"God was never alone."

Laura Ruth and I had dinner at the Burren tonight.

We mostly talked about how I'm called to serve the church.

She said she trusts me re: worship. She said one reason for this is because language is so important to me. She said the other reason is that I am so concerned to make a space that is "anxiety free" for people, to allow them to "fall into worship."

She asked me why I do so much church, asked if I have words for that.
I said people frequently ask me that and I can stumble through an answer, but I have yet to come up with a good answer.

I talked about how I'm really attached to Christianity -- and that I think that's largely because it's what I grew up with, that I'm not deeply invested/interested in investigating the truth claims (that's the phrase I was looking for! -- I kept saying "faith claims" and saying I knew that wasn't the phrase I wanted) of other religions -- and I talked about how when I was in college I wanted good sold argumentations for things like the Resurrection. (I said that my mother would sometimes say, "You know it's called faith for a reason," to which my response was: "I made the God leap; for everything else I want strong argumentation.") She asked me a follow-up question about this later, and I said that I've made peace with it somehow, that I stopped fighting it and it became something that I believe, that some of it was reading the arguments of "people wouldn't have made these claims if it didn't happen" and being sufficiently satisfied with those apologetics, and some of it was being in places like CWM and finding meaningful the layers of metaphor and meaning of Resurrection and "practice resurrection" and the importance of the Incarnation and how it says that we are created bodies and bodies are good and important. Laura Ruth said -- I think in connection with this part of the conversation -- that I haven't stopped engaging with these things, that that's one of the reasons I'm so good at liturgy etc.

My friend Lorraine has been reading Marcus Borg's Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary, and she recently blogged about something Borg says on page 6:

Thus, for Christians, Jesus is utterly central. In a concise sentence, Jesus is for Christians the decisive relevation of God. Slightly more fully, Jesus reveals, discloses, what can be seen of God in a human life and what a life filled with God looks like. This affirmation defines what it means to be a Christian.

Having that in my recent history, I was inspired to talk about how going to church stuff -- be it worship service or book study or prayer group or whatever -- shows me different ways of doing this thing called being Christian. I had never thought of it that way before, but after I had said it I thought it made so much sense.

Laura Ruth talked about how I synthesize the intellectual and the emotional/experiential and my own experience and those of other people. I was thinking later that this makes a lot of sense. In college (and since) I talked a lot about interpreting liberals and conservatives to each other, living in that liminal border space, moving between two sides and trying to help both sides understand each other. I'm also really big on organizing things, making things flow, making them comprehensible; and proofreading and editing things, making them more clear and easy to understand -- which I had never thought to connect to other issues of accessibility until tonight but which now seems an intuitive connection.

Before she had to leave for another commitment, we talked a little about The Shack (which I finally read because she said of it, "it's terrible tripe but fantastic theology"). I talked about how some of it -- like the idea that God can't just be one person, because God is love, and love can only exist in relationship, and so if there was a time at which God was not in relationship then God could not be Love -- is stuff that's good to be reminded of but which isn't new to me, so I didn't have the "earth-shattering" reaction I've heard a lot of people had. I also said that I felt like a lot of the stuff in the book was good -- like the idea that just because God uses bad things toward good ends doesn't mean that God caused the bad things to begin with -- I found myself after I closed the book feeling like there were lots of big things that didn't get addressed -- like how do you balance the fact that God does intervene sometimes, why did Jesus Incarnate at that particular historical moment, what exactly does the salvific moment on the cross or at the resurrection mean, what about judgment day. I said I was willing to believe that the answer is: "It doesn't matter. What matters is loving and being in relationship."

Laura Ruth asked if I'd read A History of God, and I said no but it's on my list.
She said that the Old Testament talks about there being lots of gods, our God is just the greatest of them. She said, "God was never alone."

Before we parted, I thanked her for all the "nice is not a big enough word for what I want to say" things she said. She said, "As a pastor, I get to tell people true things. Isn't that wonderful?"

[queer] big tent

A friend of mine emailed me this afternoon:

How do you feel about asexuals joining the bisexual community?
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/24/MNC6194GN4.DTL&type=gaylesbian

[flippant second paragraph redacted for public consumption]

My reply:

I think in some ways it makes sense for members of sexual minorities to coalition together. In some ways, including asexuals arguably makes MORE sense than including transgender folks -- since gender identity/expression and sexual orientation are very different issues (though they certainly have overlap).

Of course, there is the problem of diluting the "queer" label ("queer" being my preferred term for the GLBTetc. umbrella) -- see also discussions of whether "kink" (BDSM, etc.) is "queer" even when the participants are hetero (marginalized sexual minority, yes, but...). The actual, practical, oppression/discrimination/etc. against queer people doesn't map so well on to asexual/kinky/poly/etc. folks (though there is some overlap of issues -- obviously in wanting one's sexual identity to be understood and accepted by the mainstream but also not wanting it to be illegal -- this maps most clearly onto kink, though the marriage issue is also clearly relevant to some poly folk).

"More grains. Less you."

Excuse me, WHUT?

I was just channel-surfing 'cause I don't have the energy to think, and there was an ad for whole grain cereal, saying it can help you lose weight ("people who eat more whole grains have a healthier body weight" -- define "healthier body weight") and I'm used to that sort of stuff, but then their tagline was "More grains. Less you." 0.0

"For I did not come to judge the world, but to save it." (John 12:47)

Jeremy made a post titled "Original Sin or Original Grace?" Excerpt:

Humans wrote the bible and perhaps our memories are a bit biased towards blaming snakes and women.

But this is not just human memory, it is the Old Testament: a testimony of a people's relationship with God. Have you ever read Genesis 3 and focused on what God did? Let's see:

• God curses the snake (v.14) and the ground (v.17) but doesn't curse the humans. The humans are the ones who messed up, but God curses peripheral things. Humanity is untouched by God's curses and is given a huge portion of God's grace.
  
• God closes off the Garden not out of spite or wrath, but out of care that they not be tempted by the other Tree of Life also (v.22). God removed temptation out of care, not removed everlasting life out of spite or wrath.

