I'm Coming Out . . . as a Feminist.

My topic is 'Righteous Priesthood Service,' which puts me in the awkward position of hang to stand here, as a woman, and tell the brethren how to be good priesthood holders. However, I've heard a large number of talks over the years on righteous womanhood, given by priesthood holders, so I figure that turnabout is fair play.

I am, of course, speaking from a woman’s perspective, but I hope that my comments may be equally applicable to all priesthood service, whether given to men or to women. I’ve organized my thoughts into three categories of ways that I think that you brethren can be better priesthood holders:

1. O, be wise . . . but not just with your own wisdom;
2. Bridle all your passions; and
3. Get in touch with your feminine side. 

The brethren of the priesthood are extremely important to me as a Latter-day Saint woman. I need their permission to be baptized and confirmed, to attend the temple, to serve a mission. I need their assistance to partake of the sacrament, to do vicarious work for my ancestors, or to receive laying on of hands for healing or comfort. I need their nomination to serve in a calling. I am grateful for the good and righteous priesthood holders in my life who have judged me worthy of all these blessings and allowed me to make and keep the sacred covenants that bring me closer to my Father in Heaven. But I implore you brethren, before you become self-congratulatory over your own righteousness, to remember the great harm that one unwise priesthood holder may do. I don’t say ‘unrighteous’ . . . I only say ‘unwise.’

Towards the end of my mission, I developed an anxiety disorder. I’d be minding my own business when suddenly, like lightning out of a clear blue sky, I’d be back in the middle of a nightmare I didn’t remember ever dreaming. The episodes left me terrified and disoriented. I had no idea what was happening to me. I almost thought I was being possessed by demons . . . or else that I was going crazy. I knew I needed help.

Our mission shared with several others the services of a therapist who’d been called as  a mental health missionary to our area. Unfortunately, he was in Japan while I was in Korea. To speak to him, I needed the permission of my mission president. To speak to my president, I needed the permission of my zone leader, and to get to my zone leader, I had to go through my district leader. You RMs all know how this works. So I went to my district leader, a young Korean elder several years younger than myself, and explained to him in a language I didn’t speak that something I didn’t understand was seriously wrong with me.

There are many ways that Elder Jung could have served me in that moment. He could have told me that all missionaries get scared sometimes, and that he understood what I was feeling. He could have promised to pray for me. He could have suggested to me that I work harder, study more, and gain greater faith to overcome. If he had done any of these good things, I would not have been able to finish my mission. Instead, he gave me the greatest service of all: he was wise, but not with just his own wisdom. He trusted my judgment and provided the service that I knew I needed. At my request, he gave me a blessing, then called the zone leaders. They called President Jennings. Prez called Japan. Dr. Brown, in Japan, called me. And I got the help that I needed to get my anxiety disorder under control and finish my mission with honor.

You priesthood brethren will, all your lives, have some measure of power over the people that you serve. You certainly will wish only to help them, but to be a righteous priesthood holder, you must go beyond that. You must trust them and respect them. You must, in humility, allow their wisdom to compliment your own.

The prophet Joseph Smith observed, “We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion” (D&C 121: 37).

What does unrighteous dominion look like? Surely hardly any priesthood holder sets out to exercise unrighteous dominion or harm the people under his care. But in our church, we seek to be perfect, even as our Father in Heaven is perfect. We want to help others along their path to perfection. But what we sometimes fail to realize, to our cost, is that perfection does not mean uniformity. No one perfected, exalted being will be exactly the same as any other. In seeking to help others, we can sometimes impose upon them our own expectations of perfection. This is what unrighteous dominion looks like to me. We all feel the temptation to do it, but for the priesthood brethren, in their positions of authority, this imposition can be particularly damaging.

My sport of choice is middle eastern dance—belly dance. When I perform with my fellow dancers, I do so in stylistically appropriate costume. I’ve prayed about this personal decision to dance without a belly cover, and felt the Holy Ghost’s affirmation that this is a good decision for me and not disrespectful of my covenants or my body. However, if someday I move to a ward where the bishop disagrees with my choice, based on his own understanding of what constitutes appropriate dress and conduct, he could refuse to renew my temple recommend and cut me off from the house of the Lord. He has that power. You brethren, in your future callings as bishops and stake presidents, will have that power. You may be tempted to misuse it when someone else’s interpretation of a commandment or a scripture differs from your own. You may be tempted to misuse your authority now, when you disagree with a sister over the way she should speak, the clothes she should wear, or the activities in which she should participate. 

