I so can’t focus on one topic right now. So we’re doing one of these multi-topic ramblethons.
TOPIC A–> After reading Jessica Thomas’ blog entry this morning I was all set to qwerty out my own opinions on this new trend in the Complimentarian sphere of Christianity. Now it seems we’re using sex to sell people on the virtues of Christian Marriage a la Ephesians. But honestly, I don’t have 500 words to say about that, because everything I have to say can be boiled down to this: Magic Unicorn Sex is an unfair expectation to place on any person or relationship. Yes, the husband/wife relationship in Christian marriage is symbolic of the Christ/Church relationship. But husbands and wives aren’t perfect, so while the Christ/Church relationship is one of transcendent magnificence, its human counterpart is merely a shadow of that. So all of this faffing about how a Real Marriage will have profound and firework-generating sex is really not so helpful. The only gauge a Christian should use to measure her relationship with God should be her…relationship with God. Using other things like your sex life or your health or your wealth as fleece to measure the dewy love of God is both heretical and profoundly lacking in that crucial thing called faith.
TOPIC B–> On Friday when the news of the Hostess Chapter 22 came out, everyone was mourning the loss of a food they haven’t eaten in 15 years, scapegoating the unions or both. I’m really discouraged at the way everyone views this complex issue through the lens of subliterate partisan politics. If you are at the place where you are reducing this charlie foxtrot of a business muddle to “Unions Are Wrongbad” then you have abandoned reason for bromides. Yes, the unions are somewhat at fault. So are the banks, the SEC, the Clinton Administration, the Bush Administration, Ben Bernacke, the consumers, the vegetarian health lobby, the culture. I could go on for days about how the doom of Hostess happened. And I hate like fire to be put in a position where I’m even partially defending unions because most of them are as top-heavy and outmoded as the Hostess company itself. In fact, watching the death of Hostess over the last three years has been not unlike watching two dinosaurs box each other with their too-short arms while they stay mired in the tar pit that will eventually consume them.
TOPIC C–> My cousins, who have two adopted daughters (to their credit they refer to them simply as “our daughters”) are pregnant. I’m happy for them, truly. But I’m remembering another cousin who had a similar situation a couple of decades ago. Those cousins adopted a child from (?I think) South Korea, and then almost immediately upon that boy’s arrival found themselves pregnant. Tad and Tamara (not their real names) grew up side by side, but far from equal. Tad was the “oriental boy” and Tamara was the golden Child Of Our Bodies. Tamara’s college was paid in full, Tad was essentially kicked to the curb when he turned 18. This is what bothers me about adoption, and why I am very vocal in my belief that couples who adopt children need to get that adoption is a serious thing. An adopted baby isn’t the can of Turtle Wax that the loser gets as a parting gift. Adoption isn’t for every couple who can’t have biological children. It is its own calling. I was born the daughter of an adopted man, who himself had a brother that was the biological child of his mother. My cousins were very clear from the get go that Grandma Doc was not “really [my] grandmother” because my father was “not really her son”. If that’s your attitude, you best get yourself a ferret. You can’t even handle dogs and cats. On second thought, maybe just get a picture of a ferret.
Oh, seriously, that last one sounds like a corrupted parable of exactly the opposite way Jesus treats his adopted children. How saddening.
“Magic Unicorn Sex” lol. This made me laugh out loud, which is a good thing, especially on a Monday.
Great points on adoption. I’ve considered adoption myself and wondered if I could truly consider the child equal with my biological child, knowing that if the answer is “No”, it’s the wrong path for me.
Love the whole boxing dinosaurs image — awesome!
Wh-wh-what?!? on your cousins. How did any reputable agency ever allow people like that to adopt a child? My nephews were adopted — I can only use the past tense, because once they were adopted they became my nephews, and my sister’s children. She is their mother. We just could not say of them now that “they are adopted.” It just wouldn’t be emotionally accurate. And this doesn’t seem difficult to me — it’s the attitude you describe that seems like stretching. Though there were those even in my family who shared it, so what do I know?
As for the magic unicorn sex, every well-thought-out theological or philosophical position can be used as a metaphor for good sex, with specific examples of precisely why that theory gives participants the most jollies. I will go out on a limb and say that living with someone who shares your ideals of marriage (and who finds in you a desired partner in trying to achieve that ideal) leads to the best sex most of the time.
Which cousins? The ones with the Korean boy or the ones with the snotty-redheaded children?
[...] However another friend of mine recently wrote on her weblog about a cousin who had adopted a boy and that happy ending was more elusive. From Just Another Pretty Farce, [...]
My father’s mother has four children, each with a different father. She doesn’t recognize step-children as the same as biological children, even though all of her husbands had to be step-parents to at least one of her kids (my dad is the first born and came several years before her first marriage). So my Uncle’s step-sons don’t count to her as grand-children, my sister’s three boys don’t count because they’re her husband’s from his first marriage, etc. There are reasons I don’t consider her my grandmother – real family shows love and support and doesn’t care about something as trivial as blood line. We’re not prize winning horses, we’re people.