Reasons to Celebrate

#10: The last three issues of Vanity Fair have featured covers depicting Brad Pitt (April), Leonardo DiCaprio (May) and Bruce Willis (June).

 

#9: Rumor has it that Joni Mitchell has been busy in the studio and is about to release a CD of brand new songs about war and peace. The CD will either be titled “If,” or "Fife and Drum,” (according to my sources).

 

#8: The long awaited fourth installment of the Die Hard series will be released this summer. Live Free or Die starring Bruce Willis as John MacLane will not disappoint as long as it is just a little bit better than Die Harder (#2 in the series).

 

#7: Bob Dylan and his band have not YET completed the announcement of summer tour dates, so perhaps there is still a chance that Dylan will be somewhere near Charleston… and I will get to kiss him.

 

#6: This month there will be a blue moon. The second full moon, which occurs in the same month, is a blue moon. I’m thinking of throwing a party and serving Blue Nun and Moon Pies.

 

#5: On Queen Elizabeth II’s recent visit to the White House, President Bush was only mildly embarrassing, dating America’s BI-centennial in 1776 and referring to the Queen inappropriately as his mother.

 

#4: Roger Clemons is returning to baseball. OK. Yes, I know he’s going back to the Yankees, but I do not consider The Rocket to be a traitor to the Sox (unlike Demon Damon). He is phenomenal. He is The Rocket. And it is always a joy to watch him pitch.

 

#3: It is May in Charleston and the beach beckons.

 

#2: Tropical storm Andrea was gentle and kind.

 

#1: I am alive. And life is good.

 

Post a comment! Tell me something you're celebrating!

I Had the Hard Part

Thursday evening, I participated in a three-part panel presentation on “The Effects of the Women’s Movement on Religion.” The public forum was organized by a local Rabbi and sponsored by The Jewish-Christian Council of Greater Charleston. Isn’t that precious? They still think that ecumenism is possible…

 

The audience was comprised of older members of the community. And I don’t mean older than my students. I mean older than me.

 

It was my job to introduce the feminist critique of patriarchal religions (which is redundant of course, because they all are). I had ten minutes. I know. You’re laughing. I’m laughing too. I started by doing the breakdown of “feminist critical analysis.” Although I had to skip the “feminist” part and just hope that they understood that this was about women. The “critical” part begins with the observation that all of recorded history has been recorded by men, for men, about men. I did the standard Schussler-Fiorenza working definition of patriarchy, i.e. “a system of organization in which dominant men exercise the most power (politically, culturally, religiously, domestically… oh shoot, in every damn way there is) and less dominant men hold lesser power in descending order.” Fiorenza is quick to point out in her classes that one of the characteristic marks of patriarchy is that women are not even included in the structure of power. Then, I did the “analysis” part; that 5,000 years of human reality described, proscribed and prescribed by men must mean something. It does. It means that the body of inherited knowledge; of human understandings of ways of being in the world; of philosophy, history, psychology, mythology, theology… oh shoot, of every damn ‘ology there is, has been constructed by men, through the experience of men. But not just men; men who have lived within a patriarchal system of organization, which privileges them.

 

The result of the analysis is the conclusion that this body of knowledge is fraught with androcentrism, the tendency to think, write and act as if men constitute the standard of what it means to be human; that men serve as the model of ideal humanity and all those who are not men are marginal and peripheral as human beings. And then I gave examples of androcentrism as it rears its ugly head in language; in authorship, interpretation and translation of texts. One of the consequences of androcentrism, particularly in worldviews that assume a dualistic approach to all things, is that those things associated with maleness/femaleness will correlate to other dualisms; spiritual/material, heaven/earth, sun/moon, dry/damp, and ultimately, good/evil, superior/inferior.

 

Then, I read an excerpt from Judith Plaskow’s Standing Again at Sinai in which she points out that at the moment in which the chosen people make a covenant with God at the foot of Mount Sinai, Moses addresses the people by saying, “Be ready for the third day; do not go near a woman.” (Exodus 19:15). At this defining moment in Biblical history, when the God of the Bible makes a covenant-not with an individual, as with Abraham-but with the entire people, Moses addresses the people only as men. This is, of course, counter to the experience of Jewish women. They know that they were there. But, in one swift androcentric move on the part of the chronicler, they are rendered invisible.

 

And then, my ten minutes were up. I hadn’t even scratched the surface. My nail had not even made contact with the skin of the thing.

 

The next presenter spoke about the role of women in Biblical history, naming the names we know and relating the changing role of women in the participation of leadership and ritual in Reform Judaism. The next woman spoke of the increasing power of women’s roles in certain denominations of Christianity; of changes in the language of ritual (particularly the marriage ceremony) and of the power of women’s ordination.