[...]

God of Wrath this isn't. This is a God of Grace, who cares for the humans even as they see their actions hurt people (and animals) in ways they didn't expect.

Stories like this one are equal parts explanation of why things are the way they are and testimonies to the actions of God in the history of a people. We often point to human activity in these stories, but why not focus on God's actions? And God's actions are not angry but delicate, not spiteful but graceful, not condemning but articulating how the world will be much more difficult now but all is not cursed and irredeemable.

As we hack Christianity, we go back to the beginning, peel back the layers of tradition and history, and rediscover the God of Grace that has been there all along. Perhaps then it is when we also clothe the naked, when we also help those who toil on the cursed ground, when we also mourn the collateral damage from our sins...perhaps then we are closer to the God of Grace who still wanders in the garden alone.

***

I then read a post from Andy Bryan of Enter the Rainbow on "Eternal Life" in which he states:

I don’t think eternal life begins when we die, because if it had a beginning, then it wouldn’t be eternal. Eternal not only means “always will be” but also “always has been.” Shane Claiborne wrote about this in “The Irresistible Revolution,” saying that he is convinced “Jesus came not just to prepare us to die but to teach us how to live.” Eternal life is an ongoing something that we enter into when we decide to follow Jesus.

[...]

And while I don’t know exactly how to express the idea, because all language is metaphor, all of this means that saying “yes” to the life everlasting that Christ offers should therefore impact us in the present. Followers of Christ should live differently, better. In other words, I’m no expert on the “everlasting” part, but I’ll do my best to live the here and now like God wants me to.

Doesn’t it seem like sometimes we spend a lot of energy waiting around for heaven? As Shane Claiborne puts it, “Christians pretty much live like everybody else; they just sprinkle a little Jesus in along the way.” I don’t believe that we are supposed to live however we want and then let God sort it all out in the end. I believe we are supposed to live here and now as if the there and then has already come. Why else would be pray for God’s will to be done on earth, as it is in heaven?

[...] Jesus came to tell us that God’s reign on earth was among us, not in the far-off future, and certainly not in any earthly authority. And not only that, he came to embody that heavenly reign on earth in his very self. And it was hard work. You might say he worked himself to death.

Have you ever thought about how much in this world would change if Christians really lived the way Jesus says we should? What would it look life if we truly believed that we have been given life everlasting? How would you respond? How would you change?

The idea that we are called to do the hard work of embodying God's Kin(g)dom on Earth isn't new to me -- though a reminder is always good -- but I am particularly intrigued by this idea of everlasting life as being something that has always existed -- "like entering a flowing stream somewhere in the middle" as Andy says. Andy also cites Jeremiah 1:4's “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you…

doing the work of the church

I've been reading Shaping Sanctuary (Tiffany recommended it during Reconciling lunch at this year's New England Annual Conference), and on page 134 there are two prayers from the Reconciling Congregation Program.

From Luke 9:28-36:

Radiant God, source of light,
as you surrounded Jesus with your glory,
so you come to us in a penetrating brightness.

You catch us off guard and expose our weakness.

We choose the limelight while you call us to explore the shadows
and brighten the darkness.

We seek the spectacular while you bind up the broken in
countless acts of mercy.

We seek to stay on the mountain or in a comfortable pew while
you walk to the valleys of need.

Radiant God,
fill us with light and courage to carry good news into all the
corners of the world and to bring back the joy of your presence.

Amen.

From Matthew 15:21-28:

O God, you are Hospitality. You are Welcome. You are the Invitation, the Table, the Feast. By your spirit may we learn to receive and offer grace, to share from the sustenance of our lives and not simply the crumbs. Embolden us as we serve as the voice of those who continue to ask the church for justice and bread. In Christ we pray, amen.

***

My best friend and I have recently been discussing how to embody welcoming, inclusive, accessible church, and reading the second of these prayers in particular I was thinking about the demands that places on us the members who make up the Body of Christ that is the Church. And not only am I lazy, but I also mostly don't like people, so I am doubly disinclined to help do the actual do the work of welcoming people.

The line "to share from the sustenance of our lives and not simply the crumbs" from the second prayer really struck me. My best friend loves her church and wants to give her best to her church. I am, rather less devoted to CWM. It surprises no one, I expect, that I'm much more inclined to critique worship services etc. than I am to put in real work to help fix things. I think it's also tied to my unwillingness to claim group identity labels (like church/denominational membership).

CWM is my church home. Were I to pursue ordained ministry (WHICH I AM NOT DOING -- despite various people telling me I should), I would do it within the context of that community. It's the church I am most glad to return to when I have been out of town. I say it's my home church. But I'm really uncomfortable fundraising, for example -- uncomfortable with telling people this is a wonderful thing they should give their money to.

Though maybe I'm selling myself short.

I show up at Rest and Bread service and help set up chairs and put the inserts in the bulletins and photocopy more bulletins if we're running low. I've helped lead worship in any capacity as asked, and have sometimes volunteered when I know one of the usual leaders will be absent. I've bought firesticks [like this, only different] 'cause the ones in the chapel kept vanishing.

I help set up because I'm there early anyway and it's easy, and everything else is because I Want Things Done Right (well except for helping with the service itself, which is more because I'm capable and comfortable and willing when asked).

I think basically it's that I don't want to do anything that feels like work -- in the sense of not wanting to do anything that doesn't come naturally/easily to me. Which isn't necessarily inherently a bad thing. We're all given different gifts and graces (the Body needs many different parts) and yes we are called to grow, but...

I volunteer to lay read at any church I attend regularly -- because it's something I enjoy doing, and very selfishly it means there are bad lay readers less often.

Providing food for fellowship, for example, is one thing I really don't want to do -- though I'll sometimes help wash dishes at CWM (usually helping dry, because given the setup we have I'm not a huge fan of washing dishes there, even though in general it's a household "chore" I don't mind).

men against rape, and other topics

This morning, one of our doctoral students mentioned that he works (worked?) with Harvard's Office of Sexual Assault Prevention and Response, and he also mentioned the organization Harvard Men Against Rape. He said that when he mentions that he's a part of that org, people are all, "Oh, that's so great," and he's like, "Do you know any men who support rape?" I said, "Yeah, you don't get any liberal guilt cookies for that."

