some of the things Chua said make me cringe. And some of the things that make me cringe also make sense (which is alarming).

I’m neither Chinese, nor a mother, but I can say with certainty that I wouldn’t call a kid garbage or fatty. I wouldn’t withhold a kid’s right to go to the bathroom. But for her kids, it works. It also worked for Chua, and without any lasting emotional scars or mental illnesses (so she says).

Last night, I finished reading the book Amish Grace (this will be relevant shortly). It’s about the shooting at that Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania in 2006. Hours after the shooting, people from the Amish community visted the wife and parents of the shooter (who killed himself after he shot 10 Amish girls, half of whom died). They expressed forgiveness for what the shooter had done and offered sympathy for his family’s loss. Later that week, several Amish people went to the shooter’s funeral, including some of the parents of girls who died. The media bombarded the public with the story of grace and for the most part, it moved people all over the country. When approached by the media, the Amish people were taken aback that the non-Amish were taken aback by something so average in Amish culture. Forgiveness is a given. There is no grudge. The writers of the book, who are experts in Amish culture, delved more deeply into what happened, and they warn: “…the fact that forgiveness is so deeply woven into the fabric of Amish life should alert us that their example, inspiring as it is, is not easily transferable to other people in other situations. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but how does one imitate a habit that’s embedded in a way of life anchored in a five-hundred-year history?”

There is a lot embedded in Amish life, like no TV and no driving and no mall shopping trips. These are rules, for lack of a better term, that if imposed upon non-Amish American kids would provoke an unending series of temper tantrums. But an Amish kid would never respond that way.

I think the “Chinese motherhood” Chua writes about is embedded in that culture in the same way forgiveness and no TV are embedded in Amish culture. As a result, if you live in that culture, or if that culture is lived in your house and family, an Amish kid doesn’t have a tantrum because he or she can’t watch TV. You may not be emotionally scarred if your mom calls you garbage in Chua’s culture (although I’d like to see some studies on the mental health of adults who grew up with “Chinese mothers”). But even though thanks to the culture in which I grew up part of me wants to fight Chua on behalf of her kids, I’m compelled to partly defend her because westerners really are obsessed with self esteem, and to a fault.

My favorite quote from Chua’s essay is as follows:

“What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you’re good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences.”

When you live in a culture where everybody gets a trophy, including the kids on a losing team, you learn to expect rewards regardless of how good you are at what you do. You learn not to work harder (it’s still fun when you aren’t good at something but you get a trophy for it anyway). You believe you must enjoy everything you do, including all the things you have to do between high school and meeting goals like getting your dream job. And then you become an adult who doesn’t want to do anything.

The western assumption of fragility over strength is probably what causes western kids to be so fragile. In fact, in the human growth and development class I took a year ago, I learned that if you shield infants and kids from stressful experiences, the part of the brain that buffers stress won’t fully develop and the kid won’t have the ability to cope with stress for the rest of his or her life.

But is causing stress in the life of your kid the right way to prevent that? I have a hunch that it isn’t.

I also have a hunch that there are plenty of Yale Law professors who didn’t grow up with “Chinese mothers.”

To read Chua’s story in full, click here. (And thanks to Alex for bringing it to my attention!)

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Books worth reading.

From what I hear, a pretty popular new year’s resolution is “read more.”

And I like it. In fact, I’d make it if I believed I had the time to read for leisure. The truth is, I probably do, or will, now that I won’t have to regularly re-declutter or be distracted by a closet that spews its stuff across my room (It’s my clutter free year!).

But for anybody interested in some non-fiction books worth reading, I thought I’d share the literal few I have most recently read in full. I got something important out of each and you may get something good out of them, too.

1. The Church of Facebook: How the Hyperconnected Are Redefining Community by Jesse Rice

I found this book at Border’s and bought it though I’d never heard of it. Best impulse buy ever. For the first time in book form, somebody agreed with me re: social media. Jesse Rice, who is a writer and musician and has a master’s degree in counseling psychology, shares my sentiments (almost entirely, except for the fact that he still uses social media). In the book, he communicates those sentiments in the words and ways I’ve been trying to find for years. According to the back of the book, “while personal profiles are revealing, they hint at even larger truths. They uncover our desire for identity, our craving to be known, and our need to belong. … Join Jesse as he explores social networking and its impact on culture and the church. Filled with fresh perspectives and provocative questions, The Church of Facebook encourages us to pursue authentic relationships with God and those around us.”

An excerpt from pages 142-144:

“First, being always-on reinforces the belief that an invisible entourage follows us wherever we go. Our nonstop connectivity ensures we are always within reach of someone, at least technically, and at least in a way that might cause us to act differently than we would if we knew no one was watching. … the more we believe we have an audience, the more likely our behavior will reflect that belief. We will live in response to a thousand imagined voices, rather than in response to our own hearts.

The cultivation of a healthy self-concept is being subtly undermined by the tendency toward always-on behavior. … The new phone is enabling parents and children to be in touch with one another, but it can prevent the child from having to face certain difficult tasks on their own. ‘With the on-tap parent,’ Turkle observes, ‘tethered children think differently about their own responsibilities and capacities.’ … Likewise, when a young person jumps on Facebook … they are newly connected to a vast and growing network of ‘others’ from whom they can receive guidance, comfort, and camaraderie. While this is often a positive experience … it can also be potentially harmful. Young people can come to so fully depend on the advice and opinions of others — including parents — that they become stunted in their ability to navigate life on their own.”

2. Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality and Spirituality by Rob Bell

I bought this book upon my friend Amanda’s suggestion — for somebody who wants to write about relationships and chastity, she said, it is a must-read. I’ll go ahead and add that for anyone who cares about relationships and chastity, it is also a must-read. I’d heard good things about the book for awhile, but until Amanda suggested it, I’d avoided it. And that’s because when I first flipped through it at a bookstore, it looked a little non-traditional, as far as books go, with lots of one- and two-line paragraphs throughout. I thought I’d find it too abrupt to want to read, but as it turns out, I’ll probably never judge a book by it’s one- and two-line paragraphs again. The book is so good.

An excerpt from pages 52-53:

“There’s a passage in the book of First Corinthians where one of the writers of the Bible addresses this worldview. He confronts his audience with a challenge: Can they live for a higher purpose than just fulfilling their urges? He then claims that their bodies are ‘temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God.’

This is provocative language. A temple was a holy place, a place where the gods lived, a place where heaven and earth met. The writer specifically uses this image to challenge them with the idea that a human isn’t just a collection of urges and needs but is a being whom God resides in. He’s trying to elevate their thinking, to change their perspective, to open their eyes to a higher view of what it means to be a human. He’s asking them to consider that there’s more to life than the next fix.”

3. Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy’s Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back by Todd Burpo and Lynn Vincent

I unwrapped this book on Christmas Eve: a gift from my mom. I hadn’t heard of it. I read the first few chapters in bed that night, and I read the rest of the entire book while we all relaxed on Christmas Day. I could not stop reading it. The book is the true story of Colton Burpo, a then 3-year-old boy who, after recovering from an emergency surgery, says angels sang to him at the hospital. A little at a time after that, Colton continues to innocently reveal what he says happened to him at the hospital. And what his parents at first think might be figments of the boy’s imagination start to seem real and miraculous when he begins to bring up up things he shouldn’t know. The story itself is amazing, as are the really good points Burpo makes about life and faith throughout.

An excerpt from pages 74-75:

“What is childlike humility? It’s not the lack of intelligence, but the lack of guile. The lack of an agenda. It’s that precious fleeting time before we have accumulated enough pride or position to care what other people might think. The same un-self-conscious honesty that enables a three-year-old to splash joyfully in a rain puddle, or tumble laughing in the grass with a puppy, or point out loudly that you have a booger hanging out of your nose, is what is required to enter heaven. It is the opposite of ignorance — it is intellectual honesty: to be willing to accept reality and to call things what they are even when it is hard.”

And I’m always interested in book suggestions. Let me know if there are any you’d recommend.

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2011’s experiment: My Clutter Free Year.

Earlier this week, I spent an entire day decluttering.

I emptied every cabinet. Dumped every drawer. Dug through everything I own and found some things I don’t (Should my old friend Matt Szabo stumble upon this post, I hope he’ll accept my sincere apologies for never returning the copy of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich that I borrowed from him in 2005.).

The tedious task was a repeat. I have been there and done it, over and over again because something somewhere inside me still says what I always said as a kid.

“I hate cleaning my room.”

I always did it anyway, of course, but in a matter of days, the fruit of my labor would wither beneath the new clutter I’d create. Keeping my room clean is a feat I’ve fought and failed to master since childhood.

Exhibit A: The time my parents discovered little Arleen asleep on a pile of toys while she “cleaned her room.”

Bless my heart. I tried.

But I was the kid who wouldn’t rid her room of clutter. Instead, I’d stack it neatly and call it clean. A kid like that grows into a teen whose parents walk into her room and wonder aloud whether her closet projectile vomited. That teen grows into an adult whose desk at work is the worst one in the office.

Exhibits B and C: In June of 2010, I went to work on a Saturday to turn this…

into this:

BAM. And you’ll be proud to know my desk has consistently remained almost as clutter free since.

But until earlier this week, when I decluttered my space at home, my desk at work was as good as it got. I fought to keep clutter under control everywhere else. And I know exactly why.

When I come home at the end of the day, I throw all I bring in onto my bed. By the time I go back to my room, it’s late and I’m ready to sleep. So I throw everything on my bed onto the floor.

Every. Day.

By the end of a week, while I struggle to remember what color my carpet is, I realize what’s ahead: another Friday night spent cleaning my mess or another day off spent working. At least, unlike in my childhood, I value simplicity. I practice it an as many areas of life as I can. When I straighten up my stuff, I want to do it. And when I did it big earlier this week, I decided on this year’s experiment:

2011 will be my clutter free year.

The plan? No clutter spends the night. At the end of every day, I’ll browse my bedroom, closet and bathroom. If anything’s anywhere it shouldn’t be, I’ll put it back in its place. I won’t go to bed until it’s done. And barring any new decor or other such changes, my space will look like it looks today every day between now and Dec. 31, 2011.

So like this:

And this:
And this:


When compared to my sugar free year, a clutter free year sounds simple. But I’m 25 years old and I’ve never had a clutter free room for longer than two weeks. Nobody who has known me for awhile will believe it if I pull it off for a year. And though I’m embarassed by it, sharing it is all I can do to express the magnitude of my goal (I forgot to take before pictures.).

You should also know, however, that I’m a believer in the unbelievable. And I believe there is a lot of good to learn from this sort of exercise: To delay gratification. To prioritize. To manage my time. To be patient. Pulling it off means severing all ties to spending tons of time hanging up laundry that’s been clean for weeks. It means I won’t have to spend the first few hours of a study day cleaning so I can focus. It means I won’t trip over shoes when I wake up in the morning.

Will it be hard? Heck yes. But I’m for it. Let’s do this!