 

Then came the Q and A.

Guess who bore the brunt?

 

The first question was posed (to me) from a man who asked, “I’ve been married 50 years. My marriage has been equal. Does that mean I am not a man?”

 

Huh?

 

“No sir, it simply means that your marriage has not been characterized by patriarchy, a system of organization.”

 

It really was a great opportunity though to point out the complexities of the feminist analysis of structures of domination, which do not operate solely on the basis of sex, but of race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, age, etc., what Fiorenza calls “kyriarchy,” from the Greek word for master. To point out that the term “patriarchy” implies that all men dominate over all women would be erroneous and would constitute a naïve understanding of the issues. Clearly in history there have been women who have wielded the power of life and death over certain men (white women in the South during a certain part of its history as having power over black men, for example). The key word here is system, which excludes women from exerting powers of decision, of agency and the exercise of choice for the direction of their own lives; of participation in encoding the laws that will govern them, the texts that will describe them and the voices that will name who they are.

 

The next question (again, addressed to me) was more of a statement than a question--the inevitable person in the crowd (or classroom) who will point out the exception and expect it to send the rule crashing.

 

“What about the Greek goddesses?”

 

Huh?

 

That a culture might have goddesses in the sky does not mean that female power gets translated to the ground.

 

“What about Mary, in Catholicism… blah, blah, blah?”

 

I didn’t even tackle this one. I merely said, “Yes. Thankyou.”

 

The next few questions were (gratefully) not posed to me in particular so I remained quiet while the other panelists fielded them. The last question of the evening asked about women’s ordination and what did we think women’s rabbinic and priestly roles contributed to the future? The other panelists took their turns and then I said (something like); “I was raised in the Roman Catholic tradition. When I was a little girl women were not allowed to even go near the altar unless she was a nun changing the altar linens (which of course, she had also washed and ironed). The first time I saw a woman at the altar I was in divinity school and in my thirties. It was a powerful moment. Can you imagine what it was like for me, to see a woman occupying the sacred space that had always been denied me? Can you imagine what it was like growing up learning and understanding that by the very fact of my being, I violated sacred space? Can you envision the impact of believing that my very body constituted a thing so repugnant and profane that I was barred from the Divine’s imminent presence? The stunning fact of women at the altar, reading the Torah, consecrating bread and wine, accomplishes many things. Among them, it begins to reverse centuries of betrayal and pain, and it assures that those little girls sitting or standing in the halls of sacred space will not experience the blow of exclusion and rejection.”

 

Then the evening officially came to a close and the crowd began to disperse.

The Rabbi approached me with tears in his eyes. He clasped my hand and then told me something that made me laugh out loud. The Rabbi said, “I want to take your class!”

 

Two Surprises Before 8 AM

Surprise #1: I awoke ravenous. All I consumed yesterday was a Starbuck’s Cranberry Orange Scone and two mini-Luna bars. That’s it. All day. I forget to eat sometimes. Scavenging around the kitchen for something to eat for breakfast I found leftover rice and lentils, a dried up orange, and salad fixings. None of which was appealing. Waaayyyy in the back of my refrigerator I discovered a box of Bisquick, purchased sometime last year to make homemade shortcakes for strawberries. I checked the expiration date: February 2007. What the heck? Baking Soda surely can last through an extra two months. Pancakes!! I had an egg, but no milk. What to do? I know… 1 part water, 1 part Half & Half. Presto! Milk! I started to make the recipe and thought, what else can I put in here? I remembered I had some fresh, frozen cranberries in the freezer… I threw some of those in. As the pancakes started to cook in the frying pan, the little frozen cranberries began to pop… little red fireworks happenin’ right in my kitchen.

Life. One damn gift after another…

 

Surprise #2: I finally opened and played a new cd I received as a gift this week. And I gotta tell ya’, the only way I would have ever heard this music is to receive it as a gift. Kanye West. That’s right. Doire’s listening to Kanye. But that’s not the surprise. The surprise is- I like it! Couldn’t help but dance.

 

I wanna share candy and stuff…

Purposeful Musings?

Excerpt from the spring 2007 issue of Harvard Divinity Today:

 

“Science is no replacement for religion,” Nowak (Professor of Mathematics and Biology at Harvard) said, “because we are interested in many questions which are not scientific. For example, what is the purpose of my life? Where do I come from? Where will I go?”