But it made me think of cereta's post. (And in digging up the link, I was reminded that inlovewithnight commented, "a societal problem like rape can't be changed as long as only half the population is working on it.")

And my second thought was of TLGN's post, where she says: Deadgirl, because as the tagline says, "you'll never have anything better" than getting the chance to repeatedly rape a restrained female zombie.

++

It also got me thinking about this post on Sociological Images (seen via Matthew Yglesias):

While in New Orleans (again) in July, I attended some of the festivities associated with Tale of the Cocktail. One of them was a cocktail expo with the theme “Seven Deadly Sins.” Sponsored by Cabana Cachaca rum, Lust was personified this way:

[image]

Presumably lust is not a feeling exclusive to straight men, yet the Lust booth featured only women dancing. Because of the primacy of the male gaze, what is believed to be sexy to straight men gets defined as “sexy” for everyone.

moderation

At lunch today, people were talking about wishing to be wealthy enough to have really fancy houses, multiple houses, etc., and someone mentioned wanting to have enough money to never have to worry about money. While I can understand the fantasy aspect of the former, the latter threw me, because I don't think of people who have my job as needing to really ration their spending.

I'm so much more free with spending my money than I would have imagined myself being given who I was in high school and college, and I am too lazy to do the research to really get good deals on stuff like some people I know do, but my spectrum for comfortable spending is clearly different from other people's.

I also don't particularly have any desire to be obscenely wealthy. Yeah, I would like to be living on my own in a nice condo, and I would like a personal tailor so I can have pants and (button-down) shirts that actually fit my figure well, but in general I don't feel like my income level keeps me from doing much that I want to do.

***

Later today, I read the TIME article "Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin" by John Cloud [Sunday, Aug. 09, 2009].

My favorite part is from page 4 of the web version:

It's likely that I am more sedentary during my nonexercise hours than I would be if I didn't exercise with such Puritan fury. If I exercised less, I might feel like walking more instead of hopping into a cab; I might have enough energy to shop for food, cook and then clean instead of ordering a satisfyingly greasy burrito.

I've talked before about how this mentality is so bizarre to me -- that people go to the gym but have these really sedentary lives outside of the gym (e.g., "I go to the gym so I don't have to take the stairs"). I grew up walking everywhere, so my sense of what's baseline activity is very different from other people's. The idea of carving out time in my day to go do intense concentrated physical activity was never really appealing to me, and it's weird to me that I've become someone who has a very regular gym routine (and can actually have conversations about this!), but I go to the gym to make my body stronger and healthier in ways that have value to me.

The article continues:

The problem ultimately is about not exercise itself but the way we've come to define it. Many obesity researchers now believe that very frequent, low-level physical activity — the kind humans did for tens of thousands of years before the leaf blower was invented — may actually work better for us than the occasional bouts of exercise you get as a gym rat. "You cannot sit still all day long and then have 30 minutes of exercise without producing stress on the muscles," says Hans-Rudolf Berthoud, a neurobiologist at LSU's Pennington Biomedical Research Center who has studied nutrition for 20 years. "The muscles will ache, and you may not want to move after. But to burn calories, the muscle movements don't have to be extreme. It would be better to distribute the movements throughout the day."

For his part, Berthoud rises at 5 a.m. to walk around his neighborhood several times. He also takes the stairs when possible. "Even if people can get out of their offices, out from in front of their computers, they go someplace like the mall and then take the elevator," he says. "This is the real problem, not that we don't go to the gym enough."

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"

ris'n with healing in his wings

I was catching up on Saint Nicholas Is In Hull on my GoogleReader the other day, and a section of one entry jumped out at me:

Then she asked me, "I am... have you ever even healed anyone?"

[...]

My response was, "Well... I can't say that I have."

I kind of blinked.

I feel like my response would be, "Well not in the sense that a doctor does... but I have sat with people in pain, I have provided a safe place for people in crisis..."

I believe I have mentioned before that I love Julia Kasdorf's poem "What I Learned from My Mother."

Like a doctor, I learned to create
from another’s suffering my own usefulness, and once
you know how to do this, you can never refuse.
To every house you enter, you must offer
healing: a chocolate cake you baked yourself,
the blessing of your voice, your chaste touch.

***

Today, I was catching up on sermons at First Church.

In her July 5 sermon "Healing...on One Foot" (Mark 6:1-13), Kerrie Harthan posited that we are all healers, and I was so glad to hear that after reading that blog entry.

She also said, "our gospel message isn't about escaping, it's about being liberated -- it's about engaging."

She also shared an interesting thought from her spouse, Gloria, about being inspired by movements rather than individuals -- at least not until they are dead, so we can be sure they will not betray us. And also, "sometimes when a leader goes away, so does the teaching."

***

How To Practice
(Mark 6:30-34) Rev Laura Ruth Jarrett preaching, July 19, 2009

There's some stuff here I want to come back to again and again.

I wonder, how did Jesus came to belief. Did he believe in God, or Judaism out of the shoot because, well, he was God? Did he believe in himself? But how did he learn how to marshall his energies, when to rest and retreat? When he was healing folks, how did he learn to let out the right amout of power so that folks were healed but not raptured or slain? How did he know when to raise someone from the dead (if we believe he did) and when to let folks lie moldering. How did he know or handle the fact that folks thought he was the Messiah? How do you learn how to do that, be the Messiah?

[...]

Another practice that maybe you thought was a commandment: you shall not commit adultery. Not committing adultery is hard! It takes spiritual practice not to step out on your partner! Some of us prefer the thrill of indiscretion to the centered, patient, kind, sometimes painful, sometimes dull, working out of relationship, or the careful dissolution of relationship that no longer works. What we learn from relationships, we learn about ourselves and about our relationship with God. So, practice fidelity in relationships, a kind of fidelity you and your partner work out. It takes practice.

[...]

