Posts from — December 2008

Phew, as awesome as those pre-cana lessons are… let’s not get too carried away with the fun. The real question is: where’s the dance party?

You might not know this, but I like dancing. A lot. I know, it’s a shocker, but sometimes I let my hair down, loosen up my proper, ladylike demeanor and just dance it out. This, for example, will probably happen at the reception:

We’re using Crescent City DJ for our reception, and the company has a pretty sweet Web site where you can search through their huge music database and request songs for three playlists: “Must Play,” “Play if Possible” and “If You Play This, I Will Strangle You With My Bare Hands.” Sweet! Here are some we have so far:

Must Play

1. No Diggity- Blackstreet
2. Twist and Shout- The Beatles
3. SexyBack- Justin Timberlake
4. Shoop (of course)- Salt ‘n’ Pepa
5. Brown Eyed Girl (it’s about me)- Van Morrison
6. Bust a Move- Young MC
7. Crazy Little Thing Called Love- Queen
8. Don’t Stop Believin’- Journey
9. Tainted Love (not a commentary on our relationship)- Soft Cell
10. In Da Club- 50 Cent

Play if Possible

1. Modern Love- David Bowie
2. Kiss- Prince
3. Baby One More Time (what?)- Britney Spears
4. Stagger Lee- Lloyd Price
5. Bonnie & Clyde- Beyonce and Jay-Z
6. California Love- 2Pac & Dr. Dre
7. I Saw Her Standing There- The Beatles
8. Take On Me- a-Ha
9. Build Me Up Buttercup- The Foundations
10. Word Up- Cameo

Play And I Will Cut You

1. Dancing Queen- ABBA
2. Conga- Gloria & the Miami Sound Machine
3. Who Let the Dogs Out- Baha Men
4. Every Breath You Take (creepy stalker song)- The Police
5. I Will Always Love You (totally a break-up song)- Whitney Houston or Dolly Parton
6. Limbo Rock- Chubby Checker
7. Macarena- Los Del Rio
8. Any other group participation dance song you can think of (the chicken dance, conga line, limbo… except perhaps the cha-cha slide and one round of the electric slide)
9. We Are Family- Sister Sledge
10. I’ll Make Love to You (a. awkward lyrics and b. reminds me of 7th grade dances)- Boyz II Men

I would love some input here. We want a good blend of ’80s, top 40/hip-hop, oldies, swing and a few slow songs thrown in there. So tell me this, what three songs would you add to each of those lists?

I don’t want to get into this too much because it will just make me more enraged, but I feel compelled to share some of the answers we got to our first pre-cana lesson. Our instructors, a married couple who I’m sure have the best intentions… just not a firm grasp on reality, sent us a 16-page, single-spaced Word document filled with exclamation points and some of the most sexist statements I’ve read in awhile. It’s like reading “Men are from Mars, Women are from Whore Island.”

Sounds more fun…

I don’t quite understand. I know lots of Catholics who are open-minded and well-educated and who don’t blame women for original sin and the fall of man. I also know several Catholic couples who had perfectly lovely experiences in their pre-cana classes (though Nicole said her class was great, but the priest told them the man should make all the decisions… because that’s how God intended it). I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.

I’ll just share a few excerpts:

• Usually, men are more down to earth, more grounded than women. They are active and they like to build things, they are a lot in the “doing!

• In the Jewish tradition it is the very important duty of the father to name his children and a very meaningful one: by giving the name, the father grants permission to live and gives the identity. This is the meaning of Paternity.

• The ribs protect the heart, and also the lungs… What was in Adam’s lungs? God’s breath of life, his Holy Spirit… Maybe that’s why women are more naturally religious than men?

• She is also given maternity; she’s the one who will bear life in her womb. Woman in Hebrew is nekeva which means hollow, receptacle, to create an inside space. Woman’s body is made to receive. Woman is consecrated to life. It is an incredible mission if we think about it and wonderful too!

• Woman’s ability to receive relates her naturally to the spiritual world. She is more inclined to the things of the heart, that is to love. These two characteristics make her closer to God, who is Love and giver of life.

• God entrusts man to the woman. Man is a lot into his doing and has a tendency to forget God! He thinks he can manage everything by his own strength! So God gives the woman to the man to remind him of the spiritual.