Elder Albert Choules, Jr., of the Seventy, informs us that "No man--

particularly one who bears the priesthood--

has the right to treat any woman unkindly, especially his wife, with whom he would hope to share eternal joy. Certainly unrighteous dominion cannot be excused on the mistaken notion that permission comes by being the husband, head of the family, and particularly under the umbrella or authority of the priesthood." Your priesthood office does not ever give you the right to treat any woman unkindly,

even if you are quite sure that you know better than she does how she should be seeking for perfection.

Please remember that her perfection may be very different from yours. Please respect her sacred right to make that choice for herself, based on her own counsel with our Heavenly Parents and her understanding of the Lord’s commandments. Allow her wisdom to broaden your own.

This brings me to my second point: bridle all your passions. When I was in the MTC, a companionship of sisters in my branch got the flu. During gym time, instead of exercising, they sat together in a quiet corner and rested. To pass the time, Sister Ogelvie took out a hairbrush and brushed out Sister Peterson’s hair while Sister Peterson quizzed her on Korean vocab words. Their extra study time was interrupted by an elder they didn’t know, who approached them and asked them to stop, because he found the sight of one woman brushing another’s hair to be uncomfortably provocative.

This elder thought he was being a righteous priesthood holder. He wished to keep his thoughts pure and virtuous. I can easily understand how he might have found these sisters distracting: they're both very pretty, and Sister Peterson has great hair. But instead of taking responsibility for his feelings and returning his focus to playing four-square, he tried to make these women control his thoughts for him.

H

e treated these two good sisters as distractions, or temptations, or walking-talking-sins-waiting-to-happen, rather than as fellow missionaries with the right to use their gym time as they saw fit. This conduct is unbecoming of a priesthood holder.

Elder M. Russell Ballard has observed that "Popular culture today often makes women look silly, inconsequential, mindless, and powerless. It objectifies them and disrespects them and then suggests that they are able to leave their mark on mankind only by seduction--

easily the most pervasively dangerous message the adversary sends to women about themselves." Brethren of the priesthood, when you judge a sister by her appearance, whether modest or immodest, you tell her the same thing: that her worth comes from her ability to appeal to YOU. The fact that you are better men than the cruel and selfish men of the world does not make this a better message.

The Lord instructed, “Let thy bowels also be full of charity towards all men, and to the household of faith, and let virtue garnish thy thoughts unceasingly” (121:45). A priesthood holder who lets virtue garnish his thoughts unceasingly still experiences distraction and temptation, as he should. But he can also see through that experience to a deeper truth.

He sees all people, male and female, beautiful and ugly, saint and sinner, for the beloved and powerful children of God that they are—no matter what they are wearing or whose hair they are brushing. Only then, when he sees them as the Savior would, can he serve them in a Christlike manner.

My third point may, perhaps, be the most uncomfortable, but bear with me: a righteous priesthood holder needs to get in touch with his feminine side. As Latter-Day Saints, we believe that the greatest joy and power comes from the synergy of masculine and feminine, not from the dominance of one over the other. We believe in Heavenly Parents, who love us in complementary ways. Our church is composed of both men and women, all of whom need the power of the priesthood in their lives. This power flows from Heavenly Parents of both genders to beloved children of both genders, but only you brethren are permitted to fully exercise it outside of the holy temple. To exercise that power fully and righteously, you must learn to be gentle as well as to be courageous.

“No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned; By kindness, and pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy, and without guile . . .” (D&C 121: 41-42).

These traits . . . meekness, gentleness, kindness, innocence, and patience . . . are ones that our culture ascribes to women. But the brethren of the priesthood cannot afford to neglect these qualities. If you feel that women are better than you would be at being patient, kind, or loving, then look to them as your examples. You cannot delegate to them those parts of priesthood service that require feminine kindness; the responsibility is yours.

