The Beholder is Blind

It’s hard to remember exactly the first moment I knew that I was fat.

 

The earliest memory I have was from my crib. I remember looking up at the white ceiling that wasn’t white, but gold from the sun through the window, and gray from the shadows of walls. The crib shook and my oldest brother climbed in, his face full of happiness like he was saying a big, “Hi!” I wasn’t happy to see him. It wouldn’t be the last time a boy would disturb my world, but it was the first. I told my mother about my memory a few years ago and she thought that was impossible. I must have been told about it she said and she described my bedroom. I corrected her though, and said that no, when I was a baby, my crib was in the boys’ room, on the wall to the left as you walked in. She said, “Oh! That’s right!” And then she believed me.

 

I might have known sooner that I was fat if my brothers had teased me about it, but they didn’t. Not ever. Oh they teased me, but not about that. They teased me about sucking my thumb and about riding a tricycle when I really should have been on a bicycle, but they never teased me about being fat. I still wonder about that and why they didn’t. It would have been such a delicious and easy cruelty. But I guess that provides my answer. My brothers were not cruel.

 

When I started school I was spared the tortures of the fat child because my best friend Elaine was petite and cute, had large brown eyes and three dimples, one sitting impossibly in the middle of her chin. Everyone wanted to play with her and she made it abundantly clear in the midst of her playground power, that if anyone was going to play with her, they’d be playing with me too. She was my champion and my fierce protector. I told  her this a few years ago; this theory of our playground—that it was she who saved me from ridicule and pain. She was incredulous. She said, “Is that what you think? Are you nuts?” Then she said, “Louise, I did none of that. Kids liked you because of you.” I replied, “That may have been true once they got to know me, but I still think it was you who paved the way to allow for their getting to know me.” That conversation made me ever so aware of how two perspectives of the same time, the same people and the same playground can be so utterly different. 

 

Elaine wore patent leather Mary Janes to school. I coveted them. I was so fat my mother was concerned that my feet would become “flat,” if not encased every day in some kind of protective armor. I was sentenced to wearing brown leather oxfords with a million, gazillion eyes that needed shoelaces a foot long. They were called “Girl Scout shoes” and every time I had to lace them up I cursed Juliet Lowe. And people wonder why I find cowboy boots so thrilling.

 

One day in the sixth grade we all had to line up at the Nurse’s office for measuring and weighing. I dreaded it, especially since we were measured and weighed by the Nurse who then called the numbers aloud to the chronicler sitting five feet away. As I approached I heard the weights of all the little girls ahead of me, “76 pounds, 82 pounds.” I approached the scale and then heard in a voice that I imagined reached every inch of hall in Bernon Heights Elementary School, “116 pounds.” It was a deep humiliation.

 

Growing up in a culture that values appearance in females above all else, I was at a distinct disadvantage. Add to that my upbringing in a Catholic environment in which pride was considered the greatest sin. My appearance was never affirmed or complimented lest I become vain. One day as my mother and I were walking together down Main Street, no doubt on our bi-annual trek to Kornstein’s Department Store to purchase aforementioned dreaded Girl Scout shoes, she encountered a woman on the street whom she knew, but whom I had never before seen. They chatted and chatted while I patiently and silently stood by looking all around me. Quite suddenly their talking became a whisper and the change in volume of their voices caught my attention and I began to listen. The woman whispered to my mother, “She’s beautiful.” My mother whispered back, “I know.” I turned my head to see what lovely girl might be walking towards us and upon whom they might be commenting. I saw no one. And incredulously realized they had been discussing me. It remains a moment, a memory, full of wonder.

 

I suspect that Elaine’s memory of that time has been influenced by the result of my subconscious, child-like understanding that if I, a fat child, was going to make it in the world I couldn’t rely on my appearance. I suppose I learned to develop my personality and this is what Elaine remembers. In some ways I was a quite confident child and teenager. I was fearless on the softball field, wielded a ping pong paddle to local championship status, began public speaking when I was 16 and was so likeable in high school that I managed to ingratiate myself into every clique possible. I was accepted by the geeks, the cheerleaders, the hippies, the black kids, the athletes, the dopers. A month before graduation in my senior year, the newly published yearbook was distributed and we all turned to the Superlatives page; you know… Most likely to succeed, Cutest Couple, Best Dressed, etc. And there to my astonishment, I found my own picture above the superlative, “Wittiest Girl.” I had received the majority nod in a graduating class of 350 seniors who voted for me as female class clown. Superlatives were determined by write-in ballot. Evidently singing 1940’s torch songs in the middle of the hallways in between periods had drawn more attention  than even Ithought. When I brought the book home and showed the page to my mother, she said, “How come you’re not funny at home?” She had a point. In the company of others I was charming and funny. At home I was a teenage bitch.  

