PJ: You raised some eyebrows recently when you said you had dated an atheist.
MM: I understand that. It goes against the “unequally yolked” thing. One day I’ll write a memoir of my life in Peace Corps and people will understand better, but people who’ve been reading my blog from the beginning probably have a decent understanding already. I said that I wouldn’t have dated him if we’d met in the States and that’s true. But living in Turkmenistan, our relationship really began as an alliance. After Andrea left about a month in, he and I seemed to be the only ones in our group who didn’t get wasted at every opportunity and who had previous teaching experience and were expecting to be placed teaching in universities. So when Tstan decided not to place anyone in a university and we were sent to do the same jobs that philosophy majors were doing, it was very frustrating for us. We felt our skills and previous experience weren’t being fully utilized. So we were each other’s support network. We’re also both writers and both serious first readers. I can trust him with my writing to give me honest feedback and vice versa. Neither of us is looking to have our egos stroked, we want something more useful than “it’s good.”
PJ: I think some people may have been upset by your saying he was the most like Christ.
MM: Well, he was. Of the guys I’ve dated, if you administer the Matthew 25 test, Greg scores the best. He has a servant’s heart and he’s actively fought to find work in areas where he can put that to use. He’s in Iraq right now and I really respect that he’s not a coward. Not just because he’s lived in some rough places, but because he’s always honest even if it means stepping on toes. He is not a charming person, meaning he doesn’t schmooze or soften his edges to impress people. In fact, when I first met him, I didn’t care for him because I thought he was arrogant. But I soon came to really appreciate his lack of artifice. Also, he worked the hardest, relationship wise. He made much greater efforts to know me and understand me. Sure, at first I think it was because I was a novelty to him. But when I look back at several specific times in our relationship I recognize those as moments when I was shown the most compassion and love by someone who wasn’t family.
PJ: Can you give an example of one of those moments?
MM: I don’t really want to. I feel like I’ve talked too much about it. (She smiles) I don’t want to embarrass him with all this goo or nauseate my readers.
PJ: So you’re still in contact with him?
MM: Yes. Just chatted with him today, actually. He has an uncanny ability to make me smile when I most need it.
PJ: Do you think some people got nervous because you were praising an atheist?
MM: Maybe. What they don’t understand is that atheists are a lot like Christians. Most are nice, normal people. But there’s a small minority of d-bags who, unfortunately, are also the loudest and get the media attention. Richard Dawkins is the Pat Robertson of atheists.
PJ: He’s a respected evolutionary scientist.
MM: I’m not debating that. Mel Gibson was a respected filmmaker until he started mouthing off about things he shouldn’t have. Look, if you want to talk about evolution, fine. I believe in evolution, especially since I’ve met some people who aren’t yet fully evolved. But I also believe in God. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, and I’m so tired of people on both sides buying into this false dichotomy. I called Christians out on it in my “Science and Religion” post. Now I’d say to atheists, if you want to say, “faith doesn’t make sense to me because of a, b, and c,” I respect that. However, when you say faith is one of the world’s great evils, you lose credibility with me. What I’ve most respected about my friends who are atheists and what I believe they’ve respected about me is that we can dialogue about religion without getting nasty.
PJ: Some people have a hard time thinking of atheists as good people.
MM: (I can tell I’ve struck a nerve because she gets very animated) That’s stupid and goes against basic Christian doctrine. You’re not saved because you’re a “good person.” Many faith systems (and atheism is a faith system) can produce good people. There’s no need to vilify people. In fact, it’s counterproductive. We have the same problem with Islam, for example. You’re not going to win anyone over by assuming all Muslims are terrorists. That’s not the reason you should disagree with Islam. You can find angels and demons in every belief group. Behavior of its followers shouldn’t determine which belief system you choose. Truth should. If, for example, you’re comparing Christianity and Islam, one says Jesus was the son of God and was crucified and raised from the dead, and one says he was just another prophet and his crucifixion and resurrection didn’t happen. They can’t both be right. I don’t reject Islam because of a handful of suicide bombers. Christianity has its own terrorists. I reject Islam because it denies Jesus is the Christ.
