Why Words Matter 2013

Rev. Molly was invited to be a part of an ecumenical workshop called Why Words Matter: Expansive Language & Liturgical Leadership (on Friday, October 4). She was unable to participate, and I was among the people she suggested as alternates -- "a lay person in our congregation for whom these issues are very close to her heart (and she is very articulate about gender and God! She's been keeping me on a growing edge about God, gender and trans issues for some time now)." ♥

I wasn't entirely sure what to expect, but I was pleased to get to attend and participate.

I knew the audience would be somewhat wide-ranging, so I was expecting some conservative folks (I don't think there were any) but was surprised to encounter people who would likely have described themselves as good liberals who said things like that The New Century Hymnal "ruined" the Christmas hymns. Yeah ... my starting place for gender/language conversations is apparently different from other people's.

Near the end, one of the organizers commented that from her dropping in on various conversations throughout the afternoon, it was clear that there was a lot of energy for these conversations to continue. I would definitely be interested in attending additional stuff like this. I will have my expectations calibrated more accurately -- and also may be more assertive about bringing up my hobby-horses: non-binary gender, non-male Jesus, and cultivating a practice of volunteering names and pronouns. [Sidebar: Nametags with pronouns!]

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Apparently the impetus for this event was that someone was cleaning out her basement and sent the Mass Council of Churches [MCC] a (mimeographed! typeset!) booklet ("Faith and Mission: An Ecumenical Women’s Liturgy Resource Book was originally prepared by the Task Force on Women of the Massachusetts Council of Churches in 1978," says their blogpost) and MCC posted a photo to their facebook and got a surprising number of comments -- including from many people who were on the task force that helped create it. This suggested to them that while we may often feel like we're sort of "over" the inclusive language conversation, that we've "solved" that problem, in fact there's still a lot of energy around that issue.

Rev. Laura Everett told a story of being a teenager in a church that did a carrying the cross Good Friday walk, and she wanted to be Jesus, and of course she wasn't allowed to be. (On reflection, I wish we had talked more about imaging Jesus as female, since even in progressive contexts we're usually insistent that of course Jesus was male, and imaging Jesus -- or even the risen Christ -- as other than male seems wholly off the table, in a way that imaging Jesus as for example any race/ethnicity isn't. Laura talked about how she was excluded/marginalized, but I don't think she or any of us really talked about embodying Jesus as female -- other than Stephen Burns reading a Christa poem by Nicola Slee.)

Stephen Burns (professor at EDS) talked some about the history that brought us to this point. He said that while people talk about the 1970s, he thinks the heyday of inclusive language was the 1990s:

• The UCC put out The New Century Hymnal (which edited the words to many traditional hymns as well as commissioning many new hymns) in 1995.
• The Episcopal church put out Enriching Our Worship (a liturgical supplement) in 1997.
• The Roman Catholic Church put out the ICEL [International Commission on English in the Liturgy] Psalter in 1995 -- which book was quickly quashed, 'cause oppressive Roman Catholic Church. (He said it's "like gold dust" -- that you can get it on eBay.)

Stephen Burns talked about the danger that expansive language can be co-opted, can be used to disguise a reality that is not as inclusive/liberative as the language might suggest, and so advised us to approach with a degree of suspicion and not naivete.

He talked about gesture -- which is one of his big things -- about how it's not enough for us for example to use non-hierarchical language if the way we structure all our liturgy and worship is still very hierarchical.

(One audience member I read as female talked about being mentored by Madeleine L'Engle who told her, "When you get ordained -- and you will -- don't become a little man.")

He also talked about context. He said he went to every feminist gathering in the north of England [he's originally from England] and removed all the Lord Father He etc. language from his vocabulary about God ... and then he became a father, and he needed to reclaim that language.

One attendee works primarily with a non-literate congregation, so she can't just hand out sheets of paper with alternate words. Also, as a well-educated financially comfortable white woman ... with a congregation of poor/homeless African-American men who use very traditional language ... she feels really uncomfortable telling them that their language for God is "wrong." Stephen Burns suggested that maybe that's not the fight to have in that congregation, that maybe in that congregation she needs to find ways to be on their side fighting poverty, racism, etc.