Don’t lie. Figuring out how to tell the truth takes a lot of practice, telling truth not as a weapon, but as a means of being in relationship – letting your yes be yes and your no be no. Hard, work! Not a thing done perfectly, or instantly. It takes a lot of practicing. Once we stop being attached to telling what we wish were true, we can become free. This is what Jesus teaches, the truth will set us free.

[...]

But also spiritual practice leads us into belief, belief that little by little, or maybe very quickly, causes us to understand truths too large to be contained by our puny, valiant, striving, resilient, market saturated spirits, truths that attempt to be explained by the metaphor of Trinity, or virgin birth, life that does not end. Here is a spiritual practice. Try not to limit the work of God. Try not to make the vast mystery of God small. Try not to get tripped up by other people’s metaphors. Have patience and let God be revealed to you, allow yourselves to be opened. This is my prayer for you.

***

Catching up on TransEpiscopal blog, I read (emphasis mine)

And obviously, if you have been following this blog, by now you know that at this Convention we made stunning progress on transgender issues. As we look back on the work of this Convention, I think it will be important to see this progress in the larger context of the forward movement via D025 and C056. But I also think our progress was part of the spirit of openness and relationality, and indeed of intentional, focused storytelling that were themes of this Convention (not to mention humor, as several bishops displayed during their session Friday). The spirit of the indaba groups that were featured at last summer’s Lambeth Conference also feels connected to this trend. People were careful not to demonize one another in their disagreements. People attended to one another’s humanity. Those of us who testified on the transgender related resolutions benefited from and, I hope and believe, contributed to that spirit.

And that is as it should be. That kind of attentiveness to one another’s humanity is at the heart of the Baptismal Covenant of the Episcopal Church, which asks, “will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?” and “will you strive for justice and peace and respect the dignity of every human being?” The answer to these questions may seem easy, but sometimes they are not — which is why the response given in the Book of Common Prayer is “I will, with God’s help.” This Christian life we are about is a spiritual discipline that we all pledge to take up upon entry into this beloved community. And I know in my very gut that when we live into that discipline, when we do, with God’s help, we grow. Advent approaches indeed.

I've encountered a bunch of baptismal/membership covenants recently (attending ordinations and such), and my reaction is often, "I cannot vow that," but that one I could, that one I want to.

***

A "when loves come to town" blog entry I read recently (the first in an "Everything belongs..." series) included a YouTube embed of Bob Franke singing "For Real," and I pulled it up and listened to it this afternoon.

"let's be kind to each other -- not forever but for real"

I was struck by this as I had spent much of this afternoon sitting (metaphorically) with a beloved, praying "God have mercy."

There's a hole in the middle of the prettiest life
So the lawyers and the prophets say
Not your father nor your mother
Nor you lover's gonna ever make it go away
And there's too much darkness in an endless night
To be afraid of the way we feel
Let's be kind to each other
Not forever but for real

I forgot about the ending verse:

Some say that God is a lover
Some say it's an endless void
Some say both, some say she's angry
Some say he's just annoyed
But if God felt a hammer in the palm of his hand
Then God knows the way we feel
And love lasts forever
Forever and for real

Love lasts forever

I thought first of recent discussions about what religion means to different people and second of Catie Curtis' song "The Big Reprise."

The previous entry on "when loves comes to town" included an embed of Alison Krauss And Robert Plant performing "Down to the River to Pray."

---

Rest and Bread

Dear Beloved,

We gather this evening for at 6:15 for communion and prayer. We're reflecting on sheep tonight, how we are like sheep, and Jesus the shepherd. Come be gathered in.

We have music for meditation at 6. You may come at 6 to pray.If you'd prefer to come at 6:10 or 6:14, and even if you're late, don't worry about disturbing us. We don't mind you coming in when you're ready, because we're glad to see you.

***

[FirstChurch Mailing List] an act of vandalism in Watertown, a call for witness

Dear Beloved,

The Watertown UU Congregation's rainbow flag was torched. I don't know more details than that, other than to say, that no physical bodies were hurt.

The Watertown congregation has asked for a gathering in Watertown Sq. on Saturday, July 25th at 6 PM. After gathering, we will march to the church, about three blocks away, and reinstall the flag.

The FCS Marching Band will go to lend a hand and to bear witness. Will you come, also?

Between now and then, please will you remember and pray for those who, everyday, must decide how to react in a world that cannot behold their entire humanity. While this prayer may include each of us sometime, I particularly think of Professor Henry Louis Gates, and all who have been taken out of their homes in handcuffs.

May we share the solidarity we crave.

Although we don't know the circumstances of those who burned the rainbow flag or the circumstances of Officer Crowley who arrested Professor Gates, please, may we pray for them, also?

May we share the compassion we crave.

Yours, in solidarity and compassion,
Laura Ruth

***

Psalm 61 ("Lead me to the rock that is higher than I")
Luke 15:1-7

I loved how she talked, really lovingly, both in our pre-service prayer (I was helping her lead worship, as Keith was away) and in her Reflection, about the incident with Prof. Gates and about calling us to be our best selves. In her Reflection, she talked about how God seeks us, picks up and puts us on his shoulders -- "or embraces you in a way that would be more comfortable to you."

my biases are showing

A friend of mine made a post last night about seeking faith &etc., and I am having such a difficult time reading the comments wherein people say really disparaging/dismissive things about their experiences with Christianity -- both because of some of the tone and because of the implication that ALL Christianity is thus sullied.

Hi, watch me feel really really defensive of my faith.

It also reminded me of my friend L. saying that all men are manipulative assholes -- which is true of her experiences with men but not of mine.

So rather than just griping, let me sketch out some of why I love this Story so much.

God created the world and declared it good. God said, "let us make humanity in our image, according to our likeness." Every single one of us is beloved of God, God who has known us since before we were air-breathers (Psalm 139).

God is a God of the underdog. God hears God's people crying out. God lifts God's people out of bondage. God mourns when God's people turn away from God.

God spoke to God's people throughout history.
God Incarnated, came and met humanity in the flesh.
We commemorate our communion with God and with each other with sacred meals.