Someday, you may sit on a church disciplinary counsel, hearing the sin of some sister in your stake and deciding on appropriate consequences to help her to fully repent. There will be no other woman in the room, to comfort her, to commiserate with her, or to speak for her. That will be your job. You may not understand what she is going through or why she has made the choices that she has. In that moment, trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not unto your own understanding. You may not understand what it is like to be a woman struggling under the burden of sin, but Christ does. Ask him to teach you, so that you may understand this woman as another woman would, and judge righteous judgment without the limitations of your own mortality—the judgment and service that she needs to receive, rather than the kind you feel inclined or qualified to give.

That is the glory of the priesthood: it is a power of service, rather than of conquest. It is inseparably connected with the powers of heaven, and can only be handled upon principles of righteousness. Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ embodied these principles during his mortal ministry, in his conduct towards the woman taken in adultery, or the woman with an issue of blood, or Mary and Martha, or Mary Magdalene. I am constantly amazed and humbled by the good, priesthood-holding brethren in my life who courageously follow his example. They are wise, but not just through their own learning: they trust in and rely upon my wisdom, and they look to the Lord for a more complete understanding of how they may best serve his children. They bridle all their passions, and see me as a human being deserving of respect more than as an object of desire or temptation. And they are in touch with the feminine qualities of kindness, humility, and love that allow me, a woman, to feel safe under their stewardship. I know that the power of the priesthood is real, that it is divine, and that it is the power of God unto humanity for their protection and salvation. It was restored in our day through the prophet Joseph Smith and is even now going forth to bless all the human family. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

January

January cold is of a different tang than the rosy-cheeked chill of December. January is deep and black and biting. In January, the soul huddles deep inside the chest, just as the body buries itself in swaths of cloth, and crouches there, unsleeping, and waits.

January burns. It ravages my fingers and face and toes until even lukewarm water makes me scream. And I rage within the darkness, still alive beneath its crushing inexorability: why must it hurt so deeply, for so long? Why isn't it over yet?

And yet I know I need it, for I am winter-born. There is no growth without the dark to give it strength. Thirteen years of tepid seasons, autumn slinking into spring, leave the nauseous taste of rot upon my tongue. The world is all browns and grays and boredom. There is no bite of agonizing, fierce, bone-deep, life-affirming cold to make me want to fight my way to freedom. Until now.

I grit my teeth and wait, defiant. The cold will last and last, but I can last longer. I am winter-born.

International Hug Your Favorite Novel-to-Film Adaptation Day!

So last night, some of the girls in the neighborhood threw a pizza-and-movie party. I thought this sounded like a great plan for Valentine's Day . . . though, heck, I think this is a great plan for any Thursday you care to name. So I dropped on by, ate some pizza, and enquired what the movie was.

"Pride and Prejudice," said someone.

"The new one, or the like six-hour one?" asked another.

"The new one. With Kira Knightley. Yeah, we're NOT gonna be here for six hours."

I flinched a little. I saw the new P&P when it was first released on DVD, and remembered not liking it. But, thought I, that was a long while ago, and I've studied a lot of adaptation theory since then. Maybe I'm prejudiced against it by liking the A&E version so much. But there can be two different interpretations of the same text, and they can both be good, right? Maybe I was just being a snob because it wasn't "the right" P&P. I may be a literature grad student, but that shouldn't make me into a jerk who can't enjoy movies. And wouldn't it be ironic if it turns out I'm too prideful and too prejudiced to enjoy watching Pride and Prejudice?

So, with the best of intentions, I sat down to watch.

I had to leave by the Netherfield Ball.

I respectfully submit that my early-planted aversion to this film is based on neither pride nor prejudice. It's just simply quite awful. I know that there are many folks who like it, and to them I say: I'm so sorry.  I really, really am. I'm so hesitant to declare myself a P&P snob when I so recently railed on the Les Mis snobs of my acquaintance. But to all you folks about there who like this movie, I say: there's so much more in this wonderful story for you to enjoy. It takes a bit of effort, and a bit of time, but hardly any money. You can love Pride and Prejudice for so much more than what you're seeing in this film.