Another attendee brought up multi-lingual issues -- that in different languages, words can have very different connotations. She said that "Lord" in French has a "sweetness" to it, and even the tone the presider uses is different than when people say "Lord" in English liturgy.

People talked about The New Century Hymnal a lot. One woman said they "ruined" the Christmas hymns. Another woman said she has pastored 6 congregations in the past 16 years and there has been conflict about The New Century Hymnal in every one of them.

Wendy Miller Olapade talked about coming to the church through AA, having not grown up in the church, and getting out of seminary and into her first Call right around the time The New Century Hymnal came out and people were having lots of trouble with the new hymnal and she just didn't understand, because she thought the hymns were beautiful and these were the only versions she knew -- she reminded us that not everyone's coming from the same place, not everyone has the same history.

Inez Torres Davis talked about some of what she has learned in dealing with privilege. She said that she's learned that you need to acknowledge the pain that privilege experiences when it's .. she used some less strong word than "threatened," but I can't remember how she phrased it.
She said that privilege is fragile -- which she said neutrally and without any of the tone I would have inflected into that, but I totally loved it :)
She said that being uncomfortable is not the same as being unsafe.
She said that the purpose of the divine is healing, liberative.
She said that the Church, the Body of Christ, is suffering.

There was a little bit of conversation about referring to "expansive" vs. "inclusive" language.

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In the first breakout session, our prompt questions were on a handout that asks about your experiences of gendered language in liturgy, etc. Initially no one in my group said anything, so I opened with the fact that my experience is heavily influenced by the fact that my best friend is genderqueer -- so every time we say e.g. "male and female and a little bit of each" or "brothers and sisters," I wince because in that language my best friend is erased and told "you're not welcome here, you don't have a place here," even though of course I know that yes ze is welcome here.

One woman expressed concern that we go far that we're falling all over ourselves to be overly PC, and I chose not to respond. I wanted to respond to people's pushback, but I worried I would come off as defensive, and it felt more important to me to allow people to say their piece than for me to respond to every little piece of everything everyone said.

We talked some about language that would include my best friend -- like saying "brothers and sisters and siblings."

People talked about the concern of using the wrong language (in trying to be inclusive).

One of the women said that when you get to know people as people, then you'll know the right language -- because it will be language that you've learned being in relationship with that person, rather than just some abstract concept. She said that it's taking a risk, and you must be willing to fail -- that when people know you and know your intentions, they'll forgive you, and that you'll continue to have opportunities to try. (I think she was over-generalizing from her personal experience a bit, as I know people who would have felt excluded/offended in the examples she cited, and I don't think Good Intentions grant total absolution, but I did really appreciate her comments and felt it was more helpful for the gathered body for hers to be the last word on this than for me to pick it apart.)

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We had 2 themed breakout sessions -- you could choose from 4 topics (and there was a booklet with some reading material for each, which I wished we'd gotten in advance; it's up on their blog now):

• The Lord's Prayer/Our Father
• Trinitarian Idioms
• The Great Prayer of Thanksgiving/Eucharistic Prayer
• Texts and Contexts, Words and Actions

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The first of the themed breakout sessions I went to was the Trinitarian Idioms one. We started with talking about what the Trinity is (because I was like, "I'm really bad at being a Trinitarian, and I know that any time I attempt to explain the Trinity to someone I'm using modalism or some other heresy, so I really have no idea how to go about using more expansive language without somehow being heretical" -- not that I necessarily personally have a problem with being heretical, but...) and the facilitator talked about inter-relationship and dance (she didn't say "perichoresis," but I thought it) and how one thing that Trinity indicates about God is that God is dynamic, not static. I said that was really interesting, because I feel like a lot of the pushback around changing Trinitarian language is that the inherited language is the language we have to use, that we can't change it, but there's a variety of Scriptural language for the Godhead -- including the Second Person of the Trinity: Jesus using "mother hen" language. One of the women at my table said that she taught her kids the "God is like a mother hen" song so they would have at least one alternative image of God in their minds as they grew up.

