Notes from My Cell, April 18

Once again it is almost too cold in the cell. I've got my shawl-blanket wrapped up tight around me. The sky outside is a dismal gray, as if caught between rain and shine. I'm almost done with the latest novel-- a newer twist on Don Giovanni-- what if he were an eighty-year-old writer in today's South Africa? What if his mother had Alzheimer's and he went to visit her in the nursing home, and he was painfully aware of losing her? What if all his loves were against the backdrop of being an anti-Apartheid white Boer during all the troubles? What would he have to say about the current Iraq war? It's a rather good read, Before I Forget, by Andre Brink. I see it was once spoken of on NPR. I am worried though what book I'll read next; I think I've run through the stack of good ones.

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They took Suzie away in the middle of the night, poor girl, to put on the deportation plane back to Slovakia. Her whole family lives here now, and she's a young girl. Now I begin to wonder if they didn't take my Syrian friend off like that also. I'd hoped perhaps her husband had simply come in the middle of the night with bond money after all. I guess I will never know.

Off went Nadine, too, on short notice this morning- the prison bus came and picked up four women. Another bus was already through earlier this week, but I believe that one was federal prisons and this one is state prisons. Tanya got released after court today. She is also quite young and she was so gravely repentant while she was here. It all feels rather empty now.

Last night there was quite a loud fight, for some time, and it was so much wild yelling I couldn't understand any of it from my cell upstairs. Then, after nightly lockdown, a few girls with too much sugar in their systems were yelling to each other through the air vents. Not very enjoyable for the rest of us. Apparently they exhausted themselves by morning- it was pretty quiet most of the day.

There's a bad cough going around downstairs and I'm tempted not to be out in the dayroom much. Everyone is being rather germophobic too, so there is some tension, especially directed at the woman who appears to have brought in the cold.

Tonight so far, after supper, is far more subdued than last. Two girls are in lockdown for fighting. 23 hours a day--ouch. I forgot to mention I haven't been allowed a visit to the library yet. I keep asking. Otherwise, one could do worse than the Bible and the Qur'an as companions this next several days.

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The guard just came in and put another girl on lockdown for five days. Poor girl--she made a hair tie from the top of her sock, she said it was falling off anyway--still, it's considered destruction of federal property. She has not had much luck in her time here. Meanwhile, everyone's calling the 63 year old "Old Lady," and I haven't been able to make them stop. She is recovering from her usual habit of Clonepin, Percocet, and vodka. I understand its a bad combination for driving. I hope they will finally accept her, she is sweet, and also quite lonely.

The Friday night sandwich special is about to arrive, and someone's aunt sent about 100 gallons of Koolaid mix through commissary. This is grounds for a party. Time to go.
LeAnne

'Mean Girls' in Ministry

I finally got around to watching the movie 'Mean Girls,' which I've been meaning to do for a couple years now since it was made. I had a feeling it would help me come to terms with a few things.

'Mean Girls' chronicles a year in the life of a high school girl who's new and doesn't know how the typical social caste works. She ends up in the circle of the 'mean girls,' who are always cruel, humiliating, and manipulative towards everyone else, but still people look up to them as cool. Once she sees them for what they are, she tries to destroy them, but is herself destroyed in the process. So she has to find a way to seek healing for herself as well as the whole school.

I wanted to watch this because of the things which I've seen in seminary and ministry among women that I simply do not like. No, that's not strong enough. I am totally disillusioned by some of the things I see going on among women in power, in ministry and in seminary education, that only serve to hurt--other women in particular, sometimes to the point of forcing more vulnerable students out of the schools altogether. I have been hurt by these power games, and I've had plenty of friends hurt too. It would be easy to run away. It's harder to know how to work for change. And I don't want to become like that either, to have myself changed for the worse. There's a long list of women in ministry and women teaching in seminaries that I frankly don't want to be like, 'when I grow up.'

I don't do very well in challenging cruel and humiliating words, or manipulation, or any of the 'soft abuses,' such as verbal, emotional, or psychological abuse, or any of the other ways a person can use an institution to crush another person. Maybe it is because the seminary is the place where the institutions of religion and academy combine that it is a place vulnerable to such abuses.

Now, if I haven't said it before, I'm not talking about my female classmates, or even women who are newly colleagues in ministry, regardless of their age. The women in my seminary classes I've known, on the whole, have been wonderful sources of support. I think this is because we are all brought into the same place as students, facing the same challenges--at least in this one part of our lives. I don't know if I could say it of every seminary, but for now, this is what I see.

I've theorized here before, and elsewhere, that women in power, even at the height of their careers, still face the glass ceiling of tradition above them, still desire the esteem of their male colleagues and admiration of their male subordinates, but feel the advance of age and death that claims us all; in the process, female subordinates can only appear to them as threats until they find contentment with their own lives' work, and choose to prepare the next generation to carry on. I try to remember this when I am recovering from the latest blows. It doesn't always help.

I do worry that I will become like this also, that any step I make to lead others will somehow unwittingly cause me to treat 'subordinates' the way I've been treated. It makes me not want to hire anyone or ask volunteers for help. I don't want to give orders, and really, I don't want to lead at all. I'm still less afraid of having someone lead me than of stepping out and causing harm.

But no, there have to be other ways, ways of leading through healing. Or healing through leading. I think it'll be hard work. And as with many things, I don't know that I'll succeed. I do know I want to lash out sometimes, okay, many times, and make life as hard for them as they've made it for me. I also know that will only make things worse. I hope I can resist the temptation.

At least 'Mean Girls' has a happy ending. Relationships are restored, and even transformed. It doesn't have to be the way it was. Sometimes I think that if we let another generation of women pass, things will mellow out, but there's no guarantee of that. Some intervention is probably needed.

I hope happy endings in this situation won't end up only a thing of the movies.