Pride and Prejudice, right? Up there with the great novels of the English language. Seriously. Jane Austen was writing at the beginning of the Age of the Novel, when advances in printing technology and literary theory and paper-making allowed the novel, as we understand it, to emerge. Yeah, mid-1700s you get things like Samuel Richardson's Pamela and Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, and the late 1700s you've got the truly goshawful Coelebs in Search of a Wife (which qualifies as a novel in that it is long, prose, and fictional, but is an epic failure if you're looking for character or plot), but right around 1800 was when the English novel really truly took off, and P&P hit the market in 1813. That's two hundred years ago. Two hundred years people have been reading this book. Actually reading it. I mean, other novels from that period and earlier have survived and are still published, but how many have you read? Robinson Crusoe? Clarissa? The Absentee?

And it's never been outdone. P&P has some of the funniest, most human characters you will ever meet. Even with all we know now about psychology and behavioral theory, family relationships and human motivation, we can't harness all that information to draw characters any more engaging than the Bennetts, Bingleys, and Lucases. Part of the continuing delight of this novel is that you can read along and suddenly realize "Oh, my gosh, [character] is totally my sister, my roommate, my best friend, my mom!" That's part of the funniness of it: just the delight of meeting the caricatures of people you already know. When I'm watching a film adaptation of this book and can't remember which girl is Lydia and which is Kitty, there's a problem.

It's got some of the sharpest one-liners in the English language. "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." Two hundred years, and this is still funny. The dialogue and the details absolutely sparkle. It's like listening to a harpsichord: light, clean, quick, fun, emotive. It takes a meaningful level of neglect to make dialogue like this fall upon the ear like lazily-thrown bricks, which, unfortunately, the KN P&P achieves. It's so sad to listen to.

But here's my biggest concern about this film: the hair. The HAIR! In the brief portion I re-watched last night, KN was wearing her hair down (or half-down), in public, fully three times. Please, show me a fashion plate, a portrait, an engraving from this period that shows an upper-class adult woman wearing her hair down in public. Elizabeth should not have been allowed outside (or even downstairs) with her hair looking like that. It marks her as either a child, a lunatic, or a prostitute.*

Which unintentionally made her arrival at Netherfield really funny. She walks in to the room and my whole brain is like "Oh my GOSH her HAIR what is she THINKING?!?" However, the hypercritical Miss Bingley, who from a historical sense should have been even more shocked than I was, comments disdainfully on the state of Elizabeth's skirt. Because that's what's in the book.

There is a film adaptation of P&P that delights in the characters, celebrates the dialogue, and did its homework on hair and costuming. Yes, it's six hours long. Yes, that's a long time. But truly, my dear friends, it is worth it. I can't think of a better novel-to-film adaptation, period. I implore you to give it a try, and see what this lovely story when not just the lead actress, but the entire cast, are allowed to shine.

And if you enjoy that, I'd happily recommend to you the book itself. It is a delicious, sparkling, joyful commentary on the follies and merits of humanity. The text and the film aren't even in competition, as is so often the case: they enhance one another. The KN P&P, I'm sorry to say, just doesn't participate in that synergy at all. Which is sad. KN is a lovely actress and has done some great roles. She even does a darn good job here. But the costumers, screenplay writers, directors and supporting cast are just not where they need to be to let her performance blossom into a worthwhile story. Which is a shame, because it is a very worthwhile story.

So today, the 15th of February, I declare International Hug Your Favorite Novel-to-Film Adaptation Day! Because doesn't your favorite novel-to-film adaptation deserve a hug at least once a year?

---

*Maybe her house was on fire. It would be acceptable for her to go outside with her hair down if the house had caught fire while she was getting dressed. But if that were the case, you'd think it would be mentioned somewhere in the film. Also, you'd think that someone would do something to stop these house fires from happening three times in a single month.**

**A month with at least one day of pouring rain.

Experiments in Intercultural Fashion

Cold this morning. I got to school, stripped off my excessive layers of cold-busting outerwear, opened my laptop and went digging through the news for a story to use in class today. And what did I find?

Today is World Hijab Day!

A group of Muslim women organized this event to give non-Muslims, and Muslims who don't generally wear a hijab, a chance to give it a try. Though in the US we hear a lot about women in predominately Muslim countries being punished for not covering themselves enough, the news overlooks the Muslim women all over the world who wear head scarves or other coverings for the same reasons I wear sleeves: reverence for the body and for God. The Muslim women I have known have all made their own independent and educated decisions about whether or not to wear a head covering: some did, and were confident and happy doing so; others didn't, and were confident and happy abstaining.