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The second one I went to was the Eucharistic Prayer one, but I don't have much in the way of notes/commentary from that.

One participant offered the language:
hold bread: this is the broken body of Christ
look around: this is the Body of Christ made whole

Stephen Burns offered: "receive what you are: the Body of Christ; be what you see, become what you are"

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The person before me on the closing panel was a 58-year-old man who's been an ELCA pastor for like 30 years.

He talked about how using "traditional" language can be really powerful -- that he spent time in ministry with refugees from Communist Czechoslovakia, and they used very old-fashioned Slovak to pray the Lord's Prayer, and to pray in that language on the other side of the ocean was very powerful.

He talked about the importance of engaging in conversations, that you can't just impose things by fiat. (Which I suppose is equally true when you're a lay member with a fiat agenda :) )

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One of the prep questions I was given for my part on the closing panel was: "What changes has your congregation made to gendered language in liturgy? How did you implement these changes to make language more expansive?"

I reached out to some folks who have been at FCS longer than I have, and I cribbed heavily from one person's response, so you get a c&p, which is more artful than my unrehearsed regurgitation was:

One shift we made during my time was adopting the New Century Hymnal [NCH], with its resolutely inclusive language. Prior to that we used the Pilgrim Hymnal, which had a lot of inclusive language but by no means always. For a while we kept both hymnals in the pews and sang some songs from each, and gradually phased out the old hymnal. But we still used the Pilgrim hymnal at Christmas, because many people found the inclusive language jarring in the very familiar Christmas carols. [...]

After we had used the NCH for a few years, [person] mentioned to me that she had attended a service at a different church where they were still using the Pilgrim Hymnal, and she was looking forward to singing the good old words. But, she reported, when they actually sang, it was jarring to hear He/Him/His all the time after getting used to inclusive language. Her consciousness had been raised, though she didn't say it that way.

[...]

As for LGBTQ [...] inclusive language, that really started with Molly. We became an ONA church years before Molly's tenure, but as is quite usual, he first few years after making the declaration, our ONA stayed on the down low. Some older members were very sensitive and anxious about it, and it didn't seem useful to pick fights with them. When Molly came, she "didn't know" how sensitive the issue was, and so "naively" flew a rainbow flag right away. Precipitating some pushback, and a compromise, but the tide had turned. Our prior settled pastors had mentioned LGBTQ…I people sympathetically but carefully; Molly was the first to talk about us casually, as if there were no controversy. And by being the change she wished to see in the world, the world (or at least, FCS) changed.

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Katie Ernst, the final closing panelist, cautioned that we not perpetuate gender essentialism as we attempt to expand our language (e.g., only using She for gentle nurturing and He for fierce strong anger), which I can't say enough YES to. I do really appreciate that a lot of the ~contemporary hymnody that uses expansive language for God intentionally talks about e.g. fierce Mother God and nurturing Father God.

People had lots of positive feedback about the Welcome liturgy [also up on their blog], so Katie Ernst talked a bit about the process of shaping it. (It was like a very extended version of the Welcome we do at FCS.)

• you start with what parts of yourself do YOU need to have named/affirmed/welcomed?
• think about the people who will be in attendance, naming those diversities
• acknowledge darkness -- "you who are worn out... you who are grieving..."
• in the opening, acknowledge/honor those who have been in this space before us (including those who lived on this land before we colonized it)
• this is gonna be like 5-10 minutes long, and people aren't used to a Welcome being that long, so there will be some discomfort, but lean into that

sekritly a social justice radical

Last Tuesday night I was at a visioning session [and yes, I would like a less ableist term for that] for a group I've been involved with for much of this year, and I repeatedly said that social justice isn't where my passion is. And just about every time I said it, I felt a little twinge like I was lying -- because fat pol and disability pol and mental health pol ... these are all issues that have become very important to me. But they're not issues where people are going to say, "Yes, I'm totally on board with that -- or at least as a good liberal I feel like I 'should' be."

