Three things that should not surprise me:

1) There are multiple, defined, competing interpretations of what is meant when Christians say "Christ died for our sins", with many scholars writing volumes and volumes on them. (Any thing I might have ever thought about, I should remember, is probably some peoples' life-long field of study.)

2) Some of these theories capture better than others the beliefs I have come to in my reading, prayer and practice as a lifelong Christian.

3) The one that has come to dominate in the Western churches is the one that least well describes what I believe (even though I grew up in the West).


At least this is what I gather from articles on the internet, ranging from PDFs of articles from peer-reviewed historical, philosophical or theological journals, to blogs, to Wikipedia.

Interpretations I've come across include substitutionary/penal atonement (dominant in the west, Catholic and Protestant alike), Christus Victor/ransom theory (dominant in Eastern Orthodoxy), and, usually grouped with those two, some third one, variably: moral influence theory, participatory atonement, healing atonement, perhaps others. The variable third ones seem to be the upstart, with the least stable vocabulary, although those who expound it cite thinkers from many centuries ago whose interpretations they think are consistent (Abelard, in the 11th century, for example).

It is nice to feel less lonely, and like I am not just making shit up that no one else sees in the same texts, liturgical experiences, etc. I mean, I figured there had to be all sorts of interesting theological debates carried out by people who dedicate their lives to studying it, and that they couldn't be *that* much different from the internal conflicts of a twelve-year-old girl or drunken debates among college students, but I never really looked into it before. But it is nice to encounter these formal vocabularies and frameworks for thinking about things, and pages and pages of intelligent discussion on them.

It is a big, big world.

On my last field-visit for my dissertation study, after I had completed the interview portion, I told the lady, "you're welcome to watch the environmental sampling if you find it interesting, but please feel free to use this time for any tasks around the house if you prefer". I started setting up my equipment and then heard (some English-language text set to) Ode to Joy, sung by a lovely, operatic tenor voice, coming from the living room. The lady was playing the piano and her husband was singing. They were practicing for their retirement home's choir concert.

I commented on the way out that it must be nice to have a hobby they can share.

She said it was what got them together in high school, and fell by the way-side after they got married, until they moved into the retirement home.

Is there anything cuter?

So, I had my first subject-visit to a subject I can unhesitatingly say is not a member of the middle or upper-middle classes. (Most of my subjects are. I suppose for the cases, this is because the disease is difficult to diagnose, which means folks with education and means are more likely to pursue and finally get a correct diagnosis. For the controls, who have no particular connection to the disease being researched, it is a typical bias of research recruitment to have more educated and/or more well-to-do people volunteer more often.)

This woman lived in an apartment owned by the city housing authority, still works well into her 70s (and spoke of it as a job, not a passion, so I am guessing she needs the income), and experienced several years of unemployment in approximately her 50s.

She was a shear delight- bright, interested, motivated, generous. She was interested in the research, and had read all the materials I sent her and asked me thoughtful questions. While I was setting up my sampling equipment, she chatted with me about interesting things she'd seen on the science and history stations on TV, and on a professor emeritus that used to publish his own marine biology magazine and send it out quarterly from the post office where she used to work. She made connections between things she read and saw. She had a P-Patch. She'd survived cancer and volunteered to meet with newly diagnosed cancer patients to talk about what to expect. She was just neat.

I remember thinking, at the time (last week) that she seemed so together to be struggling financially. And I am struck by it, again, as I enter her data. Clearly bright, motivated and personable. No mental health issues. WTF?! Why wasn't she consistently employed and now enjoying a comfortable and complete retirement?

Her employment history doesn't have jobs that would likely provide a retirement plan, and maybe she didn't come from a family that emphasized having her own? She went to a few college classes, but didn't finish, because her family felt it wasn't worth investing in a girl - she was going to find a husband to take care of her. She did, and he did, for a while, until they divorced. She worked and raised a son on her own, but had several years in her employment history of "laid off, did occasional odd jobs while looking for work". She described these unhappily, as if she really tried and wanted to be working during those times.