I've wanted to try a hijab for ages. I think they're gorgeous. They frame the face so elegantly, and there's such a fantastic diversity of fabrics and colors and accessories to choose from. I love the boldness they imply: This is my faith. I'm proud of it. And, counterintuitive though it seems, I like the feminist implications thereof. A hijab says Here is my face. Look at it. Talk to me. Rather like last week's post, when you think about it: this woman is here to live her life, not to be pretty for you.

So when I realized that it was World Hijab Day, and I could try wearing a hijab without being disrespectful to another religion, I was FURIOUS. Why? Because I found out AFTER I left my house for the day.

So I improvised.

I have made my World Hijab Day hijab out of a green knit beret, a green textured scarf from Korea, and a humorous writing-teacher pin. It's a little warm, and of course if I'd found out about this in time I could be wearing my featherlight blue silk scarf from India with the bead fringe (rrgh). But for not knowing this was happening, I think I've managed to participate quite well.

I admit that I felt a little silly walking around campus with my scarf wrapped around my head. But that's what social experiments are all about! And how many of the women in my parents' neighborhood (which has a large population of immigrant families from Muslim countries) feel the same sort of awkwardness walking around Salt Lake in their beautiful hijabs? Beyond that, are there some that even feel afraid of becoming the targets of anti-Muslim hostility or violence?

So here's to you, ladies. Here's to your respect for your cultures, your religion, your bodies and yourselves. Thank you for setting an example of reverence and dedication to this Christian girl, encouraging her to be a more faithful follower of that God who is the Father of us all. And also: your scarves are absolutely gorgeous. Where do you get them?

I'm Not Here to Look Pretty

"Sorry to spoil those lily-white hands of yours, love, but you're a member of the working class now. You can forget about looking pretty."

A Little Princess

---

I was sick last week.

Stomach bug. Nothing serious. Just a few days of gastrointestinal misery, as happens to the best of us on occasion. It didn't prevent me from going to school, though it seriously decreased my enjoyment of wallowing in education, which is usually my very favorite thing to do.

While I was at school, sick and miserable, I kept catching glances of myself in mirrors, windows, and computer screens. I looked pretty awful.

I don't know about any of you, but when sick I have no desire to expend energy in prettifying myself. I don't even want to expend the energy needed to maintain prettification (i.e., remembering to not rub my eyes because I'll smudge my makeup and cause ten minutes of miserable stinging). It was impressive that I'd managed to make it to school at all, and even more amazing that I'd managed to change into something other than my pajamas. But still, I felt unhappy. Self-conscious. Guilty, even. Like the feeling that you get when there's a group project due and you haven't done your part. I felt like I was publicly letting down the university by appearing on campus looking like a sickie. I felt that I owed apologies to my classmates and professors by offending their eyes with my unbrushed hair.

And then something occurred to me. You know what? You're not here to look pretty.

The more I thought about it, the truer it became. It is not, in fact, my job to look pretty. That is not any part of what BYU expects me to do. They expect me to teach my class and grade their homework. They expect me to show up to my seminars on time and prepared. They expect me to learn stuff, and publish it as commendable research that will reflect well on the university. All of these things are my job. Being pretty is not part of that. If I were a model, it would be different. If I were a salesperson of any kind, that would be another story. If I were a dancing girl outside a Korean electronics store, a waitress at Hooter's, or a news anchor, then yes, 'pretty' would be part of my job. But I am an academic. My job is to work.

And then I took it further. If I'm not on campus to look pretty, is there anywhere that I go where prettiness is the expectation? Church, I thought. But . . . no . . . I'm at church to worship, serve, and edify. 'Pretty' is not part of my obligation to God. Dressing neatly and respectfully? Yes, sure, that's expected. But my physical attractiveness has no bearing on the quality of my worship and shouldn't impact the worship of those around me.

When I'm hanging out with my friends, am I there to look pretty? Certainly not. I'm there to have fun. I enjoy the company of my friends whether they are wearing makeup or not; I can only assume they feel the same.