• She is to be the guardian of the spiritual. She can also be called the Guardian of Purity.

• She added that they were not even allowed to touch it [the forbidden fruit]!  God never said that! She grabbed the bait! It made God sound even more severe! She enters in the devil’s game! He insinuated doubt in her. She totally gave in, meaning that she entered into temptation! Note that the devil doesn’t talk to Adam. Adam had been entrusted with the authority.

• Let’s also look at this scenario closer! First, she finds the fruit attractive. She is seduced — the pleasure of her senses and the desire for glory and power! This means that she chooses to eat the fruit to please herself without considering the long term repercussions of her actions. She wants to decide for herself what is good and what is bad.

• This is original sin: we want everything, right away, not accepting to depend on God… We want to decide for ourselves what is good or bad without trusting that God will provide at the right time. We make ourselves our own gods.

• She was to be a suitable partner to Adam, yet she made a decision on her own, not even respecting their partnership. She didn’t consult Adam. How often do we see couples where we can say that the wife “wears the pants?” As the guardian of the spiritual, Eve was supposed to remind man of God, to lead man to God and instead she led him away from God…She was also consecrated to life and led all humanity to death.

• The devil was called Lucifer before his fall, and he was the chief of all the archangels. Lucifer means the light bearer, and he was probably an extraordinarily beautiful angel. It’s easier to imagine Eve talking to the most beautiful of angels and being seduced.

• They are not equal partners anymore… The communion man and woman experienced together before sin is broken. “Your urge shall be for your husband.”  Woman will become very possessive in her love for her husband.  He will take advantage of this urge the woman has to be loved and protected, and he shall be your master, meaning that the man will distort the authority that was given to him as a service into a power over the woman and he will lose his respect for her. He will use the woman for himself instead of loving her. He will lust instead of love. Their partnership is destroyed because of sin.

Jeez, woman! Way to screw everything up. I have a sudden fruit craving; maybe I’ll go eat an apple and destroy free will.

Brian and I finally sucked it up and did our first pre-cana lesson. We are accepting the harsh reality that we have less than six weeks until the wedding, and the Catholic Church probably doesn’t give extensions (that Pope is such a stickler for deadlines).

However, this didn’t stop me from whining like a spoiled brat 90 percent of the time. “I don’t waaaaana. This is booooring. These questions are stuuuuupid. I’m huuuungry.”

The format of the online class is pretty much your average reading comprehension test– read several Bible verses, answer some questions, read some more, answer some more (next time, we will insert the steps “drink some wine” and “watch some YouTube videos” in there somewhere). The first lesson’s goal was to  “explore the very beginnings to understand better who we are as man and woman, as a couple and what was meant by God in creating us so different.” Yes, do tell.

There are no pictures in the Creative Commons “Adam and Eve” search that are not creepy

Here’s what I learned:

• God created man, but he was ronery
• God created woman out of man’s rib to keep him company
• God tells man and woman not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil
• Serpent convinces woman it’s cool to eat from the tree, God is just being stingy (man is there, too, but he’s just in the wrong place at the wrong time)
• God is not a happy camper
• God boots man and woman out of the Garden of Eden but gives them fashionable leather garments to wear
• God punishes woman by cursing her with painful childbirth and man as her “master”
• God punishes man (”because you listened to your wife”) by cursing him to toil the earth the rest of his days

Trixy woman! Always leading man astray. That’s why man should be the master.

Brian and I decided this class would be much better if it were taught by Dr. Gnuse, our “Old Testament as Biblical Lit” professor at Loyola. I think he’d put these readings into context better than the good people of Catholic Marriage Prep, Inc. I remember Gnuse discussing how woman gets too much of the blame in this story– some people like to forget her husband was there, and at the time the story was written, women rarely made decisions without the consent of their husbands. Even when faced with clever talking serpents.

I did enjoy some of the reading comprehension questions, though. Feel free to learn along and answer any of them in the comments section:

• What does this reveal about her personality? Would you say that it makes woman:
  • Hyperactive and rational
  • Spiritual and sensitive
• Why can we say that woman sinned in the very missions God gave her? Why can we say that man sinned in the very missions God entrusted him?
• So the first consequence of sin is…
• How will sin distort the relationship of man and woman?

I look forward to reading your answers and comparing them to the answer key we just received. I have a feeling some of you will not be getting a gold star.