And so I frequently don't speak up and advocate for these things I care about, because I am, contrary to how I may appear, frequently a risk-averse confrontation-avoidant person. (Reasons I don't self-identify as an activist.)

So I am owning the things I care about.

I care about healthy sexuality -- and about being inclusive of various manifestations of sexuality, including the asexuality spectrum, polyamory, and kink.

I care about being inclusive of a variety of gender identities and gender expressions. (In a Christian context, I want the diversity of humanity to be represented in the ways we talk about ALL persons of the Trinity, because we are ALL created in the image of God, and we are ALL part of the Body of Christ.)

I am growing to care more about the negative effects of rape culture and cultural appropriation.

I care about disability, including chronic pain and mental illness. I care about accessibility and about resisting the culture of shame in which we live. I care about models of disability other than "you are broken, and you would be happier/better if you were 'fixed.' " I care about not using language like "lame" or "crazy" as synonymous with "deficient" or "ridiculous." (See also: "mental illness as boogeyman.")

I care about Health At Every Size -- about not treating weight numbers as indicators of health.

I care about DBT -- about not using "should" language, about recognizing that we always have choices in how we respond to situations but we can't magically wish ourselves out of those situations. (This latter piece I think has a lot of utility in justice work -- about working with what we have right now, rather than solely bemoaning that we don't live in a better world.)

I want to be aware of the multiplicity of human experiences.

And I can't help analogizing that to the radical hospitality that Christians are called to.

I care about drawing the circle wider.

As someone who has visited many churches, I care about making church as hospitable as possible -- clearly articulating our choreography, offering gluten-free Bread and non-alcoholic Cup, taking cues from people about their level of comfort with touch (Passing of the Peace!), etc.

Returning to social justice as more traditionally understood, I've been thinking recently about setting the terms of the debate -- about being proactive rather than reactive. ... And I don't have a useful conclusion to this.

John 4:5-42 (in which Jesus does not have to be male)

I would like to tell you a story.

This story begins with a well. It’s called Jacob’s well. It’s in the Samaritan city of Sychar, near the plot of land that Jacob gave his favored child, Joseph -- Joseph who was the youngest but one of twelve sons, but the firstborn of Joseph’s favored wife, Rachel. The story doesn’t tell us why this well was called Jacob’s Well -- though its listeners might have recalled how Jacob met his beloved wife-to-be at a well. Tomorrow’s lectionary* brings us the story of Abraham’s steward finding a wife for Abraham’s beloved child Isaac at a well -- Isaac who would be Jacob’s father.

This story begins with a person named Jesus, tired from a journey, sitting by this well, at noontime.

This story begins with a Samaritan woman. She has come to the well at noontime to draw water.

Jesus says to the woman: “Give me a drink.” The teller of this story informs us that the disciples, those who have been companions with Jesus on this long journey, have gone into the city to buy food.

Now maybe this Jesus was a man -- and listeners’ expectations were that this would be a marriage story, like Jacob and Rachel, like Isaac and Rebekah. Maybe this Jesus was a man, and the woman felt unsafe, alone out there on the edge of town with a strange man.

Maybe this Jesus was a woman. Maybe the Samaritan woman felt safe from threat of violence because this was another woman. Maybe the Samaritan woman felt apprehensive, wondering what would bring a woman alone to this well at midday (her knowledge of why she came not keeping her from speculation about this stranger).

Maybe this Jesus was a large cat like C. S. Lewis would write about so many centuries later, and the woman was afraid, because Aslan is NOT a Tame Lion.

One might expect any of these things. But what this woman saw, the piece of Jesus’ identity that spoke to her so strongly that she spoke it aloud, was that Jesus was a Jew.

Jesus was a Jew, and she was a Samaritan. Both peoples claimed Mosaic lineage, but the two peoples had broken off long ago, and now they didn’t so much as speak to each other.