 

Eventually, when I was 23 and the mother of a young son, I decided to lose the weight. My top weight had been reached at 215 pounds. I wore a size 42 in men’s jeans.

I didn’t want my children to have a fat mother. I lost 70 pounds in 7 months. People who had known me my whole life didn’t recognize me on the street until I smiled or hailed them. Some people thought I had contracted a fatal illness because surely if I was thin, it must mean I was dying. I wonder if you can imagine what it was like to walk passed a mirror and be so startled by the image that you had to return to it, not recognizing at all the figure that was reflected there. I was so unaccustomed to the contours of my body that one night while my ex-husband and I were lying in bed, my arm brushed against my hip. I stopped dead, moved my hand once again over my hip and said, “Oh my God. I have a lump.” He said, “Where?” I said, “Here,” and moved his hand to touch the protrusion. He said with a laugh, “You funny idiot, that’s your hip bone and you have another one just like it on the other side.”  Sure enough, there it was.

 

One would think that after so long a period I would now be comfortable in this body and yet, I still grab clothes off the rack that are too large and I am surprised when in the dressing room they fall off. Evidently, I still don’t see what others see when I look into the mirror.

 

One night,while sitting at a bar with a friend here in Charleston, a twenty-something year old tried to pick me up. When he left I said, "What the hell is wrong with him?" My friend asked what I meant. I said, "Well, look around. The place is full of beautiful young women." She launched into what can only be described as a lecture. When at last she asked, "What is it that you think when someone looks at you like that or tells you that you are beautiful?" I said, "Well, if they are my friend, I think it is because they love me. If they are a stranger, I think they are just being kind." She said, "People are not that kind." And when people do say such things I am freakily fascinated by it. I want to see what they see and I want to say, "Don't be silly," as startled by it as I was that day standing on Main Street with my mother. This same friend who scolded me and in the attempt to help me acknowledge that at the very least I might be attractive, made me promise to stand before my bathroom mirror every day and really see (and love) what is there. She knew not the difficult assignment she had given to me.

 

It is a lifelong curse and blessing, I suppose, this blindness within oneself that denies what others would acknowledge. Just this week someone used the word “beautiful,” and in response to my reaction said, “You really don’t see it.” I said, “No. I really don’t.” And so what? So what? I can still wield a ping pong paddle in victory. I can still take command of a room when I speak. I can still bring about a peel of laughter from friends. And dammit, I can wear cowboy boots. So what, if when someone says something very similar to, “She’s beautiful,” I still have the urge to turn my head to see what lovely girl might be approaching?

 

 

Rain, Rain Go Away?

I have been reading students' “critical reflection” papers on a selection from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. The assigned excerpt from the novel deals with Ivan Karamazov’s challenge to his brother Alyosha (a Christian monk), regarding the role of God in the suffering of the innocent. It is a classic reading in the field of theodicy and works to challenge the traditional justifications for God in the face of radical evil.

 

So help me (Whoever), if I read one more paper that contains the statements, “we’ll never know the answer,” or “we can’t know the mind of God,” or “it’s up to us to trust that God knows what God is doing,” I am going to scream so loudly, I’ll be heard across the bridge into downtown Charleston.

 

I wonder sometimes if students think and write in other disciplines the way that they do in religious studies courses. I have had numerous papers in which Dostoyevsky is mentioned in the first sentence in an introduction to the essay, e.g. “Ivan Karamazov, in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, presents a challenge to the faith of his brother Alyosha when he questions the divine justice of innocent suffering,” and then, the author, the book and the characters are never mentioned again. The student forever abandons the focus of the “critical paper” (the reading under review) and launches  into her/his own theology, theodicy or spontaneous stream of speculative theo-consciousness. I wonder how their history professor would respond if a student were assigned to write a critical response to the Gettysburg Address, mentioned Abraham Lincoln in the first sentence and then wrote for two pages about what it was like to be six years old and living in the South never mentioning the Gettysburg Address again.