Jesus was resurrected, body and soul. After the Road to Emmaus, Jesus' friends recognized Jesus in the sharing of a meal. Throughout his ministry, Jesus touched people and healed them of physical ailments and forgave their sins and sat down to meals with them -- people of all sorts.
We look forward to the redemption of all creation.

We are an embodied, beloved, blessed people.

On the seventh day of Creation, God rested. At times, Jesus went off to be alone. We have canonical models which tell us that we should not work 24/7.

Jesus also asked his friends to pray with him as he approached the hour of his death. We have strong models of community.

Creation is so rooted in breath and Word. God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. The Tetragrammaton (YHWH) sounds like breath. The first human was created from the earth and God inbreathed. The Christian church was born when the Holy Spirit descended upon the early disciples and those gathered all heard the Good News in their native tongue.

Abraham argued with God to not destroy the city of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18:16-33). There is a midrash that when God commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac that God had wanted Abraham to argue then, too. We argue with God. God holds us to a high standard (and also extends us grace and mercy, streams which will never dry up) and we too remind God of the importance of justice and mercy.

"What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" (Micah 6:8)

We are called to love everyone.

"You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt." (Exodus 22:21)

Jacob wrestled with the Angel and was renamed "Israel," a people who struggle with God and live.

This brain-dump isn't holding together as well as I had hoped. Let me sum up.

I believe in a God who loves me, who loves all of Creation, who meets me in the silence of my heart, in the whirlwind of my anger and frustration, in the belly of the great fish, in the sharing of bread and drink with friends and with strangers.

[marriage] "Maybe it's more like Silly Putty and the plastic egg it comes in."

Dave Chen linked to the Salon article "It's hot! It's sexy! It's ... marriage!: Am I the only person who actually enjoys being hitched these days?" by Aaron Traister | Jul. 15, 2009.

It's a really good article.

Marriage (and long-term committed relationship) has been a topic of conversation recently in a couple of different arenas.

Probably my favorite line from the piece is: "Maybe we shouldn't treat the institution and its dirty little companion as some sort of precious Fabergé egg that is either shattered and worthless or pristine, untouchable and priceless."

One of the things I remember actually liking from Lauren Winner's book Real Sex was her pointing out that we have this idea that if you're not rapturously In Love with your partner All The Time then ur doin smthg wrong.

[kidney donation] "Open hearts. Open minds. Open doors."

Monday morning of last week, an email came through on the listserv of the local UCC church I attend about writing letters to Legal Seafoods and The Cheesecake Factory. (The email says, in part, "Legal Seafoods and The Cheesecake Factory restaurants in Greater Boston subcontracted with local companies that hired these workers to clean their restaurants. The cleaning companies then refused to pay the workers for both regular and overtime hours, cheating them out of weeks of hard-earned pay. Our mission and justice partner Centro Presente is leading a campaign seeking fair treatment for the workers.")

It occurred to me that probably plenty of CWM folk would be interested in workers' rights issues, and I continue to feel frustrated at the lack of information-sharing between congregations.

What I've been hearing about these past however many weeks at CWM (my primary church) is the trans-inclusive Massachusetts ENDA [and hate crimes bill] and environmental stuff.

At midweek service at aforementioned UCC church last week, the pastor had flyers for the Hearty Meals outreach at the American Baptist church down the street.

Then later I was thinking about how it probably makes sense for individual congregations to only focus on a few mission outreaches

***

Later that day, I read an article in The Atlantic about kidney donation (which I didn't realize until I hit the end was by Virginia Postrel). Excerpt:

Living with a single kidney is almost exactly like living with two; the remaining kidney expands to take up the slack. (When kidneys fail, they generally fail together; barring trauma or cancer, there’s not much advantage to a backup.) The main risk to the donor is the risk of any surgery. The kidney can now be removed laparoscopically, using tiny incisions and a fiber-optic camera to guide the surgeon, thus avoiding the huge abdominal slice and lengthy recovery time that used to be standard. Kidney donors don’t have to be close relatives of recipients, but they do need to have the right blood type. And kidneys from living donors tend to last many years longer than kidneys from deceased donors.

Since the current transplant system extols altruism, one way to end the list would be to find more altruists. With, say, 50,000 new living donors, deceased donation could easily pick up the slack. Again, the numbers aren’t that big. The Southern Baptist Convention includes 42,000 member churches; the United Methodist Church, whose Web site earlier this year featured the quote, “As United Methodists, we’re life savers,” counts more than 34,000 U.S. congregations. If each congregation produced just one new living donor, the waiting list would disappear. But kidney donation is a more visceral mission than mainstream religious groups want to contemplate. The only sect to adopt kidney donation as a formal cause is a tiny Australia-based group called Jesus Christians; instead of lauding them, critics point to their donations as evidence that they’re a cult.

I still refuse to officially join any church/denomination, but my home church is "wicked Methodist" (TM me), and in recent months I've noticed myself having "you are of my people" reactions to people mentioning having grown up United Methodist, so I was particularly kicked by the mention of the UMC.

[on prayer] "what do I love when I love my God?"

In reading Blake Huggins' recent(ish) blogpost "Prayer (still) does not change things," I found a lot which resonated with me (and some that didn't fit with my personal journey) and a lot to chew on.

I have failed to articulate any actual commentary in the time since I read it, so I am simply posting an excerpt.

if theology is primarily about developing a sound and coherent word (logos) about God (theos) — however limiting and finite it may be — what could be more important than prayer? If I am feebly and delicately trying to develop ideas about God, about the divine, about that which is beyond me and that which consumes me — which is what I have devoted the remainder of my life to doing — what could be more weighty and significant than my ideas about addressing the divine, than my approach to communicating with God, than the way in which I, to borrow from Brother Lawrence, practice the presence of God?

