O, Brother Benedict, Where Art Thou?

This month’s Vanity Fair magazine ran an article on a Trappist monastery recently built in the Czech Republic. The abbey was designed by the same architect who conceived Calvin Klein’s flagship store in Manhattan as well as various projects for Martha Stewart. Now I really do think that Trappist monks who take a vow of silence and who work very hard at making jams, honey and wine should not be denied beauty in their surroundings, after all, “God is in the details.” Muslims are required to pray five times daily, but monks who follow the Rule of Saint Benedict must pray seven times including Matins conducted at an ungodly hour in the middle of the night. I would think that an ugly environment might be more distracting to prayerful concentration than a beautiful one.

 

As I looked at the photographs in Vanity Fair I had to agree that the Czech cloister is indeed beautiful. Built in a minimalist style for which the architect is apparently known, the simplicity of design in fact, mirrors the simplicity of the lives of Trappist monks, a cloistered Cistercian order. The Cistercians were founded in the 12th century by Saint Bernard of Clairveaux who became the Abbot of the monastery of Citeaux and bade his monks return to the austere Rule of Benedict as an alternative (some would say reform) to the worldliness of the Cluniacs. My oldest brother’s name is Bernard (we call him Ben) and I have teased him on occasion by citing his patron namesake, Saint Bernard who, while giving his monks a rationale for banning female visitors to the monastery said (and I write this from memory so it may not be verbatim, but it’s pretty darn close), “It is easier for a monk to resurrect the dead than to resist temptation in the presence of a woman. If I do not believe you can do the former, how could I believe you could do the latter?”

 

Anyway, just within a few past entries of this blog  I myself celebrated the beauty of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, so I certainly would not deny the monks their chic abbey. But then, the author of the article reported that the Abbot of the new Czech monastery had meetings with Calvin Klein to discuss the robes that would be worn by the monks. Designed by Klein, the robes were to be fashioned from wool woven from the oldest loom in Lyon and “embellished with ancient gold thread found in Milan.” But then, evidently, the Abbot said something to piss Calvin off so the robes were never made and Calvin presumably flew back to his flagship cloister on Madison Avenue.  I couldn’t help but think of the photographs I’ve seen of Pope Benedict XVI wearing Prada shoes and Gucci sunglasses. The Pope’s designer wear was justified by Vatican spokesmen who declared that the papal haute couture were gifts. I remembered the Gospel story of the woman whose use of expensive perfumed oil to anoint Jesus’ feet was followed by objections voiced by the disciples who asked, “Could this oil not have been sold and the money given to the poor?” Jesus replied, “The poor you will have with you always. I will be with you for only a little while longer.” Wouldn’t it be possible for the Vatican to enroll in eBay and auction the Pope’s designer accoutrements for more justice serving causes? Wouldn’t the Pope appear more like an appropriate successor to the Petrine inheritance if he wore Teva sandals instead of Prada slippers? But then, he will not be with us always.

 

How ironic it is that the former Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger took the name of the Saint who authored The Rule, the 6th century manual for daily monastic life that has served as the guide for ascetic and cloistered religious brothers and sisters for fifteen centuries (and still does). The Rule treats everything from the requirements for prayer and service to the amount of beer each monk is allotted at meals. I have often been asked in the past if I had ever considered the religious life of the nun. I knew at a very young age that such a life was not for me. I had no desire to live in community with women even in a secular setting as teacher or nurse. I figured whatever a secular nun could do I could do without taking vows (not to mention those things I could do that they could not). And a cloistered, contemplative life was also not an option. A brief perusal of just a few of the rules of Benedict makes it abundantly clear why I would have been ill-suited to convent life.

 

To deny oneself.

To chastise the body.

Not to seek after pleasure.

Not to be given to wine.

Not to be a murmurer.

Not to love much speaking

Not to love much boisterous laughter.

To obey without delay.

 

This last, most assuredly, the deal breaker.

As a child I flunked Lent and could not keep the three hour silence of Good Friday.

Sitting on my grandfather’s porch one Good Friday afternoon, my little pious self attempted to observe The Silence from noon until three when Tommy the mailman walked by. He said, “Hi!” and then passed. I had two choices, shout to Tommy’s back and fail yet again at expressing my love for the crucified Jesus, or not respond and risk hurting Tommy’s feelings. I raised my little voice and chose the human relationship over the divine one. To take a vow of silence for a lifetime was simply out of the question.

 

My little girlfriends and I would suffer from attacks of “Church giggles” that left us shaking in our pews. One of us would point to something in church that she just knew the other would find hysterical (like an old woman's funny hat), or we’d make a funny face and it would be all over for us. As soon as any of us made that guttural throat sound that is sometimes emitted in the attempt to stifle a laugh, we were goners and would suffer the disapproving sneers of praying adults and the “tsk, tsks,” of other more restrained little girls who considered their quiet piety to be a mark of their superiority and of God’s greater love for them.

 

I awaken more mornings than I care to admit at 5:00 or 5:30 and my mind begins to race so that I cannot quiet it enough to even fall back to sleep. To attempt to quiet it enough for seven hours of daily prayer would be torturous indeed. This is the reason why I have been so prolific in this little journal of mine. I awaken and write. There is little else one can do at this hour that does not risk awakening neighbors adjacent to my own walls.

 

The contemplative life of the cloistered nun would have been as contrary to my personality as Maria Von Trapp’s. I could well imagine my own Mother Superior and seasoned nuns singing about me in the courtyard of the convent:

 

“She climbs a tree and scrapes her knee,

Her dress has got a tear.

She waltzes on her way to Mass,

And whistles on the stair.

And underneath her whimper

She has curlers in her hair.

I’ve even heard her singing in the Abbey!”

(which in my case, no doubt, would have been “Subterranean Homesick Blues”).

 

No, I could not have adapted to such a life.

Though I might have tried for a little while, had the habits been designed by Vera Wang.

A Home in the World

Recently, I read an article on the life of Walter Benjamin, a German intellectual who fled Germany for France and was interned in a concentration camp for “boches,” along with Hannah Arendt, Heinrich Mann and others. They were subsequently released and many fled Europe. But Benjamin refused to consider that he would never return to Paris, his beloved adopted city. In 1940 Hitler’s army entered Paris and the Franco-German Armistice was signed. One of the articles required the French government to “surrender on demand” anyone the Third Reich wanted extradited to Germany.  Benjamin and others attempted to flee France towards Spain by crossing the Pyrenees. The elder Benjamin, often out of breath and tiring, made it to the Spanish border with other exiles only to be told that their transit visas which would have taken them from Spain to neutral Portugal, had been canceled. They would be escorted back to France, which would mean certain extradition to Germany. Rather than live in a world where there was no hope for him to return to Paris, where he would experience further humiliation and loss, he swallowed some of the morphine tablets he brought with him and died the following morning. Had he and the other refugees attempted to cross the border one day earlier or one day later- the embargo on transit visas lasted only one day- they would have crossed safely.