This woman says to Jesus, “YOU? ask ME? for a drink of water? Do you not notice who we are? We haven’t invented segregated drinking fountains yet, but that’s basically what’s going on here. What do you think you’re doing?”

Jesus patiently replies, “If you knew the generosity of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked me, and I would have given you living water.”

The woman bites her lip on the ridiculousness of this. She calls Jesus, “Sir,” or, “M’lady,” or some other honorific to soften the scoffing remark she is about to make -- “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and who drank from it with his children and livestock?”

Jesus says, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”

This sounds intriguing. A little impossible, but intriguing nonetheless. This time the woman’s use of an honorific is less sarcastic, more petitionary. “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

Jesus smiles at her unreadably and says, “Go, call your spouse, and come back.”

A bit downcast now -- or perhaps a bit on-guard, a bit cagey -- the woman replies, “I have no spouse.”

Jesus says to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no spouse;’ for you have been married five times, and you are not married to your current partner. What you have said is true.”

Taking a deep breath and using the honorific one last time, the woman says, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet.” And what do you do if you end up in conversation with a prophet? Why not ask them for a decision on the major schism in your religious life? So she says, “Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but your people say that the place where everyone must worship is in Jerusalem.”

Jesus says, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Parent of us all, Maker of Heaven and Earth, neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we Jews worship what we know, for God's way of salvation is made available through the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Divine Parent in spirit and truth. Indeed, it is just such worshipers whom the Divine Parent seeks. God is spirit, and those who worship God must worship in spirit and truth.”

The woman says to Jesus, “I know that the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One, is coming -- who upon arriving will proclaim all things to us.”

Jesus replies, “I who speak to you am the Messiah.”

The dramatic pause here is interrupted by the return of the disciples. They are astonished that Jesus is speaking with this woman, but no one comes out and says, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?”

Taking her cue, the woman leaves her water jar and returns to the city. She says to the people, “Come and see someone who told me everything I have ever done! Could this be the Messiah?” The people leave the city and go to Jesus.

Meanwhile the disciples are urging Jesus, “Rabbi, eat something.”

But Jesus says, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”

So the disciples ask one another, “Surely no one has brought Jesus something to eat?”

Jesus says to them, “The food that keeps me going is doing the will of the One who sent me and bringing this work to completion.

“Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor at harvest time.”

As if to explain this saying of Jesus’, the story returns us to the people of the city. Many Samaritans from that city believe in Jesus because of the woman’s testimony, “This one told me everything I have ever done.” So when they come to Jesus, they ask Jesus to stay with them; and Jesus stays there two days. And many more believe because of Jesus’ word. They say to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”

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*For values of "tomorrow" that are true if you are using the RCL and are operating as if I'm telling this story on Sunday Lent 3A 2011.

One of these days I will have a sermon for Lent 3A 2011, but today is not that day.

My best friend’s lesbian christology is what first started me thinking of Jesus as other than always-default-male, and continues to be foundational in my continuing explorations of that.

For helping to spur and/or shape this particular retelling, thanks also to: Molly’s friend Val (who told a folktale at Molly’s Peach Fuzz Party on Saturday), Support Pastor Ian H., Chris D., and Julia W. (and Ian T. for Lenten weekday morning prayer).

Thanks to The Inclusive Bible and Eugene Peterson’s The Message for some phrasing assists (and to the NRSV for providing the base text).

Yes, I have become this person.

FCS-Ian added a whole bunch of hymns to the rotation for Lenten morning prayer service, which I was stoked about. Peter (husband of Rev.Molly, so has been at First Church UCC for over 7 years and probably in the UCC for longer, but grew up Episcopalian) mentioned that he didn't know some of the ones that had been added. I was surprised because I'd thumbed through and had been stoked that I knew all of them (in contrast to hymn selections there often). So FCS-Ian and I sang through the ones that Peter (and/or Althea) didn't know. "Oh Sacred Head Now Wounded" I realized I was sight-reading, but I "knew" it sufficient that when I saw it in the folder I was like, "Seriously?!"