I know it is not such an unexpected thing, but it seems like a lot of time, when I work with low-income people, I can see the knocks they've suffered, the problems they've got, and, while sad, it kind of makes sense that they've had difficulty getting and holding down a job, a home, etc., given all they've got working against them. Not so, here.

On the upside, I was pretty impressed with the subsidized housing, and mostly, with the residents. The basic structures were decent, the yard/deck/garden (maintained by the residents) were simply gorgeous. It was mixed-generation, and has a bunch of social and exercise activities available, and a resident governance board. She told me all about the families (kids and dogs included) we passed on the way to her garden patch, and about the various efforts the residents were making to change aspects of how the building was run. I felt 100% approval of the use of tax-dollars.

She gave me fresh rosemary and sage from her patch to take home.

My husband and I have been reading about and trying perfumes lately. Luca Turin and Tanya Sanchez's _Perfumes: The A-Z Guide_, got us started. We visited Sephora and Nordstrom a few times. I bought a not-cheap bottle of one I liked in a duty-free shop in the Hong Kong airport. Then, he ordered me a bunch of decants from The Perfumed Court (http://theperfumedcourt.com) for my birthday, which led me to reading the blog called Perfume Posse (http://perfumeposse.com) and it has become something of a minor obsession.

I've been wearing the different decants and re-reading reviews to see what language is attached to what scents I sense. Mostly to learn useful, descriptive terms (lactones, chypres, vanilla, violet), but also to enjoy the more symbolic or abstract descriptions they sometimes elaborate. I've read reviews out loud to (bored but kind) friends and laughed my ass off, as Turin, in particular, is a very clever smart-alec, the way some literary or film critics are. I thought I would prefer the scents they describe with language that sounds refined, intellectual, well-balanced, classy. Positive adjectives I can apply to myself without feeling way off-base or like I come up short. (As opposed to adjectives I might regard positively, but don't think I can pull off.)

In fact, I find I like scents that have a variety of images attached to them in reviews, and the images attached to them in reviews cast a tone, or at least a suggestion, over my day. Like, instead of feeling like I come up short wearing something sugary (I'm not feminine enough!), or feeling like I am misrepresenting myself if I wear a heavy oriental (my paternal grandmother would have worn this!), I get to try those things on as a filter for my own personality. Like a fun exploration of images and stereotypes. At least in my head. I doubt anyone else notices. It's loads of fun. But I had a somewhat unpleasant experience with the game today.

All the perfume nerds say there isn't a hard line between "masculine" and "feminine" scents, even though certain notes are traditionally classed as one or the other. I consider myself pretty adventurous and flexible in this regard. Today, I wore a perfume that Turin describes as opening with animalic notes that are raunchy, pornographic, and then dies down to buttoned-up and woody. To me, it smells good, and pretty masculine throughout. But I was enjoying wearing it all day. (I'm raunchy and pornographic and masculine! But no one would know by looking.)

Then, in the stairwell at med school, a girl walked by and I caught a wiff of a floral, slightly sugary scent. Not a cheap one. A nice one. And it was in light, airy, lovely contrast to my own musky, woody perfume. And I had this crushing feeling, exactly like when a guy I was dating perked up and flirted with this very small, soft, blonde, lead-cheerleader type of girls at a party, and I thought for a moment...no...he doesn't *prefer* tall, intellectual brunettes. I'm just what he can get. If the small, soft girl will talk to him, he likes that instead.* That's really what girls are supposed to be like, and all these other variations on feminine beauty are actually consolations to those of us who can't be/have that version. Any man talking to me, upon smelling this unknown, floral-scented girl walk by, would turn around and follow her.

Two steps later, the crushing feeling was gone, and I was just thinking - huh, nice choice of floral on her part, and appreciating my perfume again, too.

I knew smell is powerfully evocative, but I usually think of smells evoking memories I experienced in conjunction with those specific smells (almond extract evoking Christmas because I used to make cookies that contained said extract with my dad, or Noxema evoking summers of community theatre because I washed the make-up off with said product). To have such powerful emotions evoked by smells I had never smelled before today was kind of weird.