 

Indeed, some of these questions cannot be answered by science. The scientific project prides itself on treating only those questions that can be proved or unproved; questions that can be validated or invalidated through hypotheses, testing, and the evaluation of empirical data. “What is the purpose of my life?’ does not fall into this category. I do think that science can respond to the question, “Where do I come from?” (though I find it disturbing that a Professor at Harvard ended a sentence with a preposition)…

 

Doire tangent: Harvard Joke:

Freshman (to an upperclassman): “Do you know where the library is at?”

Upperclassman: “We at Harvard do not end sentences with prepositions.”

Freshman: “OK then, do you know where the library is at, asshole?”

 

Anyway… I DO think that science can answer the question “From where do I come?” but certainly not, “Where will I go?”

 

As regards the question “From where do I come?” I personally care only to look as far back as human history. Beyond that, origins are at best scientifically speculative and/or mythological. To examine the effects of 5000 years of human history is enough stuff for analysis and it is burdened with enough problems. As regards the question, “Where will I go?” I have already answered that question in this blog. I don’t care. I care not for an afterlife, nor do I need one. My narcissism, extensive though it might be, does not prevail upon me to insist that I live forever in some otherworldly realm. This life is enough for me. There is enough beauty, purpose and grace. Here.

 

Which I suppose leads us to the remaining question posed by Dr. Nowak, “What is the purpose of life?” Ha! Do you think that I am arrogant enough to propose that for you? No. My audacity would not stretch so far. But I am always astonished by the human search for meaning that is so desperate it would excuse an omnipotent god of unspeakable crimes; it would find meaning in suffering that is (to quote Emmanuel Levinas) “useless;” it would assign ultimate purpose in a Will that would condemn millions to fiery damnation. Why must the human imagination stretch so far so as to find a purpose for this life? Isn’t living it enough? Isn’t that grace enough?

 

As for me, my purpose is fulfilled when I tell a student that I love him and he is so moved as to become speechless, because it is the truth. My purpose is accomplished when I move to the rhythms of my own longings and I delight in the fulfillment. My purpose is fulfilled when I stand before a crushed soul who needs only a hand extended and my arms are there, and open. I am so tired of humanity seeking purpose in spaces and places other than those that stand right before them. When will we understand? My purpose is proposed to me in the very instant that there is a need expressed before my eyes and before my heart. My purpose is fulfilled when I rise up to meet it and greet it and embrace it in the constant and ever moving flow of humanity that I encounter, every day.

Do I need religion to respond to THAT? NO. I need only the willingness to bend whichever way life takes me, and into whatever hollow sounding breath is blown my way, and to whatever joy is there for the taking.

 

 

 

Like a Seal on My Heart

The smooth surface of white skin surprises.

The world sees a splash of brilliant color and form.

When we are together, we allow these marks

Of friendship to peek through the sleeve,

The waist of our jeans, a toss of the hair

And there. There they are,

Raphael’s cherubs, fleur-de-lis, serendipity.

The sad-eyed lady’s drum, water, truth, prosperity.

The stunning beauty of them in indigo blue

Forest green and pitch blackness.

 

If we could peel them off and trade, like dresses,

I could wear yours and you could wear mine.

I could wear the angel, feast day of my birth.

You, my Chinese character for truth.

And you, beloved Dylan’s drum.

I’d put on your watermark, a reminder to me

To dive into the places I fear to tread.

Serendipity, the hallmark of our meeting,

Fleur-de-lis, three petals; purity, light, strength.

They are set on our bodies like a seal,

The way you have set me like a seal on your hearts.

 

The world sees the shape and the color

But they do not see the stick of the needle.

The piercing of the skin, needed to become.

The pain that dug deep, shared in that room,

In this house and in that bar.

On thousands of words sent through the air.

It was there in the sound of weeping,

In the force of our teeth, grit against the drill bit,

Where the ink wasmade indelible.

And now steadfast, dependable, always, always. There.

When the breath held on, let go, held on.

 

I let you go and hold on.

Brave you to the world the way I expose the marks.

Give their eyes a glimpse of the color;

They will see the beauty of you

The blue of your eyes, the center of the daisy.

And you, the brown of your hair,

The mark of your name on the nape.

But I know how the cuts have been made.

How the ink buried deep,

And set you, like a seal on my heart.