So we got to talking about Good Friday hymns/theology. (Yes, I was ~10 minutes late to work because I was in the church kitchen consuming !Communion bread and grape juice and arguing discussing theology.)

As we wrapped up the conversation so that we could all get to work, Peter said to me: "You have a very full Protestant theology, is what it boils down to." (Whereas I had been thinking that I was so echoing CWM/Borg&co. when I was talking about an emphasis on Easter rather than an emphasis on Good Friday, and Jesus' death being as a result of undermining the domination system rather than a requirement for us to be reconciled to God, etc. -- but on later reflection, I think part of what he was reacting to was what I said I hear when I hear hymns like "The Old Rugged Cross.")

During lunchtime phonecall today, I told Ari briefly about my morning, and of course I mentioned "The Old Rugged Cross," because even though I block it out such that I couldn't actually sing it for you from memory if I tried, it's totally my go-to example for classic blood atonement theology hymn (which is maybe unfair of me). She has a lot of positive associations with the hymn, but she has problems with the parts like "exchange it some day for a crown," and so we got talking about kingdom language/theology.

I've recently started reading Borg and Crossan's The Last Week: A Day-by-Day Account of Jesus's Final Week in Jerusalem (for CHPC adult ed), and so I talked some about what I learned from the first chapter of that book about Jerusalem and the Temple in Jesus' time and the peasants who were Jesus' audience.

I knew from other books that Borg purposely uses "kingdom," knowing that many of his progressive compatriots dislike it. In one paragraph in The Last Week, the authors pointedly state that Jesus used the term "kingdom of God" on purpose -- that "Jesus could have spoken of the family of God, the community of God, or the people of God, but, according to Mark, [Jesus] spoke of the kingdom of God" (p. 25, emphasis in original) specifically because it was a political as well as a religious metaphor: "To [Jesus'] hearers, it would have suggested a kingdom very different from the kingdoms they knew, very different from the domination systems that ruled their lives" (p. 25).

I said that I understand this but that I don't think it necessarily makes a strong case for us continuing to use kingdom language, because we don't hear that tension when we hear "kingdom." I said that we (middle-class white folks) hear "kingdom" and think happy shiny King Arthur.

Ari recommended that I read Horsley's Jesus and Empire: The Kingdom of God and the New World Disorder.

After she got back to her desk, she emailed me: "We should do a book study together. You know, since we have so many silent hours together that we need to fill." ♥

I'm still not likely to start using "unequally yoked" language.

One of the readings at Simple Shifts last night was Romans 12, and at "Do not be conformed to the world," I thought of Ari, because we routinely invoke that exhortation when we see Christians buying into paradigms of the dominant society which we feel are in conflict with God's Will.  (For example, when someone at a church meeting says, "I can eat this cookie because I didn't have dinner tonight," and one of us comments that skipping meals is unhealthy and the first person says they don't care about whether it's healthy, they just want to lose weight.  This is where we silently scream, "We are called to be in the world but not of the world!  When Paul said, 'Do not be conformed to the world,' this is what he was talking about!")

And I thought of how yeah, it is trufax that we build each other up in faith.

Earlier, I had read aloud from Genesis 2 (we read the second Creation story) and I said "God" where the Inclusive Bible said "YHWH" because Ari won't pronounce the Tetragrammaton and I've come to feel similarly.  I'm much less comfortable with gendering Jesus as male because of her and much more comfortable gendering Jesus as female because of her; because of her I think about lesbian christology [sidebar] and transgender eschatology; because of her I think about how it is particularly problematic to gender the (post-Easter) Christ and about how the disciples didn't recognize the risen Christ and about how resurrected bodies (Christ's and ours) are transformed and perfected and how that could mean so many different things.  And she thinks about stuff like "kin-dom" language because of me.  We push each other.  We talk for hours about church and liturgy and theology and worship and what we believe and how that comes out in the language we use and how that is or should be reflected in how we live our lives.  We tell each other, "You are a bright, brilliant, beloved child of God -- and you are beautiful to behold."  Theology and Scripture is the language we use to talk to each other.  (Also fandom, and probably other things.  We are a cunningly multi-lingual people.)