 

As I read the article, I came across this paragraph:

 

“…the intellectual advantage of not being at home in the world [were] offset by the subterfuge and pretence to which the pariah must have recourse…for behind the compliant and optimistic façade of the grateful migrant is a constant struggle with despair of themselves- since deep down they do not believe that their misfortune is a result of political events outside their control, but the result of some mysterious shortcoming in themselves, a defect in their personalities, an inability to maintain the social appearances to which they have so long been accustomed...[I] have never accepted the idea that the present is simply a site of eternal return for all that has gone before, or that the possibility of renewal lies [only] in meditating on a dismembered past.”  Michael D. Jackson

 

I suppose this paragraph was stunning to me because of the image it created “of not being at home in the world.” All of us have experienced this at one time or another; those moments when our personalities or our perceptions seem so unique that we can find no place for them to “fit.” We walk around in the world as if separated from our very selves.  Our actions and thoughts seem so unlike all else we see about us that even we feel as if we watch them apart; moments in which we experience ourselves as so misunderstood that we want to shout with Bob Dylan’s Thin Man, “Oh my God, am I here all alone?”

 

I have been known to defy others’ expectations of me and know the somewhat perverse pleasure it brings; the response it evokes. "Yeah, I study religion, but not for the reason you think!"  Sometimes I drink, sometimes I cuss. I am not bound by society’s repressive rules regarding sexuality. I dress like a freak in my basement clothes and cowboy boots and people stare. I got my first tattoo at an age when most women are beginning to settle cozily into the ordinary. I am irreverent and gleefully boisterous and laugh (and sing) out loud in public. I shock in the classroom just to get a response, to shake up, to stir something in young minds often already numbed by powerful cultural shaping. And sometimes because of that, they come to me in their moments of “not being at home in the world.” Perhaps they recognize in me the pariah in themselves. Or perhaps simply a place where they know they will be embraced in the midst of their defiant difference.

 

There are both poignant and painful moments when alienation seems to characterize our existence and yet, the longing is to belong, not by conforming to societal expectations but despite our nonconformity; and perhaps even because of it. The longing to belong is not of the type that insists that everyone “likes me,” nor is it even a need for a particular kind of acceptance or (heaven forbid), approval. It is rather, and simply, the human need for recognition of self and of our expression of that self. For many the challenge and the task is to walk the tension wire that exists between a life lived as one of the defiantly different and/or the life of the pariah. Most often what is sought is not an entire “home,” but simply a place in the heart of another person where it is safe simply to be.

 

The heart of my best friend has provided that place and has been in my life, the single most important balancing pole on the wire that exists between accepting myself as a unique character and despairing of myself as the pariah. She is always the sanctuary to which I go where I know I will not be alone; where I always belong. There is no one on this planet who knows me as well, or loves me as well as she. She knows my secrets and my outrageous acts. She knows me better than I know myself. She knows my goodness and my cruelty; my vice and my virtue; my sins and my acts of heroism. And she loves me both in spite of them and because of them. She has been my champion and the one who will not allow me to get away with excuses or denials or self-destruction. She has never accepted for me “the idea that the present is simply a site of eternal return for all that has gone before, or that the possibility of renewal lies [only] in meditating on a dismembered past.”  We have walked with each other and held each other’s hand through the most painful moments of our lives, and the most joyous. We have feared for each other and rejoiced for each other. We have laughed and cried until the tears come no more. We have crossed the ocean and the Seine together; we have crossed the passages of womanhood together. And we have created for each other a place in the heart of another person that is as a home; a place where it is safe simply to be.

 

The Twenty Commandments of Dating

And the woman sojourned forth unto the mountain top and came upon a burning gardenia bush that was not consumed by the fire. And a voice cried out from the gardenia and sayeth unto her, “Take off thy Jimmy Choo three-inch strappy spiked sandals, for the ground upon which you stand is holy. And Lo! I bring thee tidings of great joy (the Voice mixed Her myth-a-phors) for unto thee I giveth the Law. No longer shall thee stumble in the presence of those who would tarry forth with thee into the Shadow of the Valley of Dating. Heed my Law before thou goest forth. And it shall free thee from the attention of idiots and scoundrels. And it shall bring you peace.”

 

And the woman sayeth unto the Gardenia Voice, “But they shall not listen. The women date all manner of men who do them dishonor. Whom shall I say sent me?”

 

And the Gardenia Voice sayeth, “Tell them ‘She Who Is’ sent thee.”

 

And the woman knelt and made an offering. She lit a Carolina Herrera scented candle, placed her Fendi bag on the altar of the Gardenia Voice and made of it a burnt offering.

She inscribed the Commandments on her Kate Spade papers and descended the mountain and went back from whence she came. And all the women gathered around to hear of the Law given to her that day from the Voice of the Gardenia.

 

The Twenty Commandments of Dating

 

I.  Thou shalt not cooketh for a man unless (or until) thou already loveth him.

 

II.  Thou shalt not goeth forth on any “pity dates.”

 

III.  Thou shalt not date a man who owneth a Recliner.

 

IV. Thou shalt not date a man who asketh thee to have a drink and then sayeth, “Your place or mine?”

 

V. Thou shalt not date a man whose gold chains setteth off the airport alarms.

 

VI.  Thou shalt not date a man who cringeth at the mention of the word “feminist.”

 

VII.  Thou shalt not date a man who telleth thee how to drive.

 

VIII.  Thou shalt not date a man who weareth a pink Izod shirt with blue and white Seersucker pants.

 

IX.  Thou shalt not goeth forth with a man who walketh on his knuckles.

 

X.  Thou shalt not date a man who loveth George Bush.

 

XI.  Thou shalt not date a man who cannot sayeth, “I’m sorry.”

 

XII. Thou shalt not date a man who thinketh that baseball is boring.

 

XIII.  Thou shalt not place thyself in the company of a man who thinketh the Dalai Lama is the President of Budapest.

 

XIV.  Thou shalt not date a man who heareth “the Voices” in his head.

 

XV.  Thou shalt not date a man who driveth a truck bigger than thy living room.

 

XVI. Thou shalt not goeth forth with a man who calleth his mother, “Mommy.”

 

XVII. Thou shalt not giveth thy phone number to a man who whistles at thee on the street and sayeth, “Oooooo, Baby, Baby.”

 

XVIII. Thou shalt cease to date a man who is jealous of thy love for thy students or thy children.

 

XIX.  Thou shalt not date a man who is a bad loser and who pouteth when thy woop his butt at pool.

 

XX.  And thou shalt not date a man who complaineth about Bob Dylan’s voice.

Candy Store

Barrel upon barrel of color and texture,

Promise of sweet satisfaction.

Surprising tug on childhood memory.

Cream-centered caramels my father

would offer for love, in place of a kiss.

Canada Mints, pink and white,

Basic to my grandmother's table as milk and bread.

Hershey Miniatures my brothers

would find in their lunch boxes, but were withheld from me.

 

I close my eyes and remember the feel of them on the tongue,

Molasses Mary Janes wrapped in yellow and red.

Squirrel Nut Zippers, a name that is still a mystery.

Cherry Red Tootsie Pops, sacrificed occasionally for

the tart experience of lime and green.

Necco Wafer attempts to find someone, anyone,

To take the black, licorice circles off my hands.

 

Sour Balls and Jawbreakers, made dangerous

by maternal warnings against choking;

Eaten carefully, lest they cause

an early descent to the grave.

Bazooka Bubble Gum wrappers;

comic strips, never understood.

A shrug of the shoulders and a pop

of the pink, sugar-coated square into the mouth.

 

I watch as she stands before the barrels

And with careful deliberation, makes her selections.