When I'm dancing, am I there to look pretty? Not at rehearsal. I'm there to work. For performances, yes, but I'm there to look pretty as a Romanian, Croatian, or Bulgarian. American beauty standards don't come into play.

When I attend weddings? Maybe. To some extent. It is my job not to stand out in any photos. I accept that responsibility.

When I go to the opera? Absolutely. Dressing to the nines is de rigeur in that particular time and place.

But in the ordinary course of things, my day-in, day-out life, I am NOT here to look pretty. That is not my job. I have plenty of jobs to do, and my ability to do them is not affected at all by whether I look like a movie star or a hobo. I'm an academic. A teacher. A member of society. Not a painting, a potted plant, or a string of Christmas lights. I'm a student and a scholar, a friend and a sister, a designated driver, a cheesemaker, a lifeguard. I'm not a piece of modern art with delusions of grandeur.

So I'm taking the time I've been spending on makeup and I'm devoting it to reading 18th century plays. That is all. 

Teacher. Part-time.

Do You Hear the People Sing?

I've never liked Les Misérables.

This is not because I have anything in particular against it, in any incarnation. It has done me no harm. But throughout my life people have been shoving it at me, or me at it, and that will wear on anybody after a while.

It started when I was maybe ten years old, and my very first Best Friend, Katherine Rose Clarkson, asked me if I liked laymiz. I assumed it was a kind of food. She soon set me straight and played for me 'At the End of the Day,' of which I could understand not a word. I smiled and nodded. Very nice, said I. Very . . . fancy.

This wouldn't be that big a deal if it had only happened once. But it never seems to stop. There is a certain kind of girl who, upon meeting me, immediately wants to know if I like Les Mis and, upon learning that I've never seen or cared for it, proceeds to A. tell me how great it was that one time she saw it in (fill in city here), B. summarize for me the psychotically complicated plot, and C. play or sing for me her favorite song. 

I smile and nod. Very nice, say I. That sounds great.

All three of these things have slowly begun to annoy me more and more. In the third place, I freely admit that much of the music in Les Mis is very pretty . . . but I'm not a musician, nor a trained singer. I find pretty songs to be utterly boring. I love, love, love songs filled with emotion and personality, that tell a story, that transport me to somewhere else, but no song in Les Mis has ever done that for me (Except 'One Day More,' the day that I learned it was actually about Return of the Jedi). They are always just pretty songs, sung by people with pretty voices. And the kindly offered plot summary helps not at all, because . . . 

In the second place, Victor Hugo does not condense well. At all. 

Really, not well at all.

His novels are massive epic brick-books that skip all over France (and sometimes several other countries) and jump huge blocks of time at the drop of a hat and add characters without warning or restraint. The fact that anyone managed to fit a Victor Hugo novel into a three-hour production is a miracle. Fitting that three-hour production into a ten-minute synopsis is never going to be effective. And the summaries always have this flawed underlying assumption, which brings us back to . . .

The first place. I am so happy that you got to see Les Mis onstage in London. Or New York. Or Los Angeles. Or Antwerp. Or Montreal. Or Minneapolis. Or New Delhi. Or wherever. But the assumption that someday I, too, will have that chance, and your quick synopsis will be fleshed out into a full story and I will finally appreciate what you're talking about, is painful. It is an unconsciously done, but unsubtle reminder, that you (or your parents, or grandparents, or boyfriend, or whoever) have the disposable cash to buy multi-hundred-dollar tickets to professional theater productions, which I do not. And never will, if all goes well and I realize my dream of becoming an underpaid academic with no health insurance and a car held together with duct tape. 

So all my life I have smiled and nodded through summary after summary of Les Mis, and patiently listened to one song after another, and listened appreciatively to gushing reviews of how so-and-so playing this that or the other character was just amazing and how I just have to go see it. 

Then I saw the movie. 

It was kind of an accident. New Year's Eve Day, I was semi-stranded at the mall after conducting an optometric investigation (which is a story for another post) and thought to myself, Hey, what the heck. I'll grab a plate of pasta and then go see Les Mis, in honor of my upcoming unemployment. After all, so much of my life has been spent listening to snippets and summaries, I might as well have a look.

I saw it. And I loved it.