Ari and I were talking on Sunday about how our standard for romantic partners is the way we interact with each other.

I talked about this some in therapy on Tuesday, about how the woman who hit on me last week is really really into me and I'm just not that into her, and therp asked me why I'm not that into her and said it back to me that I didn't feel like this woman was deep enough, and suggested that I maybe don't need a romantic partner to be really passionate about the same things I am so long as they have things they are deep and passionate about.  I am willing to entertain this possibility, but I do think it would work much better if my partner loved Christianity the way that I do.  Yes, if there is stuff of substance that we can connect about, I have an Ari (and other people) for talking about liturgy etc.  And if I could have conversations with my partner about gender and ableism and language that marginalizes and all that, even if they weren't engaged in church, maybe that would be fine.  But I love church so much -- and it's what I do with so much of my time ... I think I would feel really disconnected if I was all talkative about church two or three or five or six days a week and my partner just nodded indulgently at me -- maybe if they were really engaged with Christianity academically it would be okay if they were non-practicing/non-believers ... but I'm growing in appreciation for the power and value of community, plus this is real to me and there's a profound disconnect if it's not real in that way for another person (though obviously plenty of Christians differ as to which things are True Myth and which are True Fact).  And of course I know that lots and lots of interfaith couples work just fine (hello, my parents) -- I'm just talking about figuring out what I think I need.  And I'm not setting up any first-date dealbreaker ultimatums anytime soon (I don't think).  But I told Ari the other day, that I was so excited that this woman loves her church like I love my church -- but I don't think she loves Christianity like I love Christianity (and I think maybe it would be more accurate to say: she loves her church like I love my church, but she doesn't love church like I love church -- though that's still not exactly it).

"melech": king, mother, abundance

I recently read a Velveteen Rabbi post on Yom Kippur 5770, and I was struck by her section on king:

The word מלך, "king," is a prevalent metaphor in the High Holiday liturgy. We can see this through a new lens if we unpack the individual letters of the word:

• מ / mem: this letter can be found in the mmm of mama and ima, the m-sound at the beginning of the word mayyim (waters, both cosmic and otherwise). Mem is a letter of motherhood and water.
  
• ל / lamed: this letter begins up high, then takes a crooked path to reach the ground below. Like the flow of divine abundance which begins on high and divagates as it reaches us; like our lives, which start out straight but always wind up complicated. Lamed is a channel from high to low.
  
• כ / chaf: this letter is cupped, like hands brought together to receive.

These three letters flow together sequentially in the alef-bet. Here in our liturgy they speak to us of divine kingship or sovereignty -- and they also speak to us of the root metaphor of motherhood and divine flow, coming down through its crooked channels into our hands.

Before reciting the ha-Melech prayer on Yom Kippur morning, Simcha Zevit gives over this teaching in the name of Reb Marcia Prager, and then invites us to rise and embody it: hands waving above our heads like the rish-rush of the waters, then twisting and flowing down toward the ground, then cupped to receive abundance and then to offer it to someone else in the room. Suddenly melech doesn't seem to be so much about power-over anymore.

My primary church is really uncomfortable with hierarchical language for God, and I have come to internalize that discomfort to some extent -- though at the same time I think the idea of God's sovereignty can be really useful. I really like this meditation on so many of the ideas that are included in this God we worship.

on language that marginalizes (part one of possibly-more-than-one)

One of the things I've been thinking about recently is the use of the word "lame" as a derogatory adjective.  Which gives me an excuse to link to a blogpost I read a while back -- "Why Not to Use the Word Lame: I Think I’m Starting to Get It" [Posted by Mandolin | June 16th, 2009]

Excerpt:

Let’s start with that point from earlier that it DOES suck — in this society — not to have the same freedom of movement an abled person. (Although of course, here, we’re already starting in with ableist assumptions, because a big portion of the reason it sucks is because society is set up for people with bodies we consider normal.) OK, so let’s rephrase. Having functional legs is useful. Therefore, the state of having legs which are not as functional as other legs is not as nice as the state of having normally functional legs. (Again, there’s some ableism around the concept of normal, but moving on.)