Which of these lovely, seductive confections form

the sweet memories of her past?

More modern renditions of forbidden fruit,

Gummi Bears and Worms,

Ingenious Blow Pops and

Princess Leia Pez Dispensers.

I wonder as she spies the Sour Balls and Jawbreakers

Does she think them dangerous

because of my warnings of choking

and an early descent to the grave?

 

I indulge in these side-long glances of her,

when she is unaware; awestruck by the paradox of her being.

Sweetness and tenderness, strength and confidence, at once.

Beautiful girl who is no longer a girl.

It hurts to look at you.

Love so fierce, I know the heart of Mother Bear.

 

I am shaken from my reverie.

The call of the candy barrel rouses me.

I prolong the decadent joy of choice;

Bits-O-Honey and Butterscotch,

Red and white swirls of peppermint,

holding the promise of my sneeze.

Tangy taffies; menacing tugs on the

silver in my mouth.

I unwrap a cream-centered caramel

and return to the memory of my father. 

And feel his kiss.

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

In an alumnae publication, I read this week that Tom Chappell, founder of Tom’s of Maine, has endowed a professor’s chair at Harvard Divinity School. Chappell received a Masters in Theological Studies from HDS in 1991, the year I entered my MDiv program. The Chair is to be named The Richard Reinhold Niebuhr Professorship of Divinity and will focus on values and ethics. Richard R. Niebuhr is a member of perhaps the most distinguished theological family in America. His father was H. Richard Niebuhr and his uncle, Reinhold Niebuhr. But despite or perhaps in spite of this heritage of intellectual giants, Richard distinguished himself apart.

I celebrate this endowment by Tom Chappell because I celebrate the life of Richard Niebuhr, my teacher.

 

Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenza gave me the tools to deconstruct patriarchal religion; she encouraged a strategy for biblical interpretation based on liberation; she provided me with scholarly content that greatly informs my own teaching and course material; she was my advisor, my mentor and my model.

 

Ralph Potter introduced me to Aristotle and encouraged my reflection and writing on forgiveness and Christian social ethics.

 

Elizabeth Spellman gave me the opportunity to study and ask the questions of suffering.

 

Francis Fiorenza filled the void in my understanding of Catholic theology.

 

Carter Heyward expanded my understanding of Christology.

 

But Richard Niebuhr fed my soul.

He was the teacher I loved.

He was intrigued by the same “big ideas” that intrigue me; the dignity and value of human life; virtue and nobility; good and evil; the nature of beauty and the questions of ethics.

In his class, we read beautiful books; Moby Dick and Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee, Biographia Literaria by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Nature of True Virtue by Jonathan Edwards, The Critique of Practical Reason by Immanuel Kant.

 

In his class we were exposed not only to the ideas he loved to explore, but to the man himself. His intellectual honesty in the classroom became so intimate at times, that those of us who were privileged to be witness to it, often felt that he left himself too vulnerable; that he bared his mind and soul on the carpet for all to see. In his class my imagination soared, my intellect was stretched, my humanity was touched.

 

In one of the courses I took with him, I had the opportunity to be a part of his weekly class discussion group, which immediately followed his one hour lecture. That semester these were the only classes I had on that day. I commuted from Northern Rhode Island to Cambridge and utilized four modes of transportation; I’d drive my car to the nearest MBTA train station, ride the train for an hour to Boston, get on the subway at South Station and ride underground and across the Charles to Harvard Square and then walk the rest of the way to the Divinity School. Total time, one way, was approximately two hours. On those days when Richard’s class met I’d commute a total of four hours for two hours of class. In the last year of my program (’93-’94) Boston broke their 100 year-old record for snowfall with 96 inches in one season. One week, when a particularly nasty storm was predicted, I suggested to my son that perhaps I could crash in his dorm for the night (he was a freshman at Harvard that year and lived on the perimeter of Harvard Yard). In the end, I stayed with a classmate (no doubt to my son’s unexpressed relief), but so unwilling was I to miss one of Richard’s classes, that I would have been willing to camp out in a freshmen dorm. Instead, I trudged through the snow in Porter Square to make it to class on time.

 

Richard’s intellectual integrity was matched by his unfailing generosity in the classroom. He honored every student comment, every contribution and every thought.  One day when we were discussing Coleridge’s ideas on the primary and secondary imagination and the task of the poet, I raised my hand and asked a question. Richard paused, looked at me pointedly and said, “What a good question.” He shifted his weight from foot to foot and said, “That’s such a good question.” Yet again, he stroked his chin thoughtfully, “What…a…wonderful…question. I’ll have to think about that.” And in that moment, he made me feel as if I was the most intelligent person in the room, simply by asking a question. On the way out of class that day, fellow students actually slapped me on the back and said, “Wow. Way to go,” the academic equivalent of a pat on the backside on the football field.  

 

In a paper I wrote on Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason, his concluding comments included the statement that I had a “perspicacious mind.” I ran to my dictionary. I was grateful for this much needed affirmation and I treasure the remark. 

 

When it came time to choose my faculty reader for my MDiv Senior paper I did not hesitate to request Richard Niebuhr. I highlight the word “request” here. Students must ask a professor to be their reader, but the professor has the right to approve or deny the request. When Richard agreed to be my reader for the year, I was overjoyed and terrified at once. When we met in his overstuffed and rather dark office to discuss my paper, he’d ask if I’d mind if he smoked his pipe. I never did. He asked difficult questions, he demanded clarification; he expressed concern over this paragraph or that.  One day after meeting with Richard, I also met with the ThD candidate who served as my second reader. I related to Cynthia (with some exasperation) how tireless he was in pushing my thinking and my writing and complained a little about his demand for perfection. Cynthia said, “And I suspect that’s exactly why you asked for him.” And she was right.

 

Richard Niebuhr is the only professor to whom I have written in the years following graduation. Six years ago, following his retirement, I sent him a rather long email through which I shared the experience of having been his student. I placed myself in context, told him what courses I’d taken with him and that he had been my reader but followed all that by telling him that whether he remembered me or not was irrelevant. Let me be a faceless student, but let me share with him what he and his classroom had meant to me. I received no response for over a week and thought that perhaps he was away, or feared that he was ill. Then his response arrived. In his reply, he apologized for having waited so long, but admitted that he waited because he could not think how to respond to “your impulse to write with such generosity of spirit and magnanimity of heart.”  It was so like him. There I was sitting at my computer, reading his email, my intention only to have recognized him as teacher, scholar and gentleman and he, in his fashion, was giving honor to me. Ever true to his nature.

 

So, thank you Tom Chappell for ensuring that this famous man’s humane and scholarly legacy will live on. And thank you Richard Niebuhr for being that man.

The Feast Day of the Guardian Angels

Once upon a time there was a baby girl born on the Feast Day of the Guardian Angels. She had hair as white as snow and eyes like blueberries (her father told her so). And after she was born she was taken to her father.  He already had two little boys and even though he loved her right away, he wasn’t quite sure what to do with a little girl. Then they whisked her away to the nursery. Her father waited and waited to see his wife emerge from the delivery room, but he saw nothing but doctors and nurses running in and out. Finally, he stopped one of the doctors and asked if there was something wrong. The doctor said that the new father should not hold out very much hope for his wife’s surviving the birth. The placenta was attached to the lining of her uterus and would not expel. She was experiencing excessive bleeding and was in danger of toxic shock from the placenta. 