 

Sacrificial Lambs

I have always wanted to do a research paper on the slaughter of sons in the Bible. It is a pervasive theme. The first of course is the morally questionable command of God to Abraham to offer his son Isaac on the altar of sacrifice. It is an ethically suspicious story in many ways. The problem of a God who would demand that a father slit the throat of his beloved son is multiplied only by the father who would be willing to do so, no matter how heavy his heart. The message here is one of obedience, which was necessary I suspect for a people whose principle failing in Hebrew Scripture was faithlessness to a god with whom they were unaccustomed. The pre-Israelites were a polytheistic nomadic people who were being recruited to pledge allegiance to the God of Abraham. And it was quite difficult for them to turn their backs on the gods that they knew to worship a god who had not proven himself. Understood within this historical context, one can almost make sense of the drama of the story in conveying how crucial obedience and faithfulness would be. That God “tests” Abraham’s loyalty by insisting that he murder his son is made no less horrific by considering that God ultimately does not allow the deed to be done. That Abraham does not protest, indeed does not refuse to follow through, is an inversion of ethics in which obedience to a higher authority takes precedence over one’s own moral sensibilities, not to mention justice. Interesting too, how this theme of obedience is repeated in the narratives of Islam in which the same Abraham is commanded by Allah to slit the throat of his oldest son Ishmael. That the Biblical traditions contain not one, but two stories in which God asks Abraham to slaughter both sons and in which Abraham is a willing accomplice displays an emphasis on obedience which to me seems a little over the top. Unfortunately, the story is not typically told within this historical context. Rather, the story is told and obedience is lifted up as an intrinsic good, no matter the immorality of the command. I also suspect that a story which highlights the sacrificing of sons as the quintessential act of nobility, would also serve as a powerful tool for a culture that subsists within the context of a war mythology; of  war, which requires that mothers and fathers be willing to sacrifice their sons to some higher, nobler cause. Lift up the sacrifice of sons as virtuous and a society can amass an army in good conscience.

 

There is the story of the slaughter of the first born sons of the Egyptians, innocents sacrificed to the wrath of an angry God. From the perspective of the Israelites of course, whose sons are spared by the presence of blood on the doorposts, it is a saving act of God who acts on their behalf. But what of the Egyptians? Did they not love their sons as much? Did the mothers of these sons not wail in grief?

 

Then there is Herod who in the infancy narratives of Christian Scriptures threatens to murder all male sons under the age of three to protect himself from a rumored future throne thief.

 

But the pre-eminent Biblical story of a father who sacrifices a son emerged when Christianity interpreted the death of Jesus of Nazareth as the sacrificial lamb who walked willingly to the slaughter in the name of redemption. This theological interpretation of an historical moment is central to Christian understandings of the crucifixion. The death of Jesus of Nazareth is given meaning through religious language. No one raised within the context of the Christian tradition can escape this language which describes the life of Jesus as necessary so that his death could occur. God “sent his only Son” that he might die. Jesus is obedient to the Father’s plan of death. Jesus’ death is lifted up as the  cumulative moment of his life. The course of events is inverted. Jesus does not die because of the way he lived; Jesus lived so that he might die. When considering the historical circumstances surrounding the death of Jesus (admittedly portrayed only through the Gospels, a suspicious historical source) historical language is helpful in understanding this event. Jesus lived within Roman occupied Palestine. The Roman Empire was crumbling in the first century. Years of insurrection, riots, disorder and unrest threatened their continuing power and stability. Jesus of Nazareth (among others) emerged within the context of an historical setting in which to appear to be in opposition to Rome was in itself, a death sentence. Apparently, Jesus’ reputation preceded him when he arrived in Jerusalem for the Passover in the week of his Passion. Throughout his itinerant ministry of preaching and healing, he was heard to speak repeatedly of the “basileia,” or reign (kingdom) of God, which he insisted was imminent. He was socially radical, traipsing around the countryside with men and women, married, unmarried, social outcasts, sinners, unholy vagabonds. He entered into Jerusalem for the Passover holy days on an ass, the people hailing him with palms and shouting, “Alleluia! Alleluia! King of the Jews!”

 

Thousands of Jews would have made pilgrimage to Jerusalem, the city of the Temple in which all the lambs for the Passover meals must be ritually slaughtered. The streets were overflowing. The people were impatient, tired, hot. Pontius Pilate was nearby to ensure there was no trouble. And what did Jesus do? Indeed. He entered the Temple and took his famous fit. He turned over the money changers' tables, shouted about his father’s house becoming a den of thieves and through the eyes of the Romans, threatened to instigate revolt and rioting. Given this historical interpretation, the guy didn’t stand a chance. But if one can interpret this behavior on the part of Jesus (not only during Holy Week, but throughout his entire ministry) as exemplary of a commitment to an ethos, to a way of life that placed a seeking after justice and the alleviation of suffering as paramount to a virtuous life, Jesus can be understood in a whole new light. His obedience was to himself and to his own inner understanding of what it meant to be a human being living a noble and moral life.