 

They tell me that God knows what God is doing and that, in other words, it’s none of my business; that we can’t know the mind of God and so “we just have to trust.” Often in response to these statements I will write in the margin, “If we can’t know the mind of God then everybody had better stop right now telling us who God is, what God is, or what God does,” because if the mind of God cannot be known in relation to suffering than the mind of God cannot be known, period. So the project of theology and Biblical religion must stop all together. If they tell me that God knows what God is doing and we cannot judge God’s justice I write, “According to Christianity, human beings are innately endowed with reason, which grants to us the ability to know justice; to know right from wrong and good from evil. If your divine Being would endow us with the ability to identify injustice, are we prohibited from using this faculty when the critical finger is pointed at the divine Being itself?” Abraham, Moses, Job and Jesus would answer with a resounding, “No,” for these heroes of the Bible (according to the Bible) were notoriously audacious for challenging their God when they judged Him (sic) to be unjust. When they tell me that we will never “know the answer” to the Problem of Evil, I write various things. Sometimes I write that it is a good thing that the medical community had not decided that the cure for polio would never be found and that cancer researchers don’t throw up their hands in frustration and declare, “Cancer is a mystery!” Sometimes I write that perhaps Theists will never arrive at a logical, intellectually satisfying theodicy, but some theodicists have proposed that some theodicies are more dangerous and damaging than others, so perhaps it is good for us to pay attention. And sometimes I write that atheists, on the other hand, think they have found the “answer.” And yes, I will often utilize the student’s own world view and language in the hope that they will see from another location. “What you see depends upon where you stand,” in the words of Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenza.

 

Very often when Voltaire’s poemThe Lisbon Earthquake or the selection by Dostoyevsky are the readings under consideration, students often accuse the authors of being “negative,” and their subsequent remarks lead me to understand that they see this as something negative. I swear I have no idea what they mean. What is “negativity?” Do they mean that critical thinking is negative? Do they mean that logic which leads to doubt is negative? Would they prefer some kind of Pollyanna, rose-colored sight that never critically evaluates anything? Or is criticism just restricted as regards theology? I have been reading these papers which accuse “negativity” in Voltaire and Dostoyevsky for years and read in them a perfunctory dismissal of the authors’ critique, but I do not know what it means. Perhaps I should ask my students.

 

To me, a negative outlook on life would be displayed by someone who, without meteorological information might say, “I just know it’s going to rain tomorrow. We’re going to have a terrible time. We’ll have to run from the picnic grounds in a downpour.” This is not the same as saying, “”Hey look, it’s raining!”  To point to a conflict or injustice that is apparent in an idea or an action or a belief is not the same as pessimism that would doom a picnic before it occurs or before one gets the current weather report. The conflict already exists. It is not created by the one who points to it and this is what Voltaire and Dostoyevsky do. They point to irrational, contradictory or problematic theology and say, “Hey, look at this! It doesn’t make sense!” It seems the same with relationships. Often a person who calls attention to an issue or a problem in a relationship is sometimes accused of “causing trouble.” What is not recognized is that the problem already exists. The one pointing to it is  simply saying, “Hey look! It’s raining!”

 

I remember a long time ago when I started to read feminist theologians, one Thanksgiving one of my books was on the counter in my Rhode Island kitchen. My brother walked by, saw the book and said, “What are ya’ reading that for?” I answered him exactly why. An intellectual argument ensued. When everyone had gone, my son, who was very young at the time said, “I don’t like that book. That book is bad. It makes people fight.” I said, “Oh Honey, Uncle Bert and Mommy weren’t fighting. We were having a discussion about things that are important to us. That’s what people do who trust each other.” I would challenge my students, that if they trust their God as much as they say they do, then like Abraham and Moses, they should feel comfortable and confident to challenge Him (sic), to doubt and to argue with Him too.

They should be able to point to the sky and say, “Hey look God. It’s raining!”

From the Sublime to the Ridiculous

 

***The sublime:

 

I had such a cool afternoon on Thursday. I had planned on going to a lecture sponsored by the philosophy department on "Genocide and Humanitarian Intervention" (read: violence or war as justified in response to genocide) given by Larry May, Professor at Washington University in St. Louis. Anyway, he was hanging out in the philosophy department lounge working on his notes before his lecture when I had to walk by him to use the bathroom attached to the lounge. I stopped and introduced myself. We started talking about courses and stuff and I told him about my Evil and Suffering course. He asked, "Do you read Hannah Arendt?" I said, "Yes, we do a few chapters from Eichmann in Jerusalem and a few chapters on the distinction between pity and compassion in On Revolution. He said, "I was her last doctoral student."

I almost bowed.