And actually, that thing about Christians makes me want to make another point. I don’t give up on Christianity just because some Christians have hurt me. Recently I was very hurt by someone who is in a position of authority in a church. I mean, he treated me abysmally. But that has no bearing on who Jesus is and what Jesus taught. It’s hard sometimes, but you have to recognize that within the Church you’re going to run into people who are hurtful. You can’t let that taint your idea of who Jesus is. They’re not representative of Him. I know there are a lot of people who come to faith through a more emotional experience, and that’s okay. I mean, it is faith and there is always an element that is firmly out of grasp of reason. But there has also always been a very cerebral element for me and I get frustrated when I see people make bad decisions because they’re ruled by their emotions. “This person hurt me, so I’m leaving the faith.” How does that make sense? You’re equating Christianity with this one flawed person’s bad behavior, instead of, you know, what the New Testament says?
PJ: You do seem very cerebral when you talk about your faith. You don’t talk about the more mystical or emotional aspects of religion. Do you not believe in them?
MM: Rarely does a person become a Christian through reason alone. And there’s a reason it’s called faith. There’s always that element that cannot be proven scientifically (which, of course, is also true about the non-existence of God, which is why I say atheism is a faith system). My pal Blaise said, “Reason’s last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it.” I do experience what you’re calling the emotional or mystical aspects of religion. God’s spoken to me, not audibly. The best way to put it is a thought comes to mind that I know I didn’t create. And I know people who’ve had miraculous healing, and I’ve had dreams that I believe were from God. It’s very personal. It’s something I would talk about in a conversation one-on-one, but not necessarily on the blog. Though I think I have talked about the moving of the Holy Spirit a couple times on here.
PJ: You mentioned Pascal. You’re obviously a big fan. How did that come about?
MM: (Her eyes light up) Blaisey is the best! Everyone knows Pascal’s Wager, which is great for beginning apologists, but I have little use for it, personally. What really got my attention was his quote about silence. “All of man’s misery comes from an inability to sit quietly alone in a room” is perhaps the most profoundly true statement not found in the Bible. And then I ran across another quote of his: “Since we cannot know all there is to know about anything, we should know something about everything.” It so perfectly sums up my personal philosophy of the pursuit of knowledge. And I said to myself, “who is this guy?” So I looked him up and started reading Pensees, and I totally have a brain crush on him. This is going to make me sound uber-nerdy, but before I left for Peace Corps, I arranged to sit in on one of Peter Kreeft’s classes at Boston College and I got him to sign my copy of Christianity for Modern Pagans, which is his commentary on Pensees. And I am super tickled to have it in my possession.
PJ: You wrote that one of your goals this year is to submit a manuscript for publication. What can you tell us about it?
MM: It’s called Musings of a Christian Feminist. Well, unless some awful editor changes it before publication. And, yes, I did get “musings” from “pensees.” It’s going to be about fifty of my favorite essays from my blog plus I think a few new ones that I won’t be putting up on the blog because they’re a little more personal.
PJ: How is publishing a personal essay in a book that anyone can read different from putting it on your blog?
MM: Well, the internet is a much bigger audience than people who will plunk down $12.95 for a book. And at least I’m getting money out of revealing personal stuff. (laughs) At least, I hope I get money out of it. I just want it to be big enough that I’m invited on The Daily Show. Is that too much to ask for?
PJ: What about the Peace Corps memoir you mentioned?
MM: Ugh. I’m sort of overwhelmed by the idea. Partly because I’m kind of sick of revisiting old blog posts and emails and journal entries; then there’s the work of putting that stuff all together into something cohesive that is a full and accurate representation of my experience. And I’m a little intimidated by trying to write some of the struggles without coming across as whiny. You know, like Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat, Pray, Love. Was it just me, or was she not someone you could easily sympathize with? I’m sure it’ll happen [the memoir], just not in the near future. I have more immediate work to see to.