But even accepting that impairment to mobility is itself a sucky thing, MAYBE DISABLED PEOPLE DO NOT APPRECIATE BEING THE CULTURAL GO-TO FOR THINGS THAT SUCK.

The first commenter (Lexie) points out:

You are on the right track, but here is the thing about saying something like “the logic of having a mobility impairment totally sucks is self-evident.”

It’s not, really. People with disabilities most of the time do not go around saying, God! It sucks so bad that my legs don’t work! They are just who they are, a whole person with varying characteristics, some of which society has labeled as a disability.

Take being gay, for example. One could argue, and some have, that this is a form of disability and that it sucks. Gay people inherently have things to deal with, like fertility issues or the fact that they have to find different ways to socialize within a smaller range of people (the arguable 10% of the population that is gay). Or, to get really technical and TMI about it, they might have to find different ways to be intimate with each other. Doesn’t this inherently suck? Isn’t it logical to think that being gay is inherently inferior to being straight? Isn’t it easier to be straight? And that isn’t even counting the artificial attitudinal barriers of being gay. They can’t marry, or get on each others health insurance plan, or adopt as easily as straight people. It must suck so bad to be gay! Its logical that gay must mean sucky!

Right?

Well, no. What LGBT people have done exceptionally well (and are still working on) is to show people that their lifestyle and sexuality is on a continuum of normal. That gender does not have to be binary and people should be able to express gender in a way that feels comfortable for them and that is a normal part of the human condition. They are not mentally ill, or some kinds of freaks who have a horrible condition, they just are who they are…humans.

So, people with disabilities are the same way. The body comes in all shapes, sizes and conditions and all are part of the normal condition of human existence. Disability is a normal part of life. Do some things suck about a specific disability? Sure. Just like it must suck for LGBT people who want to have children and can’t go about it as easily or as cheaply as heterosexual couples can. Just like everyone on the planet has something about themselves that they can’t control that sucks. (Run faster, be better at math, sing better, not be bald, whatever.) It goes beyond saying that logically, being lame sucks but we shouldn’t hurt disabled people’s feelings by using that word. It goes to trying to get people to stop singling out one physical (or mental) aspect of ourselves as being sucky and having that thing define who we are–our entire life experience. To us, whatever characteristic we have that makes us disabled is just a part of our whole selves, and most of us are quite fond of our whole selves, thankyouverymuch. Many people will tell you that being disabled has given them experiences and opportunities that they wouldn’t exchange for anything.

In my case, my PC word peeve is “blind”. (I’m deaf blind) I’m not talking about the word “blind” itself. I’m fine with people calling me blind and prefer it to all the many euphemisms people come up with like “sight impaired” or whatnot. I hate it when blind (or deaf for that matter) is used in place of the words unknowing or stupid. i.e. She was blind to the fact that her use of the word “lame” was offensive. Blind people actually do not walk around in the dark completely unaware of what is going on around them. We actually know stuff. My point is, I think it is a matter of looking at the word (lame, blind) and really understanding what you are using that word to mean (sucky, stupid). Is that a fair use of the word? Does it really represent the people that are usually defined by that word? If not, maybe it is time to think of some better, more fitting words to describe things.

Ableism is something I really don't think about much, which is a problem.  (This also connects to conversations my best friend and and I were having recently about church accessibility -- ASL interpreters, gluten-free communion bread, stair alternatives, bathrooms, etc. -- which I need to make a separate post about.)

More food for thought (via coffeeandink's ableism tag): jesse_the_k's "(Color) Blindness as Metaphor to Racism"