 

Inside the delivery room, the mother was surrounded by nurses who began to pray. The mother feared death, but not for herself. She feared leaving her husband alone with three small children and a new baby among them. So she prayed to the woman she thought might have the power to help her. She called upon Mary, the mother of Jesus and promised her that if she survived, her daughter would love her. She dedicated her daughter to Mary and vowed that a small piece of her daughter’s heart would always belong to her and her son, and that her daughter would teach people about him and his way of peace. And then, the mother prayed what might have been her final Act of Contrition, a petition for the forgiveness of her sins. After repeated attempts to reach a surgeon, one was finally contacted. He rushed to the hospital and extracted the placenta surgically. The new mother survived. Throughout the hospital the news spread that a new mother had almost died that night.

 

And the baby girl grew into a child. And she loved Church more than anything. She loved the smell of Church; the light; the music; the mystery. She loved the saints; St. Agatha, St. Joan and St. Anne. One night, when she was seven years old her mother took her to Sunday Benediction and she sat very close to the altar and was swept away by the beauty of Church on a cold New England winter’s night. The candles, the music and the magic enthralled her. She was hypnotized by the priest’s gold and red vestments as they swirled around the altar spreading the smoke of incense. Round and round the altar he moved. And the little girl thought to herself, “He is dancing with God. I want to do that. I want to dance with God.” And the mother watched the little girl and nurtured her love for Church and God.

 

Throughout her young life the little girl heard of the night of her birth and how her mother almost died. She was glad that her mother hadn’t died. That would have been too heavy to carry. It would have hurt too much. And her brothers might have been mad.

But she wasn’t told about the promise.

 

It wasn’t until the girl was a woman of 34 that her mother told her the rest of the story; of the prayer and vow she had made to Mary on that night; the Feast Day of the Guardian Angels.

And the woman is a teacher.

She does not swirl around an altar, but in a classroom.

And yet, she dances…

It Balances on Your Head

…just like a mattress balances on a bottle of wine.

  Your brand new leopard-skin pillbox hat.

          Bob Dylan, Brand New Leopard-Skin Pillbox Hat

 

Just a few things I’ve tried to balance in my head the last coupla days….

Like a mattress balances on a bottle of wine.

 

by the way… Bob Dylan has some of the most nonsensical lyrics in music. And yet, when I hear them I actually think I might know what they mean. Must be because we were lovers in many past lives and we know each other so well. O for cripessake, allow me my harmless little fantasies, please.

*Every day Starbucks stores all over the country remove the morning pastries, wrap them up and donate them to local food shelters. Baked goods or stem cells: the options are the same, to throw them away, or put them to good use where they can help people who need them.

George W. Bush: Take a freakin’ lesson.

 

*A few weeks ago I watched the All-Star Baseball Game. I might have missed something, but was the Roberto Clemente Award actually given to, uh…Roberto Clemente??

I’m not lazy. I’ve done web searches. I’ve checked mlb.com, the NY Times. I've asked men at Starbucks and cannot find the answer anywhere. If Clemente was posthumously awarded the humanitarian prize named for him, does that mean there is NO ONE playing Major League Baseball today who is deserving of it? And isn’t it a little like awarding the Nobel Prize to Alfred Nobel? The Edgar Prize to Edgar Allen Poe?

 

*The other day I was doing a short introduction to feminist theory in my class and presented the feminist observation that for most of recorded history society has been organized as patriarchal. A young man raised his hand and said, "Well, there have been societies led by women."  First, I pointed out the distinctions between matrilineal, matrifocal, and matriarchal and then said, "And those are the exceptions aren't they? There's a reason why we call examples like that exceptions. If this entire room represented the history of the social and political organization of the human race and we wanted to allow for a representation of societies that were matriarchal that space would take up this much room on the wall [and I took my chalk and drew a tiny little dot] and the rest of the wall, would represent patriarchy."

Sometimes you don’t need a whole picture to paint a thousand words.

Sometimes all you need is a chalk mark on a cinder block on a sea green wall.

 

*Tuesday evening I had dinner with a friend. We ate at a restaurant that advertises $5 martinis during Happy Hour. I ordered a Dirty Martini (straight up, extra olives please) and when it was time to pay for the drink the waitress told me it was $8. I mentioned the Happy Hour special and she told me that martinis are $5 only if you drink them at the bar. What? It costs THREE dollars for you to walk the damn martini from the bar to the table? Tell you what, I’ll carry my own dinner from the kitchen to the table and you can knock four bucks off my bill.

 

*The next time a straight person tries to convince you that homosexual orientation is a choice, ask them to wake up tomorrow morning and “become gay.”

 

*I wonder what would happen if a foreign military invaded and occupied the United States, erected barricades around its cities, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, DC or Charleston, SC and did not allow its citizens to enter them. But they did so, they said, with all good intention; the U.S. government is unjust they said, in need of reform. It has a corrupt leadership. I wonder what the response from Americans would be. Surely there would be those who, most affected by this government’s small tyrannies would welcome the change; who might hope that this new regime would bring an end to their poverty or suffering. But there would be others who would fight the occupation to their last breath. And we would not call them insurgents. We would call them patriots.

Sometimes the other person’s shoes are very uncomfortable indeed.

 

*This past Sunday as I spoke to my 88 year-old mother, she was voicing a small complaint when suddenly she stopped and gleefully and child-like she exclaimed, “Oh! Louise! I have to tell you!”

And she proceeded to tell me that a few weeks ago during a wind storm, a cactus plant, which has not had flowers in the nine years she has owned it, was perched on a table on her outside porch and fell to the floor. The pot broke; the cactus lost some sections of leaf. She walked to the store, bought a new pot and transplanted the cactus. Last week there appeared on the cactus at least twenty pink blooms with many more buds emerging.

Sometimes when we fall down, we come up better!

(But this doesn’t mean it’s the reason we fell down to begin with. There’s a difference between a consequence and a reason…. Ok, here I go again).

 

*I worked with a woman at Starbucks a few months ago who had a particularly bumbling morning. She kept dropping things and spilling things. At one point she exclaimed, "I'm having such a bad day! God must be mad at me." God, save me from a god who gets mad at me and determines that my punishment should consist of my spilling Mocha Frappuccino all over the floor.

 

*And why is it that when something bad happens to us, it's all our fault, but when something good happens to us it's a gift from God?

Look, either He [sic] gets the credit and the blame or neither.

 

*I watched three seagulls play in the sky yesterday. They flew in a spiraling pattern, one taking the lead and then another. It was a leisurely gliding on the currents not a frenzied, frantic flight. They circled and circled in constant synchronicity. And as they circled and spiraled they also advanced in height and distance. I watched them in this dance until they were out of sight. I wonder, why didn’t they just fly in a straight line towards wherever it was they were heading? But no, the spiraldance went on and on. Now if anyone reading this is a biologist or knows the scientific reason or cause for their pattern, please don’t write to me or comment below. My query was a rhetorical one. I don’t want an answer. Do not suspend my belief or destroy my wishful illusion. I want to believe that they were playing; this little trinity in which I took so much delight…

 

*On the first day of class, I sometimes offer my students a few questions to share that are hopefully non-threatening. They don’t have to stick their academic necks out to comment on a reading or the course content, but hopefully they will hear the sound of their voice in my classroom and it won’t seem such a frightening thing later. One of the questions I sometimes ask is, “If you could live inside someone’s mind for 24 hours, whose would it be?”