 

Strange how, when I am covering this historical interpretation surrounding the death of Jesus in class, it always seems to take place during Holy Week. I suspect some students go to Good Friday services with a new perspective. And for once, I think it is a perspective that potentially enhances their faith, rather than causes doubt. To think of Jesus of Nazareth as a human being who refused to betray his own ethical imperatives brought me so much more admiration for him when I was introduced to this perspective in divinity school. I am far more impressed by Jesus the man, than Jesus the god. An emphasis on his commitment to justice, to the alleviation of suffering, to prophetic criticism against institutionalized hypocrisy, to standing in resistance against poverty, social ostracism and rejection is so much more active and courageous than the portrayal of Jesus as passive, willing Lamb who went to the slaughter in obedience to a God who would dare ask for it.

Intellectual Infatuation

In the fall of 2001, I was assigned to teach Comparative Religious Ethics for the first time. I had no textbook as yet and so I started looking for one by conducting Google and Amazon searches. I typed “comparative religious ethics” and the same book appeared as the first hit for both searches because the book’s title is Comparative Religious Ethics: A Narrative Approach, by Darrell J. Fasching and Dell DeChant. I had been intrigued by “narrative theology” and was equally intrigued by the prospect of “doing ethics” from a narrative approach. I ordered the book and liked it so much; I ordered it for the class. I dove in and took my class with me. We were in school just a few short weeks when September 11th arrived and the collective consciousness of a nation was forever changed. Teaching comparative religious ethics during that semester became more challenging than I could ever have expected.

 

The book and its ideas gave me the ability to lead my students through their confusion and their questions and offered analyses for the dynamics that are entailed in violence that claims a religious root. My students loved the book and since 2001 I have been using it every time I teach the ethics course. It is the book that students will not sell back to the bookstore when the course is finished.

 

In December of 2001, I did something I had never done before; I wrote to the author of a book to express to him my deepest gratitude and admiration. I told him that in addition to the intellectual challenge and critique the book offered, it gave my students and me something one rarely finds in a textbook. It gave us hope. He sent me another one of his books and since then I have bought two more.

 

Several weeks ago, at my invitation, Darrell Fasching came to Charleston. He offered a public lecture on campus and made classroom visits to my two ethics classes. For me, it was like geek prom night. After one of the classroom visits, I was speaking to a student who said that he was “infatuated with the book and its ideas.” I said, "What a great word!" and thought about that all weekend.

 

There have been times in my life when a teacher or thinker has had that affect on me. Like falling in love; when it happens, there’s no mistaking it. One listens to a lecture or reads a book and there occurs a “stirring of the mind,” likened to Socrates’ description of Eros as a “stirring of the loins.” The mind wakes up. It is excited and stimulated. But the odd dynamic is that rather than experiencing the imposition of ideas from outside oneself, it is experienced as an affirmation, an awakening to what seems to be already a part of one’s knowledge and self. It is as if the truth or wisdom of the words already existed in the core of one’s being and rather than a welcoming of something from without, it is a recognition of something within. The words resonate with a deep truth already known but never articulated, and like a lover to the beloved the response is a wondrous, “yes.” One desires to make the thought one’s own; to incorporate it into one’s very being so that as through the lens of one’s own experience, the thought itself becomes transformed and re-interpreted. And like an object of desire it becomes a part of oneself.

 

It has been pointed out to me that by its very description “infatuation” is transitory and destined to fade. I would argue that sometimes infatuation is the way love begins. There are those writers and thinkers whose immediate attraction does not sustain. It indeed, is a momentary fascination. But there are those others whose immediate resonance grows into a lifelong love affair of the mind. And like greeting and embracing a loved one who has been away, when one returns  to the book or hears the speech, it is understood in an even more profound way; and one is smitten all over again. And the love deepens.

 

As I shared these thoughts with my class last week, a young vibrant female student piped up from the back of the room, “Well, I gotta admit, I got a girl crush on you!” Another student added, “We all do.” Well, I doubt that, but it was a moment of openness and spontaneity and generosity of spirit that I will never forget. To be that for someone is to be a beloved of the mind and for a teacher there is no greater affirmation or heartfelt embrace.

 

I spoke too, of those in my life with whom I have been intellectually infatuated but with whom the fascination has grown into love; Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Hannah Arendt, Emmanuel Levinas, Abraham Heschel, Dorothee Soelle, Richard Niebuhr, Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenza and a few others, but most recently  Darrell J. Fasching. The intellectual attraction began in 2001 but it has grown; it has grown into a love of the mind sustained by an intellectual “yes” and affirmed again and again by a recognition of speech and thought characterized by truth, wisdom and beauty. He is my teacher and I gotta admit, I have a crush.