PJ: Such as?
MM: For one thing, I’ve been assigned to write some skits for upcoming church services and I might end up working on a Lenten devotional too. We’ll see. I’ve been thinking I should enter some writing contests, and I still strive to get one or two blog posts up each week. I thought I’d run out of things to say by now, but material keeps presenting itself. Plus I still have work and classes, and my regular church obligations with the missions committee, church council, choir, and lay preaching team. And I have some new community obligations coming up.
PJ: Yikes, you are busy. How do you manage?
MM: It’s been the same story since high school. I always think I’m going to cut back, but it never happens. I never do anything I’m not interested in, but I’m interested in a lot of things. Not every obligation is a daily obligation, so I’m able to manage it okay, and it keeps me out of trouble.
PJ: Now I have some questions from other people. Some of your readers want to know what you were like as a child. Were you precocious?
MM: Oh, yeah. I dropped supercalifragilisticexpialidocious into regular conversation. (She says this dryly and it takes me a minute to get the joke.) I don’t know. I was a weird kid, I guess. You have to understand I have two brothers who are a decade older than I am, nine and eleven years older. That really set me on the path to nerdom because I was in a house of adults by the time I was six or seven. And my parents were a decade older than the parents of most of my peers. So I know a lot of stuff someone my age “shouldn’t” know as a result. Like, “you’re too young to know who William Powell is.” Well, I love The Thin Man. Also, and I don’t know where this comes from, I’ve always had a kind of macabre, dark side; as far back as elementary school. In first or second grade, I remember telling my friends that pickles were made from frogs and that’s why they’re green and kind of warty. It grossed them out, so they gave me their pickles. When I was put into braces, my dentist said he needed to extract two of my eye teeth to make room. I kept them and made them into earrings. I dressed like a freak in middle school. I think I liked provoking people.
PJ: You still like provoking people.
MM: I do! I love playing devil’s advocate. I’ll argue a point I don’t agree with just to annoy someone. I love pushing people’s buttons, because it helps sharpen my thinking and theirs too. Plus, getting outside your comfort zone is when you grow. I really like the concept of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. And sometimes I’m the comfortable one I’m afflicting.
PJ: You do mention that on your “about me” page. Going outside your comfort zone. How did you end up at that life philosophy?
MM: Hmm. Part of it is my faith, I’m sure. Because God’s always making me uncomfortable. He frequently has to kick me in the pants, but it always ends up being good. I think a lot of it was influenced by travel, too. Growing up in a dinky town, I read a lot and wanted to travel. So when I got the chance to go to Spain with my Spanish club, there was no question that I was going to go. It’s scary when it’s your first time on a plane and you’re seventeen and the farthest you’ve been from home is Canada. And then part of the trip is in Morocco where their idea of personal space is very different from yours. But it was thrilling and I was infected with wanderlust. And subsequent trips got scarier, like when I went to Romania completely alone, no family or friends, no tour group. I just bought a plane ticket and a guidebook and printed a few phrases off the internet and went. It was one of the best experiences, though.
PJ: I want to hear about that.
MM: That might make a good blog post. Go back to my storytelling as a break from my opining. I wrote a piece in Murphy’s Law Review about it. Maybe I’ll rerun it here.
PJ: So you afflict yourself when you’re comfortable. How do you comfort yourself when you’re afflicted?
MM: That’s actually much harder for me. Affliction tends to come from external forces like you didn’t get the job interview you were hoping for or someone you trusted mistreated you. I tend to ruminate a lot on those kinds of things; I want to fix the problem. But, for example, if I didn’t get an interview because the company is required to post the opening but it’s a formality because they already know they’re going to hire internally, there’s nothing I can do to fix that situation. It makes me even more upset because of a lack of control. I need to embrace the mantra that sometimes the only thing I can control is my reaction, but I’m still really bad at that. I want to do something. I think, “if only I had written a better cover letter or tweaked my resume.” I’m not a Calvinist; I won’t just say “whatever’s supposed to happen is what happens.” No, I have an active role in my fate. But there’s a reason I don’t think Calvinists or Arminians have a corner on the truth. It lies somewhere in between. I’m working on being more zen about things I can’t control, but it’s definitely a work in progress. When I am afflicted, I try to be proactive and go for a run, eat something good, take a hot bath. Sometimes it means saying no to something so that I have time to just be. Naps. I take a lot of naps.