A student once wrote, “Professor Doire’s…but only for an hour.”

Some of us, Lester, just don’t have a choice.

 

I Was a Free Man in Paris

I felt unfettered and alive

Nobody was calling me up for favors

And no one’s future to decide.

You know I’d go back there tomorrow

But for the work I’ve taken on.

Stokin’ the star-maker machinery,

Behind the popular song.

            Joni Mitchell, Free Man in Paris

 

Traversing Paris was a challenge. Not for everyone perhaps, but certainly for us.

Where the hell are we? How do we get there?

Out of St. Germaine de Pres? To the Louvre? Back to la Rue Descartes?

 

I cannot read a map. My sixth grade teacher Mrs. Plante would be utterly disappointed. She taught me volumes about South America but missed the mark on map skills.

And in acknowledgement of those of you who love maps (you know who you are) I argue that they prove to be completely, totally and irretrievably useless if one has no point of reference. This conclusion is based on empirical data proven again and again that in order for a map to be useful, one must first determine where one IS, which is not too difficult given landmarks as big as Notre Dame Cathedral and the Louvre, but even then one must determine in which direction one must move. North, South, East, West are useless if one does not know whether these are left, right, straight ahead or backwards. One must know if one is situated N, S, E, or W of the desired new location. “In order to get there, do we go down the street in this direction, or up the street in that direction?” Is the Seine over there or over there? Trying to use a map in a strange place is like trying to look up a word’s spelling in the dictionary if one doesn’t know how to spell the word. Those of you who would like to defend maps, go right ahead, but you’ll get no acquiescence here.

 

In Paris, My Friend and I took the wrong turn so many times we probably lost one of the two pounds each of us lost on the trip simply in the backtracking. By the end of the trip we would choose a direction to walk by reversing the way we thought we should go, simply because we had been wrong so many times.

 

On our first day in Paris we attempted the bus system. Big mistake. We ended up riding for free the entire day though. As we stepped onto our first bus I attempted to give the driver francs, not knowing that one must purchase a ticket before boarding. As I fumbled with my wallet the driver made a characteristically French gesture (or one characteristic of French bus drivers anyway), which consisted of a disgusted, perfunctory wave towards the back of the bus. We rode to the end of the line and attempted to ask the driver where to get off for our desired location only to be greeted with another wave of the hand, which this time meant, get the hell off my bus. We didn’t even bother trying to offer the next bus driver francs or a ticket for our ride away from the end of the line, at which point he simply shrugged and once again we got, “the wave” pointing us to the back of the bus.

 

Two locations in particular gave us repeated trouble; a district called St. Germaine de Pres” and the Metro station named Cardinal Lemoine. We finally mastered the Metro with a few lessons from my daughter who told her host family that we had been in Paris four days and had not yet ventured underground for fear of never returning, and they laughed! The Champs-Elysees was easy enough. Shoot. With a landmark as big as the Arc deTriomphe even we could traverse the boulevard. While walking along the Champs-Elysees we encountered a trio of gendarmes just hanging around, smoking cigarettes and talking. I asked them to take our picture under one of the street signs. They shook their heads, “non,” and I understood that they certainly could not because they were on duty and were required to be ever diligent. So, as we walked away, I turned the camera on them and took their photo.

 

Every time we emerged from Cardinal Lemoine Metro station (the closest to our apartment), we repeatedly recognized no landmarks, no shops, no corners, nothing, nada, ne riens. Now keep in mind this was the same Metro station from which we emerged repeatedly. It truly was bizarre, as if we made frequent appearances in scenes from “The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” or “The Spotless Mind of Eternal Sunshine,” or “The Spotless Sunshine of the Eternal Mind,” whatever that movie is. We would emerge from the depths of the Paris underground and stare once again bewilderingly at our surroundings…pathetic looking, I am sure.  Another day, as we attempted to find our way out of the district of St. Germaine-de-Pres we confidently thought we were heading in the right direction (away from the Seine)  but the walk seemed longer than it should have. My Friend said, “So help me god, if we get to the end of that street and come face to face with the Seine, I’m going to throw myself into the river rather than take one more step.” Guess what was at the end of the street? But we had choices; throw ourselves into the Seine, hail a cab and place our lives in danger by riding with one of those Parisian vehicular maniacs, wait for a bus, or walk some more. We chose the bus, confident now that we had a ticket, purchased the day before. What we didn’t know is that bus tickets in Paris have expiration points so we were surprised when we inserted our tickets and the machine read, “Invalide!” Another disgruntled, disgusted wave from the bus driver and we were on our way, happy to be sitting in a warm bus on a cold day hardly caring where the hell it would take us next.

 

Our last night in Paris we met my daughter for dinner. I brought a big bunch of sunflowers for her (her favorites). We had a lovely dinner and at 10:00 said good-bye in front of the Paris bistro. She had been in Paris for almost three months and I hardly worried about her. I didn’t imagine dangers around every corner. I didn’t fear for her safety. And yet that night as she walked away, her back to me and carrying a large bunch of bright yellow sunflowers, young and confident woman that she was, she was still my child. I resisted the temptation to cry out, “Call me when you get home!” And for the second time that week I whispered a blessing. And I placed her once again into the arms of the city we both grew to love.

 

 

Notre Dame de Paris

The Cathedral of Our Lady of Paris. Surely, the only pilgrimage I have ever made.

I was filled with awe and hope and dread before I ever entered.

 

The foundation stone to Notre Dame was laid in 1163. Its visionaries were King Louis IX (Saint Louis, who also built Sainte-Chapelle) and Bishop Maurice de Sully. The construction extended over 150 years. It accommodates a congregation of 9000.

 

I will not describe the exterior. I could not do it justice. The mathematician or the architect may have at their disposal language that can provide the specifications and the measurements; a coolly distant methodical detailing of the subjects intricately carved into the portals, or the dimensions and placement of the flying buttresses, the height and breadth of frontal towers and spire, but I do not possess the language skills to describe the overall achievement. “Breathtaking, beautiful, stunning, magnificent,” are pale markers.

 

I will take a moment however, to mention the gargoyles. I loved them. I was fascinated by them. I stood in the middle of streets to gaze up at them. Their function as waterspouts, transporting water from roof to street is well known. But their form is still a mystery. Some speculate that the intention behind their grotesqueness was to frighten demons that might dare attempt to enter the sacred space, but this theory has not been proved. They were products of the medieval craftsmen’s imagination and skill; fantasy and perhaps the comic. The visuals in which I took the most delight in Paris were the gargoyles and Degas’ ballerinas. A contradiction in subjects? Perhaps not. Degas was known for his obsession with the contortions of the ballerinas’ bodies. The dancers’ bodies in his paintings are twisted, distorted, doubled-over, truncated. There are rumors that Degas enjoyed watching the physical demands that were placed on his models while he painted them; the tension and pain they would endure while maintaining the impossible poses he asked of them, like a 19th century Hitchcock (who took pleasure in the terror his beautiful blonde actresses would experience in a scene). But this bizarre and sadistic history was not a part of my knowledge or my initial fascination. I researched Degas only after I returned from Paris. But I must admit, that evidently I was (am) fascinated by these grotesques in gargoyle and ballerina even though, even now, I don’t know why. 