Anyway, he also has a degree in law as well as philosophy so his interests in genocide have to do with International Law, the international definition of genocide and its implication for Just War Theory and international criminal justice. His lecture was fascinating to me and I asked a few questions. I am well acquainted with Just War Theory because we cover it in my Comparative Religious Ethics course. I also studied with Ralph Potter (who did work on Just War Theory in the 70s). I mentioned him to Dr. May and he knew who he was. God I love this stuff (uhhh… philosophy, not genocide). Sometimes, I am SUCH a geek.

 

Now, the international definition for genocide, which came out of the Geneva Convention is, “the intent to destroy a social group.”  There’s more of course, including the criteria for defining a social group, which covers four categories; racial, national, ethnic or religious. But the quandary facing international governing bodies NOW is that according to the definition, technically one group could “intend” to destroy another social group without causing even one death. One could attempt to destroy a social group through dispersement or through the legal prohibition of practices and customs, or some other creative means. Certainly, one could argue that when the definition was constructed, those on the committee surely meant “the intent to destroy the members of a social group,” but that’s not how the definition exists today. Philosophies of law and the judicial enforcement of said international law must now deal with the complexities this definition causes. How does one justify intervention, which could be potentially violent, in a situation in which a social group is being threatened without physical violence? And what about those potential situations in which many might be killed, but they do not constitute a recognizable “social group?” One could argue that David Koresh’s Branch-Davidian sect, AKA the Waco, Texas fiasco constituted genocide within a strict interpretation of the definition. There was intent to destroy a social group, (a religious one). And yet, our common sensibilities would tend to reject that conclusion.

 

One of my questions was related to this. I asked, “Many of the theoretical problems seem to present themselves because of the initial definition. Has no one called for the need to rethink it; to fine-tune it?” Professor May’s response was that it appears we’re stuck with it for the time being. Hmmmmm…

 

*** The ridiculous:

 

I worked a Starbucks shift yesterday.

 

At one point, I was working the register (I mean, working it, Baby).

There were three somewhat elderly women (well, older than me anyway) hogging the counter, couldn't find their exact change, wanted a plate instead of a bag... but, the other register person was waiting on them.

I cheerfully called the next person in line over to my register--- a man, noticeably irritated, carrying a newspaper tucked under his arm. 

 

He said, "Medium coffee."

 

I said, "Is that our paper or your paper?" (People expect us to KNOW this. If it’s our paper, they have to pay for it).

 

He said, "Just a medium coffee."

 

I said over my shoulder (to the woman actually POURING the coffee)... "Grande coffee."

 

He said abrasively, "You know, it's rude to speak a different language from the person who speaks to you." (Meaning of course, the bilingual skills necessary to translate "Medium" to "Grande").

 

I said, "That will be one dollar and 90 cents."

 

He said, "F**K you."

 

I handed him his change and said, "Thank you. Have a wonderful day."

Which I am sure pissed him off even more because I didn’t flinch.

 

I am not a big fan of suicide. But some people are just so damn miserable that sometimes it seems a reasonable choice for them. I mean depression is one thing, but depression is not necessarily turned against another person. Misanthropy and misery that is expressed outwards violently, just might present a case to argue that suicide sometimes is just the right thing to do.  (OK… cool it. I’m being somewhat sardonic here,not entirely serious).

 

From now on, if anyone says, “F**K you” to me, I’m saying it back (with a “thank you” and a smile too, of course). 

Truth and Dare

Funny thing about truth; everybody has a different idea about what it is. Theologian Bernard Lonergan once said that if there is still debate about an issue then the truth has not yet been found. If that is “true,” then truth is about as rare as a white unicorn. I don’t even know why we use the word anymore. As if, even if it exists, we could know it. There are some statements that are self-evident like, “Lime Jell-O  is green,” or “The volume of local car dealership commercials increases on your television by 50%,” but, would we place such statements in the category of truth? 

 

You know what kind of “truth” I am talking about.

 

On the first day of class in divinity school, I sat in Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenza’s classroom. She wrote on the board, “Truth is constructed.” It was a memorable moment for me. In fact, I almost fell out of my chair, literally and figuratively; my theological chair that is. Despite my emergent understanding that religion has been constructed and greatly influenced and shaped by historical, cultural and political contexts, I still held on to the idea that there was truth accessible to human knowing and that it existed in some absolute state “out there.” And if only we were diligent enough we could find it. I am still living with the profundity of Elisabeth’s statement.

 

I have no more illusions about the existence of absolute truths hidden away in some cosmic box (not unlike Pandora’s) waiting for someone to open the lid. If there is such a box and someone should happen to find it and open its lid, whoever they would be, the transmission and interpretation of its contents would not escape the filter of that person’s historical, political and cultural environment and language. And so it would arrive, shaped and colored and distorted through the lens of human limitation.

