Born in the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time: The Tragedy of the East German Olympic Young Women

Brett and I watched this documentary last night on PBS. Secrets of the Dead: Doping for Gold tells the story of the young women of the East German Olympic team in the 70s. They were born behind the Iron Curtain, part of a country under constant surveillance of the Stasi while living in constant fear and paranoia. Gulags and disappearances loom as a threat to any person that disobeys the Soviet regime.
These girls were doped, mostly without their knowing, with steroids. This resulted in increased liver trouble and incredible masculinisation: deepened voices, pale pattern body hair, Adam's apples and the like.
These women suffer irreversible damage. Katerina (I believe that is her nam) is now in her 40s. She looks like a man. She said that she just stopped trying to wear feminine closthing since so many commented in public that she looks like a man. This breaks my heart.
Another figured that she was so far down the man path already, she had a sex change. Andreas married a former swimming medalist from the same era.
What broke my heart the most is what I now have led up to. A silver medalist swimmer of that era, an American, traveled to Berlin to make sense of this. She felt that, in a sense, she deserves the gold medal and wished that the gold medalist would give it up for her. That would be right to her. She met this woman. This East German woman suffered abuse under the communist regime and has incredible health issues as a result. The markings on her soul will be taken to her grave.
As the American medalist said "As an American..." it just ran fingernails over my inner chalkboard. I know what she was meaning. When I moved back to the States, its the thing that infuriates me: entitlement. I deserve what I want because: I earned it, worked hard for it, paid for it, I'm an American.
As a barista in the coffee capital of the world, I deal with rather particular people on their purchase: not too hot, extra hot, no foam, split shot, wet cappuccino, dry, espresso picked by an old blind man in Zimbabwe while whistling show tunes.
At what price?
Somewhere along the line, humanity is ignored. We may not see it, but there is a person behind our purchases. There are people behind our "entitlement".

What is a good reading of Scripture?

The last part of the term is always crazy. Blogging is on the lower end of the priority list. Papers, counseling practicums, group presentations, and an art project later I have finished. Now I have about two weeks until I start Hebrew.

Dr. Joann Badley taught perhaps my favorite class this term. "Reading Practices" used to be called "Interpretive Methods". I'm very pleased with the textbook: The Art of Reading Scripture, edited by E.F. Davis and R.B. Hays. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003.

We looked at historical and textual criticism, literary method, Patristic scholars,critical traditioning, deconstruction, and other forms of approaches.
Our final day, we came up with a working list of approaches of the reading the Bible.

Here is what we came up with:

What is a good (‘better’) reading?

• Living in the primary rhythms of scripture: Exodus/ Resurrection
• Ways the story of God disarms the other stories of our culture
• Claiming truth where you see it.
• Habits of reading and practices of discipleship affect our reading (guard against bad readings)
• Frees us to hold complexity rather than reducing the meaning (e.g. to a moral reading); especially with respect to the application
• Invites other people into wonder and imagination, because primary purpose is the presence of God; so may have drawn on various other readings (so not just ‘academic’, as per Sadducees);
• Enliven as per, not in dissonance with, the life of Christ; gain understanding through worship and other forms of Christian formation.
• Saturated with humility; God is big, and knowing there are other voices;
• AUTHOR/author; incarnational theology; Acknowledge the trinitarian character (kenotic work) of God.
• Remember canonical frame
• Informs the way that we live (reciprocity: the way we live forms the way we understand); implications for spiritual practice as well (e.g. food); implications for life in community (e.g. forgiveness, peace-maker); requires something of us (challenges us)
• How does it bear witness to God; cross as corrective
• Pays attention to the actual words; not constructing a hypothetical text