 

We entered through the Portal-de-Sainte-Anne (Mary’s mother). My conflicted anticipation was temporarily disturbed by a sign that greets the visitors at the entrance. For there, as one enters through the portal is a sign, hand-written in red ink on a piece of torn, shabby cardboard, “Beware of Pickpockets.” I was momentarily shaken. The stark contrast of the beautiful Sainte-Anne’s portal with a pickpocket warning caused cognitive dissonance. That the thefts happen often enough so as to require the sign was troubling, but that there are those who would steal inside Notre Dame Cathedral spoke to me of a moral violation I could not fathom. Go to The Louvre. Steal at the Centre Pompidou. Pick pockets at the Musee d’Orsay, but not here. Not here.

 

As I began to walk down the southernmost aisle (there are 5, the wide center nave and two on either side) I was seized by an overwhelming emotion. I had to sit down in one of the pews (there would have been none in the Middle Ages. Worshippers would have stood). And then, I wept. I buried my face in my hands and cried.  As I reflect now on that moment I still cannot articulate the full range of feeling that I experienced. I was overcome by the beauty, yes, but it was so much more than that. I wept for the symbol of the thing; the longings of men to please God, the offering of tribute to the Queen of Heaven; the monument to men’s determination to live lives that are worthy of this structure, which all too often end in failure; the desire to fuse the creation of beauty with piety. I wept too for my own lost, innocent faith. I wept for my childhood memories of comfort and love I once knew within walls such as these (though surely none so majestic). I wept because I know this place as I know my own heart. In this place I was joined to hundreds of thousands of believers who come to her for hope and sustenance and rest. And though my faith had been drastically altered, my understanding of such faith was not. And so, for a moment, I grieved my loss. And I wept for a people who sought forgiveness and mercy and redemption and who, all too often, stumbled from womb to grave without knowing them.

 

I can hear some you now, “Geez, Louise. You are SO dramatic.” I assure you I felt all these things though I have not articulated them until now. And if you can understand any of what I just wrote, if you can go there with me in your imaginations to the darkness and beauty of that place, then you know too why I wept.

 

I rose and began to walk down her nave. I crossed the transept and stopped to gaze left and right at the North and South Rose Windows. I approached the Baroque high altar. Just behind the altar is a life-sized Pieta; the Virgin Mother holds her dead son in her arms, timeless anguish and tenderness etched in her face. There is so much human experience expressed in a Pieta; love, compassion and tenderness; motherhood, sorrow and grief, and horror. I feel an affinity with Mary. I inherited a respect and a sense of her power as Theotokos (God-bearer) from my mother and grandmother. No one would tell them that she does not possess the power of a goddess.

 

I moved through the side chapels of which there are many in Notre Dame; the chapel dedicated to Aquinas, to Joan of Arc. And in front of Saint Joan’s statue, I lit a votive. The word votive is derived from the Greek for vow and in classical Greece one would offer a sacrifice to a god or goddess while speaking a vow. I didn’t make a vow to a god that day, or to Joan. I uttered my own blessing, for my daughter whose presence in this city had brought me to this place.

 

The last thing I saw in Notre Dame Cathedral was a priest. I had purchased a beautiful lapis lazuli rosary for my mother in the Cathedral gift shop (don’t tell anyone…I bought one for myself as well, but for its form, not its function). My mother is a devout Catholic who prays the rosary everyday. I knew that she would not pray this one if it was not blessed by a priest.  I knew every priest that she knew in Rhode Island and I didn’t want any of them touching it. So I brought my mother’s rosary to an old  priest who was hearing confessions in a side chapel. In English and in broken French I asked him to bless my mother’s rosary. We talked for a while and he was surprised to learn of my theological education. And then he asked a favor of me in return for his blessing. He asked me to say a prayer with him and he offered to do so in English. I said no, that I preferred to recite it in French. And so we did. And it remains one of my sweetest memories of Paris; this Catholic priest and I together as we prayed in French, the Lord’s Prayer.

 

The Trinity

I had hoped to write more about Paris this morning. But alas, I am hanging over. I hosted a small dinner party last night. I cooked Indian food. The smell of the spices lingers in the air even now; turmeric and cardamom, ginger and garlic, clove and cinnamon. I made Masoor Dal (green lentils), Potato and Carrot Korma, Chick Pea Curry and Basmati Rice. One of my guests is Vegan so for my Raita, the dish that cools the palate and is traditionally made with yogurt, I used Soy yogurt. Bleck (she said, sticking her tongue out slightly).

My guests brought the beer. Too much beer. I had three. Three. Three Sierra Nevada Pale Ales. And I am hanging over, which is why I am playing Yo-Yo Ma's beautiful, soothing Bach cello pieces. I am such a lightweight with beer. I can drink vodka and tequila like a man, but beer knocks me on my a**. A fine thing for a bar owner's daughter. I ought to be ashamed.

I had a lovely time. We talked and laughed and listened to wonderful music for hours. There was one mishap. As I rose from my sofa my heel got caught on a sharp edge of wood at which time I began to bleed profusely from my Achilles' tendon. A reminder from the gods perhaps, of my weaknesses in consuming the products of John Barleycorn.  My guests didn't know Joni Mitchell, so I considered it my obligation to introduce them. Sierra Nevada Pale Ales and Blue. A heady combination to be sure. Chick Pea Curry and Joni's twelve string steel guitar on For the Roses. Bliss. Life is good.

But not this morning.

I have already begun to partake of what I call "The Holy Hangover Trinity." Water, The Creator. Ibuprofen, The Redeemer. And Coffee, The Sanctifier.

Blessed be their Names.

If I Had My Way...

I’d just walk through those doors

And wander down the Champs-Elysees

Going café to cabaret thinkin’ how I’ll feel

When I find that very good friend of mine.

                   Joni Mitchell, Free Man in Paris

 

Yesterday a friend returned my Paris guidebook. I have not seen it for a long time.

I sat with it a while. And in doing so, I sat with Paris for a while.

My past is in Rhode Island. My present is in Charleston. But my dreams are in Paris.

 

I have dreamed of Paris since I was a very small child.

On a bleak and rainy New England Saturday when I was about eight years old and confined to the house, I turned on the television and was mesmerized by a movie entitled, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” (no, not the Disney version; the Charles Laughton, black and white one). Quasimodo won my tender sympathy and had I been Maureen O’Hara I would have danced for him too. Victor Hugo is a hero of France and when I watched The Hunchback of Notre Dame and years later read Les Miserables he became one of mine as well. Perhaps no movie has ever had the same impact on me, for somewhere within my child self I recognized the place, the century, the spirit of France. I had connections here. My parents and grandparents spoke French in the house. My maternal grandfather’s genealogy, which has been charted back to 1613 lists ancestral  birthplaces that include Normandy, Lyonnais (Bishopric of Saint Iranaeus of Lyons), Saint Onge, Orleanais (site of the successful siege of Orleans by Joan of Arc), Troyes (of Chretien de Troyes, 12th century author of the Arthurian legend, Perceval, The Story of the Grail), and the Diocese de Paris, Ile-de-France.