I was transported. I was in tears. The music broke my heart and knit it back together again. I loved the richness of the characterization and the vivid portrayal of the history and the deep and beautiful Christian metaphors. I went through half a packet of tissues. I loved watching Anne Hathaway descend into rage and despair and heartbreak and then be lifted up by a sliver of hope as she lay dying. I loved watching Helena Bonham Carter be cynical and coarse and ridiculous and manipulative. I loved watching Russell Crowe watch his comfortable paradigm of perfect, infallible and uncompromising justice crumble before his eyes. I loved watching Hugh Jackman struggle to choose between his need for survival and his need to redeem other people as he once was redeemed. Whoever the young actors were playing Cosette and Gavroche, I loved them, too! 

I left the theater feeling absolutely bouyant. I'd finally caught Les Mis fever. I was humming the tunes and vowing to learn the words so that I, too, could sing them. Some part of me wanted to climb up on something tall and scream "AUX BARRICADES!" (Of course, there's a strong streak of Frenchness in me, so this is pretty normal in any case.) And I was eager to meet up with all my Les Mis-loving friends and finally share in their transports at this astonishing piece of musical theater.

They hated it.

They hated it!

Because it seems that Anne Hathaway ruined her big number by crying in the middle of it, and Hugh Jackman ruined everything by being at the top of his range, and Russell Crowe ruined all of musical theater and most of western civilization by doing . . . something. I'm still not sure what. Anyway, it was horrible. A travesty. Nothing like when they saw it in New York. Or London. Or Shanghai. Or wherever.

Pictured: The End of the World as We Know It.

I was crushed. I wanted to take my Russell-Crowe-contaminated Les Mis and wrap it up in my favorite blanket and hide under my bed with it, where I could love it in shame and secrecy. 

And then I started thinking, and I started to get mad. 

Because, really, what the heck? Okay, so you may think that the film version wasn't as good as the stage production. Fine. I do this with book-to-film adaptations all the time. The difference is that people can get hold of the book, for free, and read it so that they can either agree or disagree with me. Access to books is not limited by socioeconomic status in this country. Access to live theater is. A more apt parallel would be me arguing 'You know, the play is absolute crap compared to the original book IN FRENCH. Translations are a waste of time. If you don't love the French version, you obviously have no taste." I don't say this because I know full well that reading Victor Hugo in French is an experience only available to a limited number of people, so I can't hold it up as the standard by which all other experiences should be judged. 

Is the issue here Russell Crowe's voice, or is it that this formerly once-in-a-lifetime, break-the-bank, utterly exclusive experience is now available to anyone with six bucks for a matinee movie ticket and another dollar fifty for bus fare? God forbid that the unwashed masses should get their hands on Les Misérables. It might give them ideas.

I loved this movie. I thought Russell Crowe did a beautiful job. I enjoyed watching his performance, and learned a great deal from it about the nature of justice and goodness. Who cares if it wasn't "as good" as whoever-the-heck else played the part in the West End? I'm never going to be able to see that, so I don't have to care. And no one is going to make me.

Do you hear the people sing? They wanted to see Les Mis. And now they can. 

AUX CINEMAS!!!

Be Afraid

Courage is not the absence of fear, but the knowledge that something is more important than fear.

The Princess Diaries

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So it being Halloween and all, I thought I'd talk about things I'm afraid of, or have been afraid of, or may be afraid of in the future.

I'll start off by saying that yes, I am rather afraid of people in scary costumes who jump out at me suddenly after a reasonable buildup of tension. But I'm mostly afraid of this because it often happens, in this particular chain of events, that adrenalin takes over my body and I hit the jumper. Often pretty hard.* So I've learned to avoid these kinds of situations.

Here is a small list of things that I've been afraid of over the years:

Ticks

Spiders

Ants

Slimy lake plants

Sand

Caterpillars

Bees

Peppers

Onions

Roller Coasters

The X-Files

 

Most of these fears I now consider conquered. Most of them had to be conquered over eight summers of working as a summer camp counselor. Some Are only conquered because I use one crutch or another (big tough hiking-shoe sandals make slimy lake plants less of an issue), and some I just had to suck it up and deal with (ticks, once my ultimate paralyzing kryptonite-level terror, are now just something I have to fish out of my girls' hair before they go to sleep at night). Some have even become pleasant to me (the onions, peppers, roller coasters, and spiders. Once I discovered that killing spiders is bad luck, they all became my friends. I like to have at least two living in my bathroom at any given time).