PJ: Okay, here’s another one. What makes you angry?
MM: I hate it when someone is ruled by emotion instead of clear thinking. It drives me nuts. And sometimes a person might spend some time thinking about things, but there’s obviously some flaw in their thinking because when they express their statement or argument, I think, “How did you come to that conclusion? You didn’t factor in this, this, and this.” And I might try to reason with them and it’s like talking to a wall. I ran into this situation very recently. I’m trying to be helpful, but there’s this obstinacy and I have to walk away. It makes me frustrated because I know I could help if they’d just listen. I think I’d get very stressed as a parent, because you have to let people make their own mistakes, but damn, boy, you are settling for something less. It’s kind of breaking my heart because decisions are being made out of a sense of fear and unwillingness to sit down and hash things through, or, I believe, seek wise counsel.
You see it in a lot of my writing about social topics, like immigration or guns, where people are motivated by fear. In fact, I’m working on a post on that very subject, “the profitability of fear,” how companies make bank off fear mongering. Just put your fear aside and think about what you just said. But so many people seem incapable of it. Maybe it’s more noticeable to me because I’m an INTJ. I always wait to make a decision until I’m not emotional. It’s why I survived Tstan. And I seek counsel when I can.
PJ: Where do you seek counsel?
MM: I almost always ask my dad. He was a counselor, after all. And he’s a lot like me in the sense that he thinks things through and doesn’t act irrationally. Plus, he knows me really well and I know he has my best interest at heart. Sometimes, depending on the situation, I’ll ask my mom or one of my brothers, and sometimes my cousin, Jenny, who is the wisest person I know who’s my age, (besides me, of course). And sometimes I talk to all of them about something, because it’s good to get a few perspectives. I feel really lucky to have that many people I can go to. I think it’s important that all, but one, are older than me. I think too many people only talk to their friends or siblings of a similar age for advice. That’s a huge mistake, because you’re essentially asking yourself. Someone with the same level of life experience, probably the same background, etc. Not helpful.
PJ: Let’s move on to something less serious. One of your readers wants to know, what’s a gushdepdy?
MM: The gushdepdy is a traditional dance of the Yomut tribe in the Balkan region. We danced it at weddings in Balkanabat. You travel in a circle, shuffling a few beats and then hopping and twisting your upper torso toward the center of the circle and clapping. It’s fun. My sitemate, Lindsay, adores it and requested it at her farewell party. The DJ was confused because a white girl knowing the gushdepdy is an anomaly. We definitely made some fans whenever we danced it.
PJ: What are you reading right now? Are you going to keep giving kitaplar updates or was that just for last year? (Kitaplar is Turkmen for ‘books.’ Maresha used it to title her posts about her book a week resolution in 2013.)
MM: I’m not sure if I’ll still do those or not. I would like to try to keep reading a book a week if time permits, but I probably won’t feel like writing as many posts about it. Maybe single book reviews if I read something that really grabs me. Right now I’m reading a book about the Middle East. It’s a survey of the history and politics of the region. I feel like I can’t be too informed on the subject.
PJ: I could probably keep asking you questions for hours. But I’ll finish with this one from a reader. It might not be very original, but I like it anyway. A genie will grant you three wishes. What are they?
MM: I would never accept wishes from a genie. That always ends badly. They try to trick you up. But in the spirit of the question, I would wish for a publishing contract, a year of all expenses paid world travel, and… (thinks) I’d save the third for an emergency.
I get the feeling that she’s got something else in mind for the third wish but doesn’t want to spill the beans. From what I know of her, my guess is world domination.