shame and awe

Confession. I have a slight addiction to nytimes.com. To make matters worse I recently received FREE online access to the "Times Select" which has not helped the problem. Fortunately, staying on top of current events is actually written in my job description.

And actually today this job gave me a raise making this an ironic time for this post. Regardless, I did notice an article in the old NYT yesterday.

Women make only 80 percent of the salaries their male peers do one year after college; after 10 years in the work force, the gap between their pay widens further, according to a study released Monday.

The study, by the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation, found that 10 years after college, women earn only 69 percent of what men earn.

They controlled for all likely factors and the result?

"likely due to sex discrimination."

For crying out loud. So, despite having higher GPAs, even in math and science and possessing better and more college education, we're still making less. But here's the real kicker:

Part of the wage difference is a result of people's choices, another part is employer's assumptions of what people's choices will be. ... Employers assume that young women are going to leave the work force when they have children, and, therefore, don't promote them.

Of course I am now at an age when babies seem to be bursting from the seams (shout out to the K-Js). And Jake and I are in discussion about this ourselves. Already we're starting to wonder what the job situation will be like for me post-baby. I don't particularly like the idea of staying at home but the alternative is also hard to imagine.

Here's something I've learned in my first "real job" (listen hard all you soon to be college grads): working 40 hours a week does not mean 40 hours. You really work as much time as it takes to "get the job done." This means un-told hours at conferences, on immersion programs, at school until 9 pm for programs, speakers, films and classes plus the regular 8-4. Some of these activities you just can't do with el nino (which is Spanish for... the nino). Like hang out in Tijuana with Salesians monks or pouring concrete for low-income housing in Birmingham.

I seriously applaud my jefe Tom for hiring me (and my coworker who is also recently married and getting ready to jump on the preggers train) but it also seems wrong and weird to be grateful I was hired because I am of child-bearing years. This article also reminds me that some "formation" needs to happen in our office. Make no mistake, universities are The Corporation, only it pretends not to be which is probably worse.

These conundrums have endeared me to Amy Laura Hall, the sweet Southern theologian from Duke Div. She does some incredible work on women, culture and child-bearing. She has a great article in Christianity Today called "Unwanted Interruptions" (but you need special pay-for-it access to read online). In essence she is tying hostility in the womb to hostility outside the womb. It's no wonder that children are seen as a hinderance to working well and consistently. But it shows very little imagination.

One of the ideas that has come out of reading Hall has to do with creating spaces for children in our so-called professional lives. I work at a Catholic university and Catholic's are supposed to be serious about families. So how about making a little space? How about making my hours flexible? How about working from home some of the time? How about having the baby in the office on occasion? How about really only asking the prescribed 40 hours from me?

I keep thinking that if we can take this seriously at University of Portland then maybe it will redeem the idea of the mother-worker. If any place needs this modeling it's the university. So many young women are struggling with this question. It would be great to show them one way.

"your laughter into mourning"

I’ve been feeling a bit sore lately. It’s mostly my back but my whole body feels a little achy. I’ve had some trouble sleeping and most days at work I’m a bit down in the dumps.

This is happening for a lot of people this week, especially those of us who work at university campuses. There is something so shocking about an event you could imagine being replicated on your campus. An angry student, a disgruntled student, a student who just never fits in. And suddenly everything goes wrong.

All the pictures of the students who were killed look like my students. The things they were doing and the things they loved reminded me of all the kids who come through Volunteer Services, take our classes or go on our immersion programs.

I’ve been focused on the Virginia Tech event quite a bit in the past two days, especially the media coverage. But something else caught my eye when I opened up the NY Times this afternoon.

171 killed in Iraq.

I heard the story on the way home, about separate bombings at checkpoints, in a market, at a training center. I see this headline a lot, but there was something a little different in my heart this time. I thought more about what each of those lives meant and it produced a wave of sorrow.

I wonder what it’s like to be an Iraqi living in Baghdad. If anything, the shooting at VT is giving me an increased sense of empathy for the Middle East communities which find themselves daily subjected to the violence we saw on April 16, times 5. Tom Friedman, in his classic Beirut to Jerusalem talks about the psychological trauma and the toll it takes on the body to live in a place where terror is always a threat. I can see my little pains magnified in the great pain of that country.

We will never have profiles and pictures for each of the Iraqis killed today at the hands of their own countrymen. But somehow seeing the information about the Virginia Tech students helped me to remember and grieve all those who have died more deeply and with more conviction. My heart cries out that Christ invade our world with the forgiveness and compassion of the one who laid himself on the cross for our sake.

the place we live....

Five Great Things About Portland
1. The months of March-September. We get sun like we get rain -- in big doses for months at a time.
2. The Time Zone. Most sporting events (like the recent NCAA championship) start showing at 9 pm on the East coast. In Oregon we get to see everything 3 hours earlier! Since we are big wimps about sleep, we see sporting events we would never see if we lived elsewhere in the country.
3. The airport. Did you know PDX has free wireless? And a restaurant that serves ten types of sausages? And 3 alternatives to Starbucks? And plentiful rocking chairs?
4. Green, green, green. Biodiesel stations, restaurants that serve only food grown in a 50 miles radius, a five-cent “return fee” on anything that can be recycled, organic beer, community supported agriculture and 6 different farmers markets.
5. Location. Mount Hood, Columbia River Gorge, Deschutes River, Mt St Helens, Willamette Valley, Pacific Crest Trail, the Long House, Buffalo Exchange, the Hawthorne Neighborhood, brew pubs, Rose test garden, Washington Park, Mt Tabor, L’Arche Nehalem, Stumptown Coffee, Cannon Beach, Newport

Five Things About Portland We Could Do Without
1. The months of October-April
2. The Time Zone. President Bush loves to make press announcements between 9 – 10 am EST, exactly the time when I on the West Coast am getting ready for work. No matter where you stand on the political chasm, hearing W’s voice at 6:30 in the morning is brutal. Hence we have developed a “No Bush Before Noon” rule in our house.
3. Travel. Living a 6 hour plane ride from my family. Jacob’s Iowa hometown is less intense flying-wise but most flights go into Omaha which adds two hours on to the trip. No weekend visits to the fams for us...
4. Misuse of the word Spirituality. We think this is way lame. For some reason the word “religion” went out of use in Portland a while ago. And instead of having the east coast sense to call secular humanism secular humanism, everyone here is into the vogue loosey-goosey term “spiritual.”
5. Couldn’t come up with a number 5…..

And on an unrelated note I couldn't help but add this amazing Colbert clip. I think we've watched this fifty times...