 

Truth is constructed.

 

And yet to say that one is seeking after truth is not the same as claiming to know the truth. Those who seek after truth continue to ask questions and to doubt.  Nothing; no thought, no book, no ideology, no law, no doctrinal statement is considered so sacred that it is exempt from the eye of scrutiny and suspicion. As such, one remains open to the wisdom of others and (hopefully) does not arrogantly claim that the human body of knowledge is now a closed system. I have friends who teach theology and religion in Catholic universities. Several years ago they were given to sign a “mandate,” which stated that in their classrooms they would not teach anything that was contrary to official Catholic teaching, nor would they entertain speculative doubt regarding the truth of this teaching. The epistemological assumption here is that all has been revealed, there is no further truth to be found, and that the Church alone is the repository of truth. Many Catholic college professors refused to sign. Now those of you reading this blog who are not Catholic, don’t be so smug. The Catholic Church does not corner the market on religious groups who claim sole possession of the knowledge of truth and arrogantly declare such.

 

I wonder when, historically, possessing the truth and asserting one’s truth into the world became so important. And why now everyone’s differing truths are such a ground of contention, separation and isolation. One would think that if a truth has been found, it would unite, but all that claims to truth seem to do is divide. Elie Wiesel once said that in the answers there is death; life is in the questions.

 

I have had students who have told me that in their questioning and doubt they have been told by parents that if they cannot affirm the claims of Christianity then they are no longer welcomed in their home. I have had students who have written their first critical analysis of their religion while their hands shook as they typed the words. I had a student once tell me that it actually crossed his mind that his mother and sister were both diagnosed with cancer in the same month because he was being punished for questioning his faith. I have had students in my office in tears because as they begin to question they begin to reject truth claims that seem to them to be unloving, illogical, and contrary to their understanding of the ethical requirements of compassion. I have had students tell me that they have been told they are going to hell. I could go on and on. And all this pain because they do not conform to someone else’s idea of truth. But what my students are doing is seeking after truth and in seeking after truth, ironically, they are finding what it is they reject. Equally valuable, I think.

 

Imagine this; no thought, no book, no ideology, no law, no doctrinal statement is considered so sacred that it is exempt from criticism and prophetic judgment. Gandhi once said that any scripture  that violates the principles of ahimsa (non-violence) and human dignity is not a shastra (sacred scripture). This remains one of the most courageous and stunning assertions I have ever heard from a religious leader. Sacred scripture is not beyond questioning and if it is found to be in violation of human dignity then it is to be rejected as sacred. Wow. But then, Gandhi’s criteria for assessing whether or not an action or idea was sacred was not that he’d  learned it in childhood, or that it was contained in a book, or that it was “tradition,” or part of a body of inherited knowledge. Gandhi’s “truths” had to be tested in ethical experience. The yardstick for Gandhi was non-violence. This was his measure of truth and of the sacred. For him nothing was true that violated human dignity. And he opened himself to the possibility that truths could be found in religious traditions other than his own; that no single system contained all wisdom.

 

To hold “truths” as sacred does not seem to be serving humanity well. Perhaps our criteria for sacredness should no longer be whether or not we believe it to be true.  Perhaps our criteria for judging the value and sacredness of being in the world is better grounded in ethical questions like, “Does this ‘truth’ acknowledge the human dignity of the other? Does this action (or idea) work to alleviate suffering? Does this doctrine alienate, separate and discriminate? If it does, out it goes. Does this belief promote the superiority of the one over/against the other (in THIS world OR the next)? Does the statement in that book violate the dignity and worth of any human being? Promote or instigate violence?

 

Perhaps instead of asking “Is it TRUE?” we should be asking, “Is it JUST?”

Ahhhh… but this is a loaded question isn’t it? For justice too is relative to one’s “truth.” This relativity is the same which allows a student of mine to sit in the back of the room and in answer to my question as to whether it is logical to propose that an omni-benevolent god condemn 6 million Holocaust victims to hell for all eternity, to nod his head. Yes, yes, this made pefect sense to him. And I’m sure to him and to his version of truth it seemed the epitome of justice. So, in addition to asking the question, “Is it just?” we must listen to the response as  it is expressed  not from those who sit in  the  chairs of privilege and authority, for their truths are very different from those at the bottom. No, the question, “Is it just?” must be answered by those who are suffering and their voices must carry the authority to determine the ethical truth of our claims. It must be they who represent the sacred in our midst, and our possession of truth must be measured by how we honor their sacredness.