does washing your hair mean never having to say you're sorry?

pantene has an ad with the tag line, "why are women always apologizing?" 

the ad features a series of common, everyday scenes that sometimes occur between two people (such as accidentally bumping into one another). each scene shows a man and a woman doing something for which neither is at fault. in every single scene, the woman apologizes. even though no apology is necessary.

i like these ads. and........i don't like them. 


i like them because i agree that an anxiety-driven need to please (which this ad implies, not subtly, is the fate of women - because women have been socialized to make nice) is unhealthy. and wrong. and we should stop it. 

i like that.

i like them because after they show the series of events in which the woman apologizes, they re-do the scenes, with neither party apologizing......because neither party did anything wrong. 

i like that, too.


but.....that's also why i don't like them.


i don't want to end my life looking back over it, knowing that i spent a good chunk of it counting up every time i did something nice - "unnecessarily" - and every time somebody else (of any gender) didn't.


i don't want to end my life getting even.

i don't want to end it angry.

i don't want to end it thinking you owe me more than i owe you.


i also don't know what in the world apologizing has to do with washing your hair.


sorry, pantene.  

yay for amy adams/boo for everyone who says yay for amy adams

i am glad that amy adams gave up her first class seat for a united states solider sitting in coach. but, i am sad that so many of you are glad.


this shouldn't be news. this shouldn't be all over social media, with everyone liking and sharing and high-fiving. this should be ho-hum, nice girl. not to mention that the kudos should be going to the soldier, not to amy adams. but the solider has kinda gotten lost in this story - except to the extent that he being a soldier boosts our adoration of amy adams! i don't think amy adams would be proud of us for that.

this certainly shouldn't capture everyone's attention because it's somebody from hollywood. this should be routine stuff, even for someone in hollywood. especially for someone in hollywood. we should expect that the rich and the privileged would step down and take a lower berth. because that's what we've all been taught to do. many of us have been taught it from a Christian perspective, but even those of you who don't buy into that surely know by now that being high and mighty ain't where it's at. 

and yet.....we are surprised. surprised that someone high and mighty actually did what the high and mighty are supposed to do. what all of us are supposed to do.


i hope we wouldn't be surprised if you did it.


and, sir? thank you for your service.



 

"i'm ok/you're ok" sucks.

nobody understands judgment. but i do! so, follow along:

first of all, trying to talk about judgment is like trying to untangle Christmas lights that you knew you should have put away in an orderly manner last year but you didn't so now they're all screwed up.

second, people tell you not to judge but then they judge and when you point out to them that they judged they tell you not to judge. (Christmas lights!)

third........if we never judged, nobody would be in jail. that guy down the street who murdered his wife? he's after you next. cuz we shouldn't judge.  

fourth, as if it isn't abundantly clear by now, we. judge. all. the. time. all of us! everybody! you! me! judges! (even, supposedly, supreme court ones. but don't get me started on that.)

what you really mean when you say "don't judge" is "don't judge me. or anyone who agrees with me." what you don't  mean is "i won't judge you."

Christmas lights!

fifth (or is it sixth? Christmas lights!), everybody gets the "don't judge" that Christ talked about (and pope francis) all wrong. He (they) didn't mean don't judge behavior. Christ judged behavior 24/7 and flipped over tables all over the place on account of it! God handed down some fairly famous rules that everybody is now judging can't be displayed in a place where some people would judge them to be correctly displayed and those rules are full of judgments which is why nobody likes 'em. which is also a judgment.

originally, i intended for this blog post to be a lot longer than this but frankly? i'm irritated with this topic and with y'all and besides......

ima go bake some Christmas cookies.

happy father's day to mom

women can't have it both ways. they can't go decades telling men that they are about as necessary to a woman as a bicycle is to a fish  and then be outraged when men bail on fatherhood.


in my practice, i hardly ever see a child with a dad. but i routinely see moms who are mad as hell about it. maybe these women should have given a little thought to "raise up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it" and paraphrased those words a bit.

today, most of the moms that i see in my job will be saying - or at least thinking - all manner of horrible things about their kids' dad. not that these dads are heroes. hardly. 

but if we believe that we have a collective impact on one another - (and if you don't believe that, you're nuts) - then we can't ignore the truth. and if you tell someone long enough that he's not important - or worse - well......what exactly did you think was gonna happen?

as much as i wish a happy father's day to all the good dads out there, i wish a happy one to all the lousy ones more. they need our prayers more than the good dads who already get it and are already doing it.

and more than wishing the lousy fathers a happy father's day, i need to wish the angry moms one, too.



now. go get your bikes out of the trash.

wild thing, you make my heart sing!

you know how in "sister act" whoopi has the sisters up there singing "i will follow him," which was originally (i think...too lazy to google it - not to mention not enough coffee yet)....which was originally (i think) a song by little peggy march (i think) about how she was in love with a boy and she'd go wherever he went just to be with him? but when the sisters sang it, it was clear that the "him" they were talking about wasn't some cute little guy but, rather, God? remember that? well.

turns out, just about every song you listen to can have the same interpretation. if you pay attention. which you don't. because you're too busy texting and driving.

it also works in the reverse: remember rod stewart's "have i told you lately that i love you?" that song had a theological meaning right from the start - the song was about God - but everybody on saturday night thought it was about their boyfriend. probably even little peggy march thought that.


i have found that it is the rare song that can't be interpreted through the lens of a believer. if you're a believer.

"i'm a believer."