Go figure.

(*Okay, so the guy I was dating was my husband, and it turns out he really *does* like me best of all, but I didn't know that then. He might not have, either.)

So...

I am going to Bangladesh. Usually, when I travel to the developing world, I visit a Travel Clinic at the University beforehand. I have gotten lazy and cavalier (and also think I have every vaccine I need; I just need cipro and Malarone), and so I put it off and now it's Monday and I leave Friday. Yikes!

So I am using Safeway's online service. It rules. You go to travelmedmd.com and register and answer a bunch of questions about your medical history and itinerary, and a doctor somewhere reviews it, and 2 business days later you get a packet of recommendations and can go to Safeway and pick up your prescriptions.

So, when I go at the University, they have record of every vaccine I've had since 1996, because I had them all there. They also got copies of my vaccine records from pre-college when I started as a freshman - a mix of cards filled out by pediatricians, cards filled out by my mom, and a fax from the place where I worked as a NAC before going away to college.

For this, I had to pull out this messy, sloppy file-folder with all of that stuff in it and input all the dates myself.

Now, for my research, I ask people the "date" of various health or healthcare events. Very occasionally, the tell me a specific date. Sometimes, I get month and year, sometimes year, sometimes decade. I have these rules I decided on arbitrarily for entering the vague dates into my database (where the date-field expects day, month and year). So I noticed, in reviewing my immunization records, that where the University listed out my self-reported vaccines (after the list of the ones they gave themselves), all the ones from junior high and high school are listed as happening on the first day of the month. I thought, aha! I was just as bad at remembering as my subjects are, and the University uses the same convention I do. (I am guessing most everyone does.)

Then I came across this card, this beautiful, aged, cardboard thing, where all of my childhood vaccinations are filled out in my mother's handwriting. Precise dates, assuredly recorded the moment they happened. Different colors and thicknesses of pen. Same neat handwriting. 8/11/1978. 1/23/1979. 9/6/1979. And I was awed. I mean, it is routine, normal (at least for middle-class parents in the Western world), to write these things down. But with my developing respect for how difficult it is to get good data about all sorts of important things, the precision made me feel tremendously loved. So important to one person that it mattered to document these things. I kind of teared up.

I love my mommy.

A friend recently forwarded an article about a religious group starting a chapter of their after-school group in the local public schools. It reminded me of a couple of formative experiences I had thinking about church and state and public schools, but in sort of a rambling way that didn't seem like a direct reply.

There is a subtle distinction between using public resources to establish (or maintain or support) a religion, which I believe is rightfully prohibited vs. using public resources to create an environment in which students can explore their intellectual, spiritual, moral, and even religious selves, which I believe is an implicit mandate of general educational institutions. The distinction depends, in part, on equal access, which I think is the basis for the laws on the matter. I don't believe that is the only issue, though. I think it also depends on who has authority over religious activities associated with public schools - official and perceived authority.

At my high school, any kid could start a club and use school resources (space for events, rooms for meetings, I think even some matching funds for fundraising), so long as that club met various rules, one of which was being non-discriminatory. These included student-led Bible studies (and could have included groups relating to any other religion, but at the time there were very few individuals from other religious backgrounds, and my pothead friends were too lazy to follow through on their jokes about starting one). There was a clear policy on what these clubs were and how they worked. The official authority over club activities rested largely with the students, to form, to dissolve, to decide all their activities.

One can imagine unofficial limits to that authority. The student leaders might have been heavily influenced by adults at their churches. They might have had the right to invite adult speakers or facilitators who could then be influential. Also, there was always a faculty advisor, who (I believe) was technically supposed to facilitate the students' making their own choices within the constraints of the law, school policy, etc., but clearly that faculty advisor could potentially be pretty pushy.

