Capstone Conundrums

     So, because I'm planning on graduating a semester early, this coming semester, which I just registered for (YAY!) is technically the start of my senior year (weird).  What this means is that I need to seriously start figuring out what I want to do for my capstone.  It also means that I need to seriously get cracking on LSAT studying (eek!), but that's beside the point.

     I really want my capstone to be something important, something that I care deeply about, something that acts as a comprehensive accumulation of my time here at AU, and (perhaps most importantly) something that I won't get bored with. :P  I have so many different thoughts in my head, so many things that I care about.  I really am at a loss as to how to narrow them all down to something feasible.

     I'm a Justice and Political Science Major with a concentration in criminal justice and extensive course work in women's and gender studies.  (As a totally unrelated side note: I'm taking a religion class called "Feminist Theology" next semester.  Get excited!)  My life goal is to become a sex crimes prosecutor.  As such, I'm hoping to get into a prestigious law school.  What would be the appropriate cumulative project for this preparatory life called college?

     Or I could just explore one of the many policy areas which get my blood rolling: underage prostitutes and the fact that their "johns" aren't charged with, at the very least, statutory rape; the idea of life without parole being a de facto death penalty; issues of human rights (or lack thereof) within the prison system; the lack of rehabilitative policy within the American criminal justice system; the direct correlation between the crappy education system here in the United States and poverty/crime rates; and the patriarchal status quo in this nation serving as the basis for most, if not all, sex crimes.

     I also have to write a 20-30 page paper for my Justice Stories class.  Maybe I can treat that as a sort of mini-capstone to get some of my more minor ideas out of the way so that I can focus on one major idea in my capstone.  Or maybe I could actually challenge myself and force myself to do something creative for the project...  I doubt that'll happen, but I'll at least force myself to consider it.

Since when did school start involving important life decisions?  Didn't freshman year just start?  Can I just go back to taking classes for fun and not thinking about the implications of those actions?

There is hope in the world.

So I had a 9-5 training session with DC rape crisis center today, and it was "isms" day (as in sexism, racism, etc.). This has by far been my favourite session so far, and I just wanted to tell a quick story told by the executive director of DCRCC which I thought was really cool:

First, background: Denise, the executive director, is a Caucasian woman who's partner, Donna, is an African-American woman. Donna has a daughter from a previous relationship whom they both raised. Now the story: When this daughter was about 5 years old, she was sitting on both Denise and Donna's laps, kind of in between them. Denise and Donna were holding hands across the lap of the daughter. Donna asked her daughter, "Which hand is Mommy's and which hand is Denise's?" The daughter accurately identified their respective hands. Then Donna asked, "How did you know?" Pointing to her mom's hand, the daughter said, "Because this ring is yours and this ring," pointing to Denise's hand, "is Denise's."

This five year old girl was so blessed to be able to live a life entirely oblivious to the idea that someone might be identified by the colour of his/her skin. To her, it was just as mundane as a person's shoe size, eye colour, or birthday. They are all just things which you are born with, but which do not, in any way, make you who you are.

Denise's hope, and mine as well, is that soon we will come to a day where most seven year olds don't yet see skin colour as a defining characteristic. And then eleven. And then 16. And maybe somewhere down the line, our great, great, etc. grandchildren will be able to live in a world where not a single person (or at least not the vast majority of people) will look at a person and see first their skin colour and then the rest of them.

Maybe one day the same will happen with the rest of the "isms" which we talked about: Sexism, Classism, Ageism, Heterosexism, Cisgenderism, Ableism, Faithism, Nationalism, and Lookism.

Maybe that's too much to hope, but I'm not giving up.

Double X's

These two little x's

So tiny

Even microscopic

Yet they seem to make all the difference

These tiny little x's

Seem to decide so much about me

What clothes I'm allowed to wear

What positions I can hold

In the church

In the workplace

In the home

On the street

On the bus

Late at night

All alone

But I can't ever go alone

I am lesser

I am her

I am not him

They say there is no difference anymore

That we live in a post-gender world

But they don't see

They can't know

The looks that I get

When I speak of my ambitions

When I say I don't want kids

They tell me I'll change my mind

That I don't know what I'm talking about

Or even that I'm wrong

Would you say those same things to him?

No, of course not.

Because I am not him

I am her.

What is it about these double x's?

To insult a man,

They call him a woman.

To degrade a woman,

They tell her she is not a man.

Because I was born with these double x's,

I must not act like a man

For fear of being degraded.

Questioning my womanhood,

They call me a dyke

Or tell me to return

To the comfy and unconfusing little world

Of these two little x's.

I want to be judged,

Not by my chromosomes,

But by the ideas inside my mind,

The passion in my heart,

And the character of my life.

If that's too hard,

If you can't see past these gender roles and sexual lines,

Then don't bother judging me at all.

Old Revelations and New Commitments

So I think three major things happened on retreat:

1. I broke down and realized that I can't follow my life's calling on my own; I need to rely upon the strength and love of God.
2. I'll never be able to hear God's voice if I'm not regularly listening.
3. I need to stop focusing so much on myself and where I'm at with God, and instead focus on how I'm serving, ministering to, and loving others.

Now, in light of that last point, the whole idea of blogging about my thoughts seems kind of counter-productive, but I think it's important for me to solidify what I believe God is teaching me by allowing this semi-public forum to hold me accountable.