This is what I am trying to get at: prayer says more about our theology and our ideas of God than we realize; indeed, I would go so far as to claim that how we view prayer in some sense determines what we believe about the nature of God and vice versa. If God is a deus ex machina, a mechanistic deity, a Big Daddy in the Sky who pulls strings for good people and cuts strings for bad people, then we will pray in a certain way. And, like my example above, how we pray will reveal an understood theology whether we overtly claim it or not. If we really want to “do theology” well and uncover all those areas in which the residue of our tacit assumptions about God still remain, then we had better take prayer seriously.

What can we do, then, in developing a theology of prayer but return to St. Augustine’s age old question in book ten of the Confessions: what do I love when I love my God? Is that not the ultimate question of prayer? Does that penetrating question not guide all our prayers and all our tears, all of our weak attempts to address that which calls us into being? To paraphrase Jacques Derrida, what can we do but re-inscribe that question into our own context and our own language?

[My note: See also Blake's earlier post in which he talks about (among other things) relationality in reflecting on the question "what is it that we love when we love our God? Who is it that we love when we love our God?"]

I must confess that I am not consistent in setting aside time for prayer or “quiet time” as they used to say at church camp. Yet I wonder if in some sense doing so might minimalize the power and potency of prayer. Here I want to be very clear: I am not suggesting dropping such exercises altogether, of course there are important and edifying. I’m just wondering out loud if hyper-emphasis on that alone misses the point of prayer. What if instead of being relegated to the mundane as some sort of chore one must undertake in order to reach a certain quota prayer (and here I am relying on Brother Lawrence and others) demanded a radical restructuring of one’s life in response to the always ever-present Spirit of God in the world? What if we lived life itself as an act of prayer rather than reduced prayer to mere daily exercise? What if prayer is simply (and complexly) the ongoing outworking of our reply to Augustine’s question, which is always left open as a question?

It is in this vein that I read Oswald Chambers when he writes, “It is not so true that ‘prayer changes things’ as that prayer changes me and I change things.” I do not pray to change God’s mind or to change reality, I pray because I myself am changed and transformed in the process. And because I leave Augustine’s question open as a question I am always answering (rather than a question to which I Answer) I stand with John Caputo, Derrida and the medieval mystics in saying that I do not know to whom I am praying, I do not know where my prayers and tears are directed. Yet I am (at my best) transformed and empowered to restructure my life as an ongoing act of prayer in response to the question “what do I love when I love my God?” Such a response is made palpable in my direct encounters with the other, encounters in which I am humbled to see myself as (an)other and encounters in which my normal, boring mode of being in the world is ruptured by divine grace, pushing me beyond a place of comfortability and into the realm of the im/possible where I see the other face-to-face.

I do not know to whom I pray, yet I continue. And in so doing I, a broken vessel, am made new again and again. In this way I can turn Derrida’s oft quoted statement (”I quite rightly pass for an atheist”) in my own direction: I quite rightly pass as one who prays. I seek to structure my life as an act of prayer itself insofar as such an act is an act of transformative response to the rupture of the divine event, of continually answering the questions of what it is that I love when I love my God and to whom, if anyone, my prayers are directed. These are open-ended questions, they are never nailed down and only loosely demarcated. My prayers are, like Augustine’s, prayers of a restless heart, of an unhinged being who does not know who he is and yet still seeks to understand from whence he came. My prayers are always already unfinished and any “Amen” that I utter is always already the beginning of my next prayer, my next attempt at answering or reformulating these questions.

Our prayers have no real discernible beginning or end, only movements or acts (as in a play) in between. This is, I think, precisely why Martin Luther King, Jr. said that to be without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without drawing breath. To be in prayer is to be in touch with the divine, something which never really ceases albeit something of which we may or may not be aware. The more efficacious prayer is — and here I turn back to Brother Lawrence — that one which is aware of one’s being in touch with something beyond oneself, something which beckons a tangible, sustained response; the most efficacious prayer is that one which heeds the call for response and allows oneself to be changed, both through the prayer and through outworking of the response. This is the sphere we should inhabit as those who seek justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God — a sphere of continual prayer, a posture of “praying without ceasing” as Paul wrote (I Thess. 5:17). So let us pray and let us continue to pray as together we work toward more faithful participation in the divine life.

[Firefly] on Incarnation, atonement theology, etc.

Some local folks have been watching Firefly every other Friday night, and in watching "Safe" (for literally the sixth time) a couple weeks ago, I was really struck by the resonance of one exchange (text c&p'ed from script here), thinking about God reaching out to us.

RIVER: You gave up everything you had to find me. And you found me broken. (beat) It's hard for you. You gave up everything you had.
SIMON: Mei mei ["little sister"]... Everything I have is right here.

I think God is always reaching out to us, and that's one of the ways I think of the Incarnation -- not just that we weren't understanding God's Will for us and needed shepherding back to the path (The Way), but also that God reaches out and touches us, sits down at table and shares bread and drink with us.

And our brokenness grieves God, and God is right there with us through it all.

Christ descended from the Right Hand of the Father to come to earth, born of a human woman and suffering as humans do, but at some levels it wasn't a sacrifice because God's home is with us, our home is with God. (And now I'm thinking of the Children's Moment and Reflection from my evening church this past Sunday.)

***

I tagged this entry "mother is the name of god," mostly because the fanfic I learned that quotation from takes place during this episode, but it also got me thinking.

Our interim lay speaker began his time with us (Fifth Sunday After Pentecost) preaching on family (specifically 2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10 ... on how David is covenantally anointed a leader of family -- "All the tribes of Israel came to David at Hebron and said, 'We are your own flesh and blood.'")

[Christianity] perfected bodies and (wedding) feasts

Shapely Prose's A Sarah posted:

One of the reasons I grudgingly remain a Christian, is because of a particular story that Christianity tells about bodies. Now, I hardly need to point out that not all the stories Christianity has told about bodies are good ones. A lot of them are crap. Maybe most of them; I don’t have an exhaustive understanding of Christian stories about bodies, but of the ones I come across, most are terrible. But there is, I think, a strand of the Christian tradition that is very body-affirming. For example: You might not know this, but there’s actually good reason for viewing the notion of a “soul” going to “heaven” as an interloper in the Christian tradition. Well, maybe “interloper” is too strong. But many theologians would say that, at best, it’s a belief that’s become an unhelpful distraction simply by being so focused upon. (Like, it actually doesn’t say in the historical canonical creeds that Christians’ souls will go to heaven when they die; it says only that Jesus was resurrected from the dead and then ascended into heaven, where he’s hanging out until he comes again.) (Er, I’m paraphrasing.)