I never really noticed the student Bible clubs. Perhaps they were not explicitly focused on evangelism, but rather on mutual support and learning. But I tend to think it is because there was sufficient institutional support to ensure that the "official" authority of students was real. I wouldn't have been pissed if my peers used that club as an opportunity to organize and evangelize, but I would have *definitely* been pissed if I felt some outside church or clergy or faculty member was using this public school resource to evangelize to students. In junior high I would have been alone in this, but by high school I was not. There are a lot of people that would've raised a ruckus. (See below.) I felt 100% confident that the faculty charged with overseeing student clubs and other extracurricular activities would take seriously any complaint, from any student, about such a club overstepping their "equal access" to school resources or being under the control of someone other than the students.

I feel like the student-led Bible studies served as a legitimate forum for students to explore religious ideas.

In the same school district, though, there were young adult leaders from Young Life who came to school to hang out in the cafeteria with kids during lunch. The school staff did not stop them at the door and say they had no business on campus.

Maybe this group could pass the "equal access" test. The administration might make the argument that any religious or other group would be allowed in at lunch if they showed up or called to ask. It seems implausible, though, that they would have, for logistical and cultural reasons. They certainly had no clearly articulated policy for how outside groups could go about seeking the status that Young Life had.

Even if they could argue they could pass the "equal access" test, though, I think they fall on the side of public resources being used to support a religion, rather than the school creating an environment that allows students to explore religion.

And this is because of the issue of control. Clearly, if the YL people entered the cafeteria, the obvious barrier they did *not* encounter was the school administration telling them to halt. The administration did have official authority to prevent individuals without school-related business from entering the campus. What about unofficial control and authority, though?

When it first started, in Jr High, I droned on to the blank stares of my very few friends about it being a violation of the separation of church and state for a while, and eventually brought it up at an ASB meeting. I somehow innocently thought that the student body could vote to make the administration stop letting the Young Life folks on campus during lunch. Most of the reps (aged 11-14) were just confused, and somehow thought I thought we had the authority to shut down Young Life entirely. We argued about it chaotically the for a 45-minute meeting while the Student Activities Director looked overwhelmed. The only thing that came of it, so far as I recall, was that a certain group of 9th grade boys harrassed me in the halls for the next month, calling me "Satan" and other nice names. Neither the Activities Director, nor the Principal, nor teachers -no one- ever mentioned it in any public forum, or called me or anyone I knew in to address the complaints. Nothing. I think Young Life eventually stopped coming because of their own reasons (fewer adults interested in that volunteer role or whatever.)

Later, in high school, they started coming again. I don't remember if I noticed on my own, but, low and behold, someone brought it up at an ASB meeting. And *every* student in the room was pissed. PISSED! Relative to the student body, the ASB reps probably included fewer evangelicals and more kids who wound up being atheists down the road, but some of them are pastor's wives now. And *that* Student Activities Director listened, had the students consider and organize their complaints, consider which institutions were relevant and how they worked (school admin, school district, school board, etc.), formalize their complaints, and take them to the school administration. And the administration listened.

If I remember correctly, they listened in a way that made them formalize their equal-access requirement (making it clear other groups could come, and that if there was a sea of reps from outside groups coming to lunch they'd figure out a way to fairly distribute the number of visitors between groups on different days, etc.), and saying the outside groups couldn't sit and talk with students who said they didn't want to talk to them. I *think* I remember them saying it was because if they kicked out YL, they'd have to explain why they didn't kick out military recruiters, and they didn't want to kick out military recruiters. Most of the kids on ASB would've preferred they make access equal by kicking out all groups, military included, but the admin didn't want to.

I am not sure how I feel about this compromise. They did create equal access, but I am not sure how much formal or informal control they gave to the effected students. I don't know who was supposed to enforce the rule about not talking to students who didn't want to talk to them? Were the administrators around and lunch checking? Were students informed of their right to be left alone or options to have that enforced? Maybe they should've made the default that the outside reps can't sit down at any table until invited, so if they lingered standing a long time it would be visually obvious to that staff to come tell them to move along.

Officially, it seems like the school switched from effectively supporting a religion, to creating equal access for groups that allow students to explore religion. I am not sure if there was sufficient power for individual students to make that switch real, though.

So, at the cathedral I go to, every week during communion, there are "healing prayers" offered in a chapel off of the nave. So, if you want, you can take communion (or not) and then go stand in line until it's your turn to approach one of 2-3 people trained in "healing prayer", and have them lay their hands on you and pray with you, for you or someone you love who needs healing.