Well, I think the biggest (as in most overwhelming) thing which happened on retreat is that I finally got to a point where I knew that I couldn't volunteer at DCRCC on my own. The last time I tried to tangibly tackle these type of issues, I was consumed by the fight. I became depressed, started cutting and became suicidal. And I know for a fact that, if I try to counsel and advocate in my own power, I will return to that place. And that thought terrifies me. But silence isn't an option; apathy isn't a choice. After laying this issue on my heart again, God asked me, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" My heart and mind, voice and whole body cried out: "Here I am. Send me!" This fight has already captured my heart, my soul, and my future, and I can never turn away. These two realizations (my inability to fight on my own and my inability to turn away from the fight) was overwhelming and heart-breaking. But I think that it was a necessary place for me to get to. Because once I got to that place, I was able to realize that, although I cannot fight this battle on my own, as my verse of this year says, I have the Spirit's very power, love, and mind within side me. If I rest in Him, if I let God's love and not my own flow through me and into these broken people, instead of consuming me, this fight will make me soar.

For this reason, I'm contemplating getting "Love" tattooed on my forearm (in cursive, white lettering), right underneath my scars. This is not my love, but the love of my Saviour which will stop me from picking up that knife again, no matter how inadequate I am to love these people.

The second thing which God has really been teaching me over the past several weeks, months, and even years, is that He can never talk to me if I'm not listening. It's when I read and know His Word that I have any chance of growing in knowledge of God and following the call of His Spirit. Yes, my life is insanely busy right now. I am mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausted; the very thought of waking up one hour earlier or staying up one hour later to truly connect with God seems to drain me. Even though I know how much more refreshed I feel when I do, especially in the morning. I have to learn to be disciplined.

Finally, I need to stop complaining about not hearing God's voice, stop spending all my time trying to muddle through the convolution of my brain instead of focusing on serving and evangelizing those around me. I am rarely one who talks about or even, in all honesty, thinks about evangelism. But, certain people (cough, cough, Kera, cough) have truly gotten to me by bringing one simple fact to my mind: if I truly believe that some of the people around me are going to hell, then, how much must I hate them to be perpetually silent about my faith? Now, I have no clue what this looks like. I will never be one of those fire-and-brimstone, "let's go burn a Koran for fun," wack-o Christians. It will just never happen. But I do know that it looks like more than what I'm doing. I need to truly figure out where my convictions lie, and then stick with them. I also need to not shrink back from the awkward conversations, the difficult discussions. I don't know how to have those discussions organically. I'm very new at this whole being bluntly open about my faith thing. But I really am going to try. And I ask anyone who interacts with me regularly, whether you share my convictions or not, whether you think I'm crazy or not, to hold me accountable to what I'm saying. I will be no where near perfect. I'm sure I will fail much more than I succeed. But I am publicly committing to changing, empowered by the overwhelming power, love and disciplined mind of Jehovah Jireh.

My Justice major is showing...

For 150 years, the Louisiana plantation known as Angola has been worked, toiled over, and broken by the sweat of forced labour. The bloodiest and most dangerous war in American history was fought to stop the use of humans as cattle, people as slaves. Until recently, Angola plantation was known as the bloodiest and most dangerous prison system in America. So yes, circumstances have changed, but I would bet that if you took a picture of the fields of Angola in the mid-1800s, it wouldn't look too different from the fields today.

77% of Louisiana's maximum security state penitentiary is African American. I wonder if some of these boys can trace their lineage back to these very fields? Angola is their prison, their plantation, their ancestry, their heritage, their nation.

This brutal land is covered in the blood, sweat, and tears of African-American slaves. Burl Cain may claim the title of warden and may be bankrolled by the state, but just as in days gone by, he is a plantation owner looking down on his forced labour like cattle, like chattel, like children. Maybe one day the land can be put to rest, can stop bleeding, sweating and crying out the suffering of its slaves.

The preceding paragraphs came out of my Justice Stories class. We've been looking at the writings of American prisoners as well as watching films and learning about prison conditions. We've also looked a little bit at the solitary confinement policy of prisons.

Throwing inmates in "the hole" is not widely considered to be a violation of any rights. But if it truly isn't torture, why was solitary confinement the primary method of breaking the souls of inmates at Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, and other torture strongholds? Humans are meant to be social creatures. It is psychological torture to entirely cut them off from all communication with other humans.

Another policy which we have been examining in a couple of my classes is the death penalty and life without parole. Every time we look at these policies, the question always pops into my head, "Why do we deny the possibility of redemption?" When it comes to theories of punishment, the idea of rehabilitation has largely been discarded in favour of retribution and deterrence. Over the past couple decades, the United States has largely eliminated the education programs within her prisons, despite the fact that education in America is the one proven way of getting people out of poverty and a life of crime.

Furthermore, the people who have the largest stake in punitive policy are cut off from voicing their opinions on punitive policy! Why do we deny ex-convicts the right to vote? We cut these people off from society for years on end, and then deny them an ability to ever life a normal life again. They can't vote. They have little to no education. Very few legitimate employers will hire them. The only landlords which will house them are in very shady places. And then we act surprised at the high recidivism rate. There are so many people which claim that America is a "Christian nation," and yet they deny the very possibility of one of the most basic tenets of the Christian faith: redemption.

Why is it again that I'm pursuing a career in prosecution?