Arguably, the FAR more consistent and long-established Christian belief about life after death is EXACTLY NOT that some immaterial vapor of selfhood will go into a happy place in the sky. Rather, it’s that our bodies will be resurrected and perfected.

Aieee! Perfect bodies. I’ve gone to church since I was a wee tot, and have now made a job of it — and yet when I hear about bodies being “perfected,” what springs to mind is not the Christian belief in the resurrection of the dead. No, it’s diets. It’s bikini season. Clear complexion products and spray tan and so forth. I fill with dread and anxiety and self-loathing.

But in the Christian theological sense, “perfected bodies” means mostly that our bodies won’t be in pain or die again. (Well, you have people like St. Augustine who also specified that everyone would be 33 years old in the resurrection, but that’s sort of an academic point.) More interesting than what the bodies won’t be, is what they will be, according to this particular flight of the Christian imagination. Namely, they will be ours. Recognizably. They will be physical bodies, the same ones we have now, just… transformed, somehow. They’ll be even more what they are now, more alive, more there. Their longings and yearnings will be fulfilled and satisfied. The delightful tangibility and vulnerability that comes with being fleshy won’t go away, but it won’t any longer be an occasion for danger and harm. It has even been speculated by at least one Christian theologian (and yes those are weasel words, and no I can’t remember who said it but I swear it’s in my seminary notes!) that our perfected bodies will retain their scars. The reasoning was that it makes sense that anything which testifies to suffering’s having been overcome will be preserved.

And what’s one image in the Christian tradition that has consistently been used to describe this new, redeemed, embodied life that awaits? Obviously not immaterial souls becoming harp-playing angels on clouds. Nope nope nope. A feast. A feast, where nobody is left out and everybody has enough. A feast where – if I may extend the image in a manner I think is faithful to it – there are no good foods and bad foods… no popular table and no nerds table… no foods that look gorgeous on the plate but are the result of cruel and world-killing technology… no need to make eating into a locus for control in the hopes of finally, finally being worthy of love. Just a beautiful, intimate, abundant, joyful, and peaceful meal with your close circle of friends. Except that the circle is extended to every creature, and the Holy One is sitting with us at the table too.

She goes on to talk about some of the ways in which the "wedding night" imagery is problematic and then to her great credit says:

Ah, that’s where I see the whole “ordered appetite” thing come in. And, you know, I can *almost* cut my tradition some slack here. I mean, if you’re saying that both gastronomical hunger and its fulfillment, and sexual longing and its fulfillment, reveal something about the very goal of the whole cosmos… well, suddenly, it seems pretty important to put in a bunch of provisos about how there are right and wrong ways for those appetites to be ordered. Because we don’t want to say that just EVERYthing that someone might theoretically do sexually, or EVERYthing you do related to your meals, is redemptive and good. A meal can be the occasion of exclusion and harm, even accidentally. So can sex. So can a bunch of other embodied longings.

Well, better make a whole bunch of rules to make sure that people only do the right things with their appetites, and not the wrong things, right?

Uhhh, sure, go ahead. Make a list of ordered and disordered appetites. And rules. And good people and bad people. And good bodies and bad bodies. Knock yourself out. EXCEPT REMEMBER THAT a big horking part of the Judeo-Christian narrative has to do with the guardians of “order” always being tempted to use that order to shore up their own power. And meanwhile – at least as I read the Christian Bible, but I’m not alone – God has pretty consistently cast God’s lot with those who’ve been othered by the authorities of the day.

Seriously, that’s like, um, kind of the whole freaking plot of the Bible, over and over and over and over and over again. The guardians of order say, with some plausible reason, “These are the conditions necessary for God to find favor with people!” And then God says, “Aww, nice try, mates, and I can totally see how you got there… but turns out I’m not so simple. ‘Scuse me a sec… Hey, you outcasts over there! Come join the party!”

At the end, she writes:

I can’t write about this without mentioning a memory that I shall cherish for as long as my memory functions. It illustrates everything I’ve just been trying, in fits and starts, to describe.

In the early ‘aughties I lived in a sort of pacifist anarchist Christian commune. One of the things we did — in addition to dumpster-diving, protesting war, and gardening — was provide a place for families with children who needed somewhere to stay. (At the time, in the city where I lived, most regular shelters and agencies wouldn’t place parents and children together.) One young woman, a high school student, stayed with us for more than a year. She’d been kicked out of her house when she got pregnant and decided to proceed with the pregnancy.

One day – when she was getting near her due date – she and the baby’s father announced they would be getting married. “WHAT!? CONGRATULATIONS!” we exclaimed. “WHEN?!” Whereupon this woman said somewhat dejectedly that they’d just get it taken care of the next day, because it’s not like they’d have any family who’d want to come.

At this point the matriarch of the community BEGGED her to let them try and give her a beautiful wedding. The bride happily said yes. And what I saw come together in the next twenty-four hours… I just don’t know how to describe it except that it felt like God was a sprightly and eccentric auntie throwing a wedding for her favorite niece. Somehow the news spread throughout the whole neighborhood. Little things just came together. For instance, the next morning my friend Christy and I found gorgeous entire bouquets of fresh flowers in the dumpster behind a florist, which we used to decorate the basement chapel. The intentional community down the street baked a wedding cake using, for the toppers, boy and girl chocolate Easter bunnies that they happened to have gotten on clearance. One of the other moms in the house worked as a caterer, and she made piles and piles of pupusas and heaps of black beans. Other neighbors brought chicken and I don’t even remember what else. A very psychologically troubled friend of ours who had some musical gifts sang “Danny Boy” as a solo. The preacher from the storefront church half a block away offered to do the ceremony. And the eighty-five-year-old grandfather who lived up the street — the sort who’d sit on his front porch in all but the worst weather so he could greet everyone as they passed – asked the bride if he could give her away.