This week, they did sort of a special edition, where the "healing prayer" option took place in the nave, as its own separate event. People were still mostly sitting in their pews, listening to music (divine Mendelssohn) while individuals had one-on-one interactions, but the idea was to incorporate it more into the main service, to make everyone more a part of their neighbor's healing.

So I was sitting there, with not much else to do. And I thought, hey, I know someone I love who is in need of healing right now (I mean, more than in the baseline, we're all broken kind of way), maybe I should go up and ask for a prayer for them.

And it flashed through my mind that it wasn't really that person's thing, but I quickly dismissed that, because I don't really worry about that anymore. (I figure anyone who loves me and knows me will appreciate it or not care, even if it's not their thing.) And then I thought, well, but that person is so *blessed*. I mean, they need some healing right now, but in the middle of what is, overall, an amazingly blessed and privileged life. And I thought, maybe I should think harder, for someone needier, or just hold back. I mean, maybe I shouldn't waste prayers on someone who has so much going for them. I mean, there are all these people who are worse off.

And then of course, I thought, Jesus Christ, Hazel, are you being stingy with *prayer*? Where are all those happy proclamations about God's abundance?

This is sort of a pointed example of a tendency in myself that I have noted and been fighting (with variable success) for several years, now. A tendency to be really fucking hard on those I view as privileged (holding us to a higher standard of behavior than everyone else, being critical, being ungenerous, denying us empathy and benefit of the doubt). And it is not very Christ-like (my new favorite word to distract people who don't like religion from how much they hate "Christians"; most think Christ himself was pretty groovy, as Eddie Izzard calls him). I mean, Jesus was sometimes kind of a dick, and he did say it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to enter into the gates of heaven, but he had friends who were from all classes, including some very rich people, and he was just as demanding of the poor, telling them to be generous and not worry about the consequences even when their lives sucked the most. So, this double-standard is really not cool. I have been generally better the last year or so than, say, 2-3 years ago, but not nearly as gentle as I'd like, or even as gentle as I was for a couple decades before that.

And so I got up and got all un-Episcopalian (we don't like extemporaneous prayer; it is so uncomfortably personal). Okay, so still fairly Episcopalian, because I waited in line until a man in a bowtie gestured to where I was supposed to go stand. And I went up to the alter rail where this lady had some oil and she took my hands, and she asked me if I wanted to tell her my name, and I did, and I added that I was there for my friend X, and I thought shit, it's an unusual name, maybe this is an invasion of privacy! and then I thought, yeah, and she has asked nothing about why they need healing, relax. And she put this oil on my head, and put her hands on my head, and said this prayer - with our *names* directed at *God*, OUT LOUD (quietly) it was soooo uncomfortable, and powerful and amazing.

And I walked away, and sat down and felt...um...healed. I mean, I was already on a trajectory of improvement, but, I have found it markedly easier to be nice to people in the 60 intervening hours. Like, rich, overbooked, I-have-more-friends-and-interesting-projects-than-you-can-shake-a-stick-at kind of people. Other people, too. I mean, I don't know if it is powerful enough for anyone else to notice, but I do.

So, that was cool.

I hope you are all well.

HF

I am a big wimp.

Participants in my study receive $15 as a thank-you gift for their time. So far, two out of eight have refused the thank-you gift so forcefully that I could not fight back. They are happy to do anything they can to help improve knowledge about their disease. I was cowed, and took my $15 back to the lab with me.

I am donating the $30 to the only research and advocacy 501c3 non-profit that exists for this disease.

I have figured out a trick, though. Everyone gets photocopies of the consent and release forms that they sign. If I put the $15 in an envelope and paperclip it to their copies, they don't notice that I am giving them money until I am gone. I've only tried this with two people, so far, but it seems to work.