 

My religious imagination posits past lives spent in the company of Thomas Aquinas, Master of Theology at the University of Paris. I envision myself (or is it a memory?) mounted on a percheron in the battalion of Joan of Arc, and as a freedom fighter in the French Revolution. “Liberte! Egalite! Fraternite!”   

I have had dreams of them all. I had dreams in which I was a member of the French Resistance during WWII (to which a friend once remarked upon my recounting such a dream, “Of course you were.”). The dreams of France are vivid.

And Notre Dame. Ah! Notre Dame. Most magnificent edifice ever constructed for God by men. I longed to see it.

 

Allow me a little digression… Three years ago I received my first tattoo. Once the decision had been made to actually get one, there was no hesitation or doubt of what it would be. Tattooed on my lower back is the fleur-de-lis, symbol of the right to rule France (she said humbly). But that is not all. The fleur-de-lis is the symbol of French royalty, the symbol of France itself. The three pointed stylized lily (some maintain it is an iris) is an ancient symbol of Neolithic and Classical goddesses. It is a symbol for purity and so has been associated with the Virgin Mary. Its three points rendered it a symbol for the Trinity. It was embroidered on the banners of Joan of Arc as she marched into battle and is associated especially with the Kings Louis of France (Saint Louis, Louis IX of course, is my patron namesake). And it is depicted on the flag of Quebec, the birthplace of my beloved grandfather, Samuel. My only lament is that it also serves as the insignia for the Boy Scouts of America. And yet, don’t you just find it deliciously ironic that the symbol for the Boy Scouts of America has pagan roots in the ancient goddess? (But then, what doesn’t?)

 

So, six years ago when my daughter spent a semester in Paris, it was time to go to the city of my dreams.  My Friend and I went together. There is nothing like being in Paris with one’s best friend and one’s daughter. We like to do the same things (mostly) and even when our favorite things are not the same, we indulge the other because we know they will make time for ours. When I had not had enough of the churches, we saw more churches. When she had not had enough of the museums we went to another museum. And when we got each other lost, the annoyance was short-lived because of the love. And we could laugh out loud and we could cry without restraint, because we always have.

 

For ten days we had a Paris apartment, in the Fifth Arrondissement, the Latin Quarter, on the Rue Descartes (once a street of brothels). Within blocks of our building was Rue Mouffetard, which once offered housing to the poet Paul Verlaine and American Ernest Hemingway. A few hundred yards away was a section of a fortified wall built by Louis Philippe and another hundred yards in the opposite direction, The Pantheon, the mausoleum that protects the remains of the heroes of France, including the dead Victor Hugo.  

 

Magnificence is everywhere. Paris does not disappoint. We even had our own French waiter. His name was Herve and every morning we would walk down la Rue Descartes and breakfast at his brasserie; croissants or baguettes with butter and jam and cappuccinos that tasted like dessert. On the last day of our stay, Herve turned on the restaurant’s sound system and sang to us publicly and delightfully. The warmest of goodbyes. Rumors of the rude French are lies, all lies. We encountered nothing but warmth and welcome. They were helpful and charming when we most needed them to be.

 

The small pleasures were sinful enough; le café and ice cream called Berthillon, the best of which was served in a café situated just blocks from Notre Dame (let me say that again, just blocks from Notre Dame). Thick rich ice creamscooped out like little balls and served in threes, the chocolate so rich it is like eating cold fudge. Every afternoon at 3:00 we’d stop walking to have a petit dessert. My Friend experimented with the pastries, every day a different one, and one day a plate was set before her that was so beautiful, she took a photo of it. For me, it was always the same, the ice cream, “Trois boules, s’il vous plait.” While in Paris all of our senses feasted. Taste; croissants and pastry with cream, ice cream and cappuccinos sprinkled with chocolate. Sight; Monets, Van Goghs, Bottacelli frescoes, Rembrandts and Da Vincis, stained glass and my favorites; the gargoyles and Degas’ ballerinas. And just in case we didn’t think Paris welcomed us, a double rainbow just outside our window on our second night. Beauty everywhere, which made our eyes hurt. Sound; the French language spoken so prettily and with such lilting welcome, “Bonjour!” Touch; sculpture, fabric, stone and soft leathers. And having waited a lifetime for one, I bought a leather jacket that was hand-made in a little shop by the man who fitted me. Scent; flowers everywhere, candles lit in faith in the cathedrals, cheeses so sharp one turns her head away from the pungency; wines, and perfumes given as little tokens when making a purchase. After days of so much feasting, indulgence and beauty, My Friend and I thought surely we were destined for hell, because we had so much of heaven there.

 

 

My Back Pages III

Journal Entry--- March 26, 1993

 

Earlier in the semester during one of the lectures I wrote down and underlined, “It is impossible to escape one’s history.”

 

As a woman pursuing a Masters of Divinity degree I am often asked whether or not I plan to be ordained. The answer to this question initially and invariably includes providing the information that I am Catholic. The feelings that accompany the act of saying, “I am Catholic,” are complex to say the least. They are a combination of embarrassment and a defiant claim of ownership; embarrassment because of the injustices inflicted by the hierarchy of the Church throughout its history and defiant claim of ownership because being Catholic is an integral part of who I was and am. I imagine the feelings to be comparable to the experience of a child whose parent is a public embarrassment. The whole world may condemn him or her and yet, despite this, the child is compelled to say, “He is my father,” or “She is my mother.” For me the experience of growing up Catholic was so profound that I cannot separate it from who I am.

 

As a Catholic woman the question of ordination requires not only the obvious decision regarding vocation in general but also the decision to leave the tradition. The experience of waking up on any given morning and thinking, “I am not Catholic,” is comparable to waking up and thinking, “My name is not Louise.” The tradition has given me a love of ritual, story, divine things; an appreciation for the symbolic and an awe for the human practice of religion. It is an inseparable part of my memory, my childhood and my history.

 

The discussion in my group this week evolved into a debate concerning the tension experienced while deciding for oneself whether working within the structure of the Church is worthwhile or is compromising of one’s own commitment to personal liberation. I found myself becoming increasingly agitated when, after having explained that I have made a vow to myself never, ever to work for the Catholic Churchagain, some women in my group attempted to convince me that only in working within the system can I create change. As my agitation turned to anger, I candidly expressed that I didn’t really care what happened to the Church; let it crumble and fall on its own arrogance and intolerance.

 

I then related a story of an experience I had 5 years ago. In November of 1988 I had given a presentation on the “Image of God,” to a group of parents preparing their children for First Eucharist. Two months later, in January of 1989 one of the parents who had been present at the session approached me after the class and said that he wanted to thank me for that session. Because of it, he said, he had been helped through a very painful time in December. His brother had been killed in the Pan Am 103 Flight that crashed over Lockerbie, Scotland. He told me that because of that presentation he had been able to image God in such a way as to not blame God for his brother’s death. [I am not such an advocate for the God of the Bible these days].

 

I told my discussion group that after he had said this to me and I had been left alone in the church basement, I wanted to run from that place as far and as fast as my feet would carry me. Why had it taken this man 34 years to hear a word about God that did not present “Him,” as responsible for suffering? What kind of God did we, as ministers present to people in the midst of their pain? I knew only too well; a God who wills for us to suffer, a God who tests His people; a God who works in “mysterious ways.” If a charge of slander could be brought against the teaching office of the Church in the name of God, a guilty verdict would be inescapable.