ALL THIS HAPPENED IN ONE DAY.

It was both a feast, and a wedding night. And to me, it was a very scripturally-appropriate foretaste of the future of justice and peace that I try to work for. But I’ve often reflected how it satisfied exactly nobody’s rules for proper behavior or ordered appetites. Nobody. Certainly not wedding experts. Certainly not most religious people, who would have frowned on the bride (and perhaps only her) for having sex. Not the young woman’s family, who were angry she proceeded with the pregnancy. Not the vegans in our community, because of the chicken. I mean, they handled it with good humor and everything; I’m just saying if *they* had been in charge there probably wouldn’t have been chicken, you know? The wedding probably wouldn’t even have satisfied the government, seeing as how the groom didn’t speak English, couldn’t understand a word the preacher said, and didn’t actually repeat any vows. Hell, as a feminist I wasn’t thrilled in principle that she was being given away!

Didn’t matter. There was some power that had gone out ahead of us, ahead of all our rules, and brought us together in a place of peace… in a way that none of us could have anticipated. It was a gift *precisely* *because* it didn’t just spring up out of our fastidious adherence to rules.

Well, that’s my take, anyway. It’s also a long way of telling how I eventually found my spot in a liberal Christianity where a love of embodied life (in its lumpiest and bumpiest and earthiest sense) is at the heart of my faith… a Christianity that expects God to be especially at work in the lives of people with the “wrong” kinds of bodies, who have or are believed to have the “wrong” kinds of yearnings, longings, appetites.

"Mother is the name of God..."

At SCBC prayer group this morning, people kept saying "Lord" and "Father" and "He." I don't want to co-opt the term "double-consciousness" (esp. since I think I wouldn't really be using it correctly), but I was very conscious simultaneously of how the speakers intended the language and how it failed to resonate with me. I've been inclined recently to use female language for God (e.g., "Mother," "She"), even though any gendered language for God makes me uncomfortable to some degree because God is so beyond our conceptions of gender. "Mother" in particular often make me uncomfortable because I feel like the speakers are intended to conjure up this happy fluffy "if only women ruled the world we would live in socialist harmony" idea. I was thinking about how recently I've had that fierce protective "place myself between you and the powers of darkness" urge, and how that feels to me really true to who God is and also echoes the Mama Bear response I've seen from my own mother.

"Mother is the name of God in the lips and hearts of children" [Google tells me (1) that originates with William Makepeace, (2) it was quoted in The Crow -- which is probably where it was initially familiar to me from.]

***

At CWM tonight, I think it was in the Welcome that Tiffany said something about how we are gathered around this table, and I realized that by gathering around the Communion table, we literally mirror the Last Supper -- Christ gathering together with his friends.

Carolyn went off lectionary and preached on: Psalm 29, 1 John 4:19-21, Amos 5:18-24

She talked about how Amos' audience believed that their prosperity (though I don't think that was the exact word she used, but I totally thought, "Wow, that really undercuts the idea of the Prosperity Gospel") was the result of God's favor on them. Retribution will come at the time it is least expected. She also talked about how this idea of divine retribution is problematic (though I think she might have been overgenerous in stating that we liberals are uncomfortable with the idea of divine retribution raining down on our adversaries ;) ).

She said that the word translated "stream" in Amos is a word from the Noah flood story, so it's rather more intense than just the literal translation of "permanent stream that will never run dry." She talked about how the water language of the Psalm recalls Creation and Noah -- order out of chaos. She suggested that one lesson we could take from this is that God helps us find meaning.

Three things we can learn from this Amos passage:
1. Justice is important to God. (On the Day of YHWH, YHWH's justice comes to fruition. Even God's people can act counter to what God wants.)
2. God is there with us.
3. Perhaps we are called to be the prophets.


Interestingly, I used to really like the name "Yahweh" for God, but my best friend and I have had conversations about the Tetragrammaton, and so now my immediate reaction is to find it problematic that we are pronouncing a name which was purposely unpronounceable/unpronounced.

[Iran] Neda, interventionism, media, etc.

Blake Huggins said, "The Revolution will not be Televised. It will be tweeted."

One of the big things going around re: the Iranian election is:

دنیارابگوییدچطورآنهاانتخاباتمان دزدیده اند
Tell the world how they have stolen our election

I literally saw someone comment: "This quote could have been from any one of several million people here in the U.S. in 2000. Truly, we have more things in common than we imagine. I'm sad for them." I could have slapped them. Regardless of whether Bush stole that election or not, the people insisting that Gore won were not getting killed by the government for saying so.

One of the first things I came across about the election was Daniel Larison commenting on a George Friedman piece about polling, questioning whether Ahmadinejad really could have stolen the election. (Though some days later I read a BBC piece "Iran: Where did all the votes come from?", which is very doubtful about the legitimacy of the official results.)

My early reaction to all the news about the election was that I am really not invested in whether the Iranian election was stolen or not. (I winced when at a church service the first Wednesday after the June 12th election, one of the worship leaders said something about the courage of the people of Iran in the face of a stolen election.) What seems to me the big problem is that peaceful demonstrators are getting violently opposed by the government.

***

Matthew Yglesias wrote:

Obama *always* stays “two steps behind them”

I missed an excellent post the other day from Spencer Ackerman citing Trita Parsi of the NIAC:

It was important, Parsi said, for any non-Iranian organization wishing to show solidarity with the opposition to ensure that “anything they do is two steps behind the opposition and not two steps ahead.”

I just wanted to point out that this has always been Obama’s MO. He’s always a step or two behind where his supporters want him to be, getting pulled along by their enthusiasm, rather than out ahead of them where he might get cut off. It’s a community organizer’s MO. You never get out ahead of your constituency. Instead you shape the playing field so that your constituency’s desires flow towards where you think they should go, and allow them to carry you along behind them.

Somewhat relatedly, Andrew Sullivan quoted Kevin Drum responding to TPM's Jacob Heilbrunn.

***