My life now contains three remaining major fears:

Heights.

Needles.

And, most recently, storms.

The heights thing is a product of growing up in Minnesota and then being abruptly transplanted into Utah. Before I moved here, it never occurred to me that the ground could just stop and be empty air for who-knows-how-many miles all the way to the bone-crunching bottom of the cliff. Minnesota does not have cliffs. Any irregularities in ground level are covered by trees, so if you do fall, you don't fall all the way to the bottom of the (whatever), you just fall as far as the first tree and then you stop. High on my list of Most Embarrassing Moments was my first church youth group outing here in Salt Lake, during which we hiked the short, pleasant trail to the top of Mount Ensign and I had a complete trembling tear-drenched freakout in front of a jury of my peers who had lived comfortably around cliffs their entire lives. I'm not in touch with any of those people anymore.

Needles, my mother swears up and down, are because of a traumatic pneumonia-induced hospital stay when I was two. I don't remember this incident at all, so I have to take her word for it. But the fact remains that needles just plain suck. Often literally. I don't like the consciously-induced pain, I don't like the rape-evoking invasion, and I don't like the residual damage of having a small metal tube shoved through my skin and my muscles and my veins which are all trying to do their jobs without holes in them. This fear keeps me from getting an annual flu shot (I just wash my hands and hope for the best) and makes me dread tetanus vaccinations more than stepping on rusty nails. (Nail went straight through my shoe and well into my foot, and I was calm as a summer's morning. Doctor yanked it out, and I was cool as a cucumber. Someone asked "When was your last tetanus booster?" and I collapsed into a quivering RoseE-shaped Jell-O mold, slowly leaking pathetic tears.)

I do, however, give blood. I give it fairly regularly. I make sure everyone knows that I'm scared of needles when I go to donate, so I will get the appropriate amount of encouragement and pity. But it's the same thing as the ticks, really: the fears that I cannot face for my own sake I can bear for the sake of others. It could be that I'm a selfless wonderful person, or it could just be that I value saving face more than self-preservation.

 So I'm afraid of lots of things. Most of these things I've learned to cope with in one way or another. One of my camp buddies once observed that she would sort me into Gryffindor, since most of my stories involve me being scared of something and dealing with it anyway. This observation made me feel warm and fuzzy, and so I tattooed it upon my heart. Metaphorically. Because tattoos involve needles.

But then there's storms.

The storm thing makes me mad. I love storms. I love the way they smell and the delicious way they drain away the day's heat and the mighty wildness of a world that may act sedate most of the time but will never truly be tame. But, this summer, there was an incident. And post-incident, I now jump out of my skin at the first rumble of thunder (or anything that sounds like a rumble of thunder, like someone moving furniture in another room or unexpected lawn mowers). Thunder is now the only thing in my life that makes me want to hide under my bed. And I hate that. I don't want to be that person . . . the girl who's scared of storms, like Kotah, my parents' deeply cowardly small auxiliary back-up dog. I don't want to be the girl who needs to be held until the weather clears . . . but at the same time I hate being alone under those gray, wild skies.

NO. Because I am ME, and I have dealt with spiders and ticks and slimy lake plants and blood donations and that episode of X-Files that Stephen King wrote. I can drive along the drop-offs of Yellowstone and eat food so spicy it makes my father's eyes water. I've been stung by bees, crushed by horses, and impaled by nails without batting an eye. I will not let this storm thing beat me. I will smack it in the face, and to blazes with what Prez would say.

I am afraid.

But don't think that's gonna stop me.

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* That was an interesting weekly report to my mission president. "Dear Prez, before you read Sister Pak Sung Hee's letter, let me explain to you what really happened . . . but before I even do that, I must confess that yes, I smacked her across the face and knocked her off her feet and back into her desk chair. But she was lurking around the corner with her hair combed over her face! You know what long, straight Asian hair she has! It was the thing from The Ring (which I have not seen and now never will) and it was gonna eat me and I screamed and then I'd smacked her and it was already over and I felt really bad but she started it."