 

After I related this story a member of my group asked me if I didn’t thank God that I had been there for this man and made a difference in his life. I told her that I rejoiced in it, but wondered if she knew at what cost. I have come to realize that working for the Church meant [for me] that I was still participating in a cycle of abuse. I, along with millions of women past and present have been exploited, silenced, diminished and abused by a powerful Church that in the midst of abusive tactics expects gratitude for the opportunity to stand marginally in its presence. The sense of betrayal and pain that I experienced in this realization is something from which I am still attempting to recover.

 

My story ends that very same afternoon while waiting on the platform at South Station for my train back to Rhode Island (I commute to Cambridge for classes). Standing on the platform not five feet away from me was Ed, the man in my story [I know. And even as I write this 13 years later, I have a case of goose bumps]. He was waiting for the same train home. I hadn’t seen him in two years. I called out his name; we embraced and sat together for the one hour ride home. During the trip he talked about the very experience I had related in class that day (I had not wanted to bring it up myself). He told me that he had spoken to me that evening five years earlier because he thought that I probably often wondered whether my work made a difference or not and he wanted me to know that in his life, it had.

 

And I didn’t want to run this time. I realized that even though the Church had been in my life far longer than I had been in his, the Church did not define my image of God, nor did it have the final word on the creation of myself. Those were ultimately in my hands. So, I realized that I had not fashioned Ed’s image of God either. I had simply been in his life for a moment and if somehow, in some small way, he felt that I had made a difference, then I was still glad for it. You call these “Christic” moments, Carter and I understand more than ever that the Church does not define sacrament, nor does it define Christ. God/Christ is not a being, or a thing. It is a moment, when grace, power, compassion, beauty, truth or tenderness occurs among the human. To use Mary Daly’s term, “God is a verb.”

 

Reflection on the reflection:

It’s been very strange to read and re-write this journal I wrote 13 years ago. I look at the words, know that they were mine and yet, I have changed so much from the woman I was then, I hardly recognize her. I was still speaking of God through the lens of a (somewhat) believer. I believed in the project of systematic theology. I was working through a painful but fertile time in my life; re-inventing a self drawn from an inescapable history but determined not to be chained by that history. I was creating and constructing a self and a voice that would ultimately be mine, not theirs. It takes a lot of work to create a voice.

 

And I am not finished yet. It still takes shape but I will no longer be silenced.

And I live louder every day.

 

Crimson flames tied through my ears
Rollin' high and mighty traps
Pounced with fire on flaming roads
Using ideas as my maps
"We'll meet on edges, soon," said I
Proud 'neath heated brow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth
"Rip down all hate," I screamed
Lies that life is black and white
Spoke from my skull. I dreamed
Romantic facts of musketeers
Foundationed deep, somehow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

                     Bob Dylan, My Back Pages, 1964

My Back Pages II

Journal Entry  3/5/93

 

In the Beginning was the God/ess, the Playful,

  The Delightful, the Wonder-Filled, the Divine Energy.

And the God/ess created humankind in the Divine Image;

  Male and Female the Divine Image created them.

The God/ess blessed them saying, “Be creative and imaginative,

  Fill the earth and rejoice in it.

Have compassion for the swimming creatures, the winged creatures,

  The four-legged, and two-legged creatures and

All the living creatures that move upon the earth.”

 

The God/ess said, “Have compassion also with every tree

   That has seed-bearing fruit, the flowers and the grasses.”

And so it was.

   The HeavenEarth and all its array was begun,

But not completed.

   And the God/ess said, “Let the creatures live in peace,

And bring the HeavenEarth to fulfillment.”

   The God/ess looked at everything that was begun.

And the God/ess laughed.

   Evening came.

And the God/ess played.

   Morning came.

And the God/ess laughed.

  Such was the beginning,

Of the creation and recreation.

 

                         (With a nod to Genesis and with audacious creative liberty).

 

The re-working of Genesis above, appeared in my journal for March, 1993

The reflection below is a combination of thoughts I wrote then, and some I’ve added today.

 

The term “HeavenEarth” serves as my vision for the realm of God. Repeatedly in the Gospels, Jesus of Nazareth seemed pre-occupied with announcing its in-breaking. But traditional theology, in its treatment of the “realm [or Kingdom, or reign] of God,” has eliminated the earth from its imagery; it has virtually eliminated the human from its realization. The realm of God has come to mean some eschatological, other-worldly event that leaves the earth behind in a future eternal existence. It leaves the human behind and envisions angels and demons separated by a God who once again divides rather than re-members and re-creates. Once again a dualistic world view has rendered even the ultimate vision of Jesus, a torn, broken mess.

 

In my own understanding of the realm of God its fulfillment will only come when all dualisms have been eliminated; when the earth becomes heaven because we have created it so; when the human becomes divine because we have transformed ourselves into holy compassion; when spirit and matter are honored equally as sacred; when male and female are so inconsequential that the first thing noticed about a person is not their sex (or color, or ethnicity, or economic status), but their human dignity.

 

A theology that posits a being who broke through the dualism of divine/human and who existed as both-in-one was the opportunity to begin that vision. But it was lost like Arthur’s Camelot. And for one brief shining moment the world experienced the reality of Jesus of Nazareth who redeemed the earth by announcing its very intimacy with heaven; who exemplified the lesson once and for all, that the human and divine are not separate; who brought together male and female as Divine Logos and Sophia Wisdom; who announced that the realm of God lay not in an otherworldly place, but in the depths of the human soul. And then like all things before it that were profoundly beautiful and true, the world saw to it that his life and his lesson were killed.

 

“The realm of God is within you,” Jesus said.

 

It seems such a simple affirmation.

How could his millennia of listeners be so obtuse, arrogant or ignorant, stubborn, myopic or just plain stupid to have so misinterpreted and bastardized this truth?

But they have. Jesus was projected into the cosmos like some rocket ship, directly to the Father; God remains transcendent and “out there”; salvation lies in the future not in our own making here on earth; the human is still perceived by Us/Them categories, the Saved/the Unsaved, the sacred and the profane; the body is still understood to be the obstacle to the divine rather than its vehicle; the earth is rejected, squandered, and raped. Justice is sought not in the alleviation of suffering within our political and social structures but in a divine justice that comes at the end of time. Human pain has been nailed to the Cross with a hope of transformation only after death, not here and now. Eschatology has come to be associated with each individual’s end. Personal piety and grace have been stored up like neat little boxes for the time when enough little packets could assure a swift acceptance into heaven. How did Jesus’ vision become so SMALL? How did it become so trivial?

 

Reflection on the reflection:

I am amazed that “doing theology” can still fire me up so much. Though now my motivations are so different. I no longer have any interest in exploring the “nature” of the God of the Bible. Now, my “theological project” emerges from the conviction that traditional theology is unjust at its core; it creates and sustains human suffering and serves to protect unjust political, social and cultural structures and institutions. My theological project is no longer characterized by a desire to defend god, as to deconstruct the oppressive ideologies that have been created in the name of a god.

 

In a soldier's stance, I aimed my hand
At the mongrel dogs who teach
Fearing not that I'd become my enemy
In the instant that I preach
My existence led by confusion boats
Mutiny from stern to bow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.”

           Bob Dylan, My Back Pages, 1964