So, for those who aren't in the biomedical research field, the federal government requires all entities that receive federal research money from the Dept of Health and Human Services to have an Institutional Review Board (IRB), a committee that reviews research involving human subjects. Their approval is required before doing research, and they can suggest/require changes to protocols before approving. They require at least annual progress reports, reports of any unanticipated or irregular events, etc.

On the love-hate spectrum, I am more in love with the IRB than I think is typical. I think having to write up my protocol for them, detailing how subjects would be recruited, how data would be collected and protected, etc., helped me organize my thinking both ethically and scientifically. Researchers I know seem to generally agree that the concept is good, but that the devil is in the details and sometimes their requirements and the goals of effective and efficient data collection are at odds. Some requirements from the IRB even annoy the subjects, themselves.

One thing that has come up for me is sharing information with subjects. All of my case-subjects really want to know if the organism that has infected them is present in their tapwater, showerhead, potted plants, gardens, etc. The issue is, we don't really know if the presence of the organism in any or all of those locations is associated with risk of disease acquisition or re-acquisition.

It is an organism that is common in the natural environment; everyone has been exposed to it at some point. Lots of people just assume that disease acquisition is purely determined by the host's susceptibilities; if the patient doesn't have an obvious immune defect, they must have a subtle, yet-to-be-identified one. I am looking at the possibility that there might be different ways of interacting with the environment or specific strains of the organism that are associated with acquisition. Even at the outset, before sampling, though, when people say, "Is it in my water?" I want to say "yes, it's in everyone's water", although I don't.

The concern is that, if we don't know how the disease is acquired and how to prevent it, folks who find out they have the bug in their water might take expensive and/or risky steps to avoid (re)exposure - harsh chemical decontamination, turning up their hot water tank temperature and increasing the risk of scald injury, replacing all the plumbing in their home, etc., without gaining anything. So I am not allowed to reveal individual results to people, only the report of aggregate data at the end of the study.

People HATE this. Well, one very gracious lady the other day asked but immediately agreed with my explanation. Most feel like it is condescending to be told they can't handle the information.

It reminds me of some of the ethical debates about AIDS research in developing countries. A lot of research projects bring advanced technologies for diagnosis to communities that have little or no technology for care. I didn't follow in a lot of detail, but I think the dilemma throughout the 80s and 90s was between burdening people with knowledge that they have a deadly and stigmatizing disease, without giving them any tools to deal with it, or providing medical care to research subjects that was far beyond anything they would have access to in the absence of the research project, which can be viewed as coercive. (A token of appreciation is a "thank-you", the equivalent of several times a person's annual income is an inducement.)

Anyway, the difference, of course, is that if I gave people the results of their home sampling, they wouldn't be able to do anything about it because there is no clear information on what to do. In the AIDS research context, their are treatments known to be effective, but the individuals don't have the resources to access them. So while I accept the IRB requirement to not disclose individual information, the AIDS field, I think, has pretty much settled on the other approach - providing diagnostic information *and* care. (I might be wrong; I'd be curious about your take, trvth.)

Because of the concerns about coercion (and the additional expense this imposes in each research study), comes some responsibility (and motivation) to serve as advocates for foreign aid to increase poor countries' capacity to provide care. This decreases the discrepancy between the care a person can receive from the Ministry of Health vs. the slick foreign research team, so participation in research isn't "an offer they can't refuse". Also, if research is conducted in an area where the MoH provides anti-retroviral therapy to all in need, the research team can make a reasonable argument that they all they have to provide is counseling and referral for treatment, not the treatment itself. (Obviously, if they are studying a new treatment, they'll want to do the care themselves, but say, in a study of a prevention method...those who become infected and get diagnosed can be referred.)

A friend sent me a link to an article containing some very important criticisms of graduate education and "the academy":

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27taylor.html?_r=1

It makes me nervous to read (merited) criticisms of the effects of tenure, without any suggestion of alternative ways to protect academic freedom. We take it for granted, but it is really nice that some very smart people can say very unpopular things in public debate without fear of losing their jobs, and that we even fund them to do so with our tax money.

Has anyone read any proposed alternative ways to protect academic freedom? We have laws to protect industry whistle-blowers, but what about people that criticize society, politics, etc.?