First of all, let me thank you for the warm and encouraging welcome you've given here over the last few days. I have come to have a "thing" about the Kos community in the months since I finally got the nerve to post my first comment (took me almost a year.) You rock. Since the move to Scoop I have been thunderstruck by the creativity you've demonstrated in the Diaries, you've let us all see your passions and personalities. I feel like I've gotten to know all of you a lot better, and, boy, do I like what I see.
I have a pretty serious essay to offer today, but I also have enough ego that I want you to know me a little bit: who is this Melanie who seems to have a major crush on George Tenet?.....
Here are some of the nuts and bolts:
I've lived inside the Washington Beltway since 1985, the life right now is with two large cats and a really embarrassing number of books. I'm 49 and in the middle of the mid-life career change. I was a professional
bassoonist for more than 25 years (Kos and I sort of bond over the music thing) and until 2000 I worked as the Assistant Principal Bassoonist of the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, the orchestra which plays for operas, ballets and musical theater in the
Kennedy Center's three theatrical stages. In 2000, my life took a different turn, and I enrolled at the
Washington Theological Union to pursue another master's degree, this time in theology. I finished my course work in 2002. (
Ilia, if you are reading this, I promise to have the final draft of the thesis on your desk by Thanksgiving) and worked a wonderful temp
job, but got laid off on July 1. I'm looking for my new career (and think I'm going to get an interview and an offer
here) but I don't really know what is going to happen next. I am a lay women, a Roman Catholic (for two years) and a
spiritual director,
retreat director and writer.
My road to Washington began in a small town on the northern Minnesota border with Canada, went through the Twin Cities, Boston, Charlotte, Winston-Salem and Greensboro. My resume is fairly scary: when you work in the performing arts you learn to do a lot of things if you like to eat. Major themes: college teacher for decades, lots of experience in fund raising (if you are in the DC area and you've got a development job, click on my name up top and email me, I'll email you the resume) and I've worked in orchestras all over the country and in Europe. If you've read my Diary, you know that I got hooked on progressive politics at an early age, honed the jones when I lived in Boston (where I discovered politics as blood sport, Minnesota was a lot gentler than Massachussetts) and am now, of course, residing in politics junkie heaven. As all of you know by now, my particular area of interest is in the "backstory," the stuff that's going on behind what you read in the paper.
Many of you have asked if I'm going to take on the big Seymour Hersh piece on doctored intelligence in the current New Yorker. I am, over the weekend. Of course. I'll have an essay for you on two threads of Hersh's backstory. I'm working on it now, this is going to be a really bloggy-linky thing and I'm still learning how to use HTML and the posting software, so it is going slowly. Please be gentle with me as I climb the learning curve.
But I wanted my first appearance on Kos's front page to show you a different side of me.
Here's a snapshot of a comments thread on a poem I posted in my Diary.
I don't know what the significance of this diary entry is. I was surprised when I found out you are a theologian. You seem way too astute to believe in that stuff . . .
I'm not blaming any Kossians, but I want you to notice something.
I'm both an intellectual, and religious. I know a whole lot of other people like me.
My blogtime (and there is a lot of it while I'm unemployed) is spent in two parts of the Blogosphere (y!sctt): the liberal politics part, and the liberal religious part. Many, many other religious liberals have complained to me that the first part devotes a fair amount of energy to dissing or openly denigrating the second part. That's been my experience, too, and I was on the receiving end of a flame war at Atrios the other night as a result, not a pleasant experience.
Secular liberals, you need to get a clue: there are lots of deeply religious people out here who reliably pull the lever in the voting booth for the straight D ticket. We are Christian evangelicals and Main Line Protestants and Catholics like me, from the Dorothy Day-Peter Maurin-Oscar Romero wing of the Church. We are Jews and Muslims and Sikhs and Buddhists and Jains, pagans, Hindus and, yes, by God, there are even Zoroastrian Democrats in this country. When you make light of religion, you wound a part of us which is very important to us. Making light .... hmm, that's very diplomatic, which I rarely am. What we usually get are outright insults.
Fundamentalism, be it Christian or Islamic, is only one faction of these faiths, which are not monoliths. Every one of the world's great faith traditions is an umbrella which covers wide and various theologies and practices. The Roman Catholic church is one of the broadest in the Christian tradition. It is too easy to tar all of Christianity with the broad brush of condemnation of the George Bushes, the Pat Robertsons, the William Boykins. Yes, they own one piece of the large tent which is Christianity, they are not one that I can justify in any way. From the progressive religious view, there are similar movements in all of the other great faiths which are similarly distasteful. As a religious liberal, I have a critique of Roman Catholicism. But, really, that isn't very hard work, now, is it?
I'm not trying to convert you. That's not my job. What I want you to notice is that the casual putdowns of faith that I see so often in the threads here, and nearly everywhere on the lefty blogs, is like a slap in the face to those of us for whom our faith is one of the things that fuels our progressive politics. You know, take care of the widows and orphans, give it up for the poor, visit those in prison? Do you think these are Democratic values or virtues?
Has religion been used to justify atrocities? Please, I know the history as well as you do. But faith has done some pretty good stuff, too. Not often enough, but none of us does good stuff often enough.
So, before you post the next time on some outrage by a Boykin or a Bush, learn something about the faith positions of the great traditions and don't trash religion in general. We understand that religion isn't important to you, but it is to us, and we kinda like you. We have a lot in common, like the way we've chosen to live and vote. Your Demo base includes people like us.
Here are some liberal religion blogs I check in on regularly. Go visit. Find out how much we have in common. We don't bite, and we won't hit you up for money. And some of these folks are simply amazing writers.
You think you've got the Baptists all pegged? Wrong-o. Read
Real Live Preacher (Link fixed.) and get all of your stereotypes busted. God, can this man write.
You grew up Episcopalian so you think you've got that Episcopalian thing all sussed out? Read Le Pretre Noir (link fixed) and take a look at his do-rag and his Harley (he's older than I am, an Episcopal priest who works in the mountains of western Maryland.) His sense of outrage powers some fine argument. This is single malt scotch writing.
Allen Brill is a Protestant minister who thinks that the problem with the Christian Right is that they haven't met The Right Christians. Go look at his Theory of Everything. The man's a big thinker.
What the hell is a Moravian doing in Minnesota? I had no idea you folks had invaded my Lutheran place of birth, but you are doing it with style. He's a
post-modernist like me.
Ever met a progressive Muslim woman? She's
Veiled for Allah and she's got a story to tell. She's a Kucinich voter.
I read this one daily to learn about Shi'a Islam.
Aziz Poonwalla is a faithful correspondant.
I'm still acquiring Jewish links, if you've got some, I'd love to add them to my bookmarks.
Thank you for your warm welcome. Kos was right, with Scoop, we've got a new kind of community. And I welcome your comments.