I was asked a question the other day, by a really smart friend who realized that when I wrote “all I want is a little brains, a little heart and a little courage” that I said so for literary effect. But since he is a relentless question-maker (I like that about him) he went for it anyway, “Now seriously though, isn’t what you really want, a lot of brains, a lot of heart and a strong spine?”
I wrote back…”Yes. That's exactly right. A lot of brains. I have to be able to talk to a man about the things I care most. People have laughed at me when I have said, "If he can't understand me when I talk about evil and suffering, then it's not going to work." It's seems a strange requirement I know, but is nevertheless true. If they don't "get” my determination to deconstruct traditional understandings and treatments of suffering; if they don’t “get” that the issue is an ethical one, then they won't "get" me. And I mean that both in terms of "having" me and in understanding me.
After I wrote this, I had to go to my office to search for something and came across a bag filled with all the papers I wrote for my professors in divinity school. I looked at some of the titles and occasionally thought to myself, “Wow. I knew that once?” I fear I have forgotten more than I remember. I sat on the floor of my office and began to read a weekly “journal” I had written for Rev. Carter Heyward who taught my course in Christology at the Episcopal Divinity School. (And I still remember walking from EDS to HDS in FebRuary when the temps would fall to 2 degrees and the wind whipping in off the Charles River would force me to duck into the Law School just to get warm so I could keep going). I took one course there that transferred to Harvard. I took it because Carter Heyward is one of the “Philadelphia Eleven,” one of the eleven women who were ordained in 1975 by four renegade Bishops, before the Episcopal Church ordained women. Their “ordination” that year would result in the decision by the Episcopal Church convention the next year to end their policyof barring women from the priesthood. (And yes, please call a woman a “priest.” None of this “woman minister” crap). I wrote an entry in that journal in 1993 that I could have written yesterday. Here it comes; an entry that will inevitably be the first of others in this blog, on the topic of evil and suffering.
Welcome to My Back Pages:
Journal entry for the week of 4/5/93 (Oh my. Well, look whose birthday that is).
My interest in studying the theology of suffering, my critique of the inadequacy of traditional treatments of suffering and my determination to deconstruct them were born out of the experience of parish ministry. As an education minister in a parish of 1600 families in RI, I witnessed anguish and suffering by some who experienced tragedy beyond belief. As I listened to the pastoral responses offered to them I began to reflect on the theological understanding of suffering (and God’s role in it) that resulted from my having “grown up Catholic.”
As a woman of French-Canadian descent raised as a Roman Catholic in a small New England “mill town,” I witnessed theological and pastoral treatments of suffering that diminished the very real human experience of suffering and tended to “spiritualize” it into higher goals or ideals. The theological language of suffering can be illustrated by citing some of those stock phrases that are typically offered in the face of tragedy or pain; phrases like “it was God’s will,” or “God has His [sic] reasons,” “God doesn’t close a door without blah, blah, blah.” Suffering brought about by the hands of another such as domestic violence or other forms of abuse was treated in such a way as to suggest that the victim had opportunity within the victimization, and that the suffering could be utilize to strengthen or elevate them. Or they were chastised for not having the fortitude to “bear their cross,” or for not extending immediate and unconditional forgiveness. I know only too well that there exists a theology of suffering that sends a clear message that some experiences of suffering were not to be voiced at all. There is a reason why “to suffer in silence” has become cliché. It has been the experience of far too many.
The theological implications of such pastoral responses are evident in those postures held by those who suffer and who have been raised on such teachings. If the suffering is God’s will, God must therefore “need” them to suffer for some reason. If a person is “elected” to suffer, the understanding is that God sends the suffering. In much pastoral and theological language of suffering God is made instrumental as the very cause of suffering. [I would later come to understand this by Soelle’s term Divine Sadism]. These perspectives of course contribute to the possibilities for exploitation of those who suffer by those whose interests are served in perpetuating the cycle of institutional and social evil. If God has deemed it necessary to send such suffering, then to do nothing can be seen as an honoring of the will of God. Jesus’ example to seek the alleviation of suffering gets buried in all the “God talk.”
I have seen in my own ministry the deeply held conviction of many that if only they prayed “hard enough,” if only they have faith enough, God will hear them and there will be resolution to their suffering. Conversely if there is no such resolution then it follows that they did not have enough faith, or did not pray well enough. This results in nothing less than divine victim-blaming. The initial suffering is “sent” by God, but the responsibility for the suffering is incumbent upon the faith of the one who suffers.
If a woman who is beaten daily at the hands of her spouse truly believes that this is God’s will for her, the suffering is then given glorified meaning, even though she maynot immediately know what that meaning is. But in order for her to find out, she needs to stick around. She remains within the situation.Suppose the glory of God is to be revealed by her unconditional forgiveness and Christian charity? Suppose she is supposed to “learn” patience? [I would later come to understand this by Soelle’s term Christian Masochism].
As a parish minister and as a student at HDS, no other single issue has so consistently been the focus of my analysis (well, this and feminist theology) as the dynamics of the theological language of suffering. Not only are these dynamics played out in confessional and pastoral counseling settings but in secular and institutional settings as well. Week after week I have been continuously frustrated by sermons that attempt to interpret biblical passages associated with suffering. I would sit in the congregation and know how inadequate these sermons were in the face of very real, lived experiences of despair, loss of employment, sickness and death, violence and tragedy. As a student at HDS, I am finding and creating my own theological voice. I am learning to critically analyze. I am discovering that if I judge a traditional theological perspective to be inadequate and unmindful of people’s experiences then the perspective is in all likelihood, heavy-laden with power and control interests.
The spiritualizing of suffering has led to callous treatments of very real, physical and emotional pain that we are challenged to see and to expose. We must speak a truth that comes from a different kind of knowing; knowing that emerges from listening to the pain of our bodies and our psyches; knowing that allows us to speak a language of resolution and revolution:
There will be no more Glories to God
Until the children’s stomachs are filled.
There will be no more songs to the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic,
Until you have washed the blood off your hands.
There will be no more silences in the dark caverns of your sacred places,
Until the roofs have been blown off by the sound of our voices.
And the songs we will sing will tell the stories of the flesh.
Of the hands that violate innocent bodies.
Of the force of one body into another.
Of the hatred in your eyes.
And the power of your fist.
The songs, the cries, the voices will shout, “No more.”
And the spirit of our lives will be the one WE create.
The spirit of our longing,
The spirit of our liberation.
The spirit of a world crying out for life.
That concluded my 4/5/93 entry.
I added this as a footnote to the poem (psalm?) and to Carter, * “I wrote the poem in an uncharacteristic but most healthy display of anger; anger that is still difficult to express. My immediate response is to be embarrassed by it and to pull the piece of paper out of the printer and hide it. But a voice cannot be raised if it is hidden.”
"Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats
Too noble to neglect
Deceived me into thinking
I had something to protect
Good and bad, I defined these terms
Quite clear, no doubt, somehow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now."
Dylan, My Back Pages, 1964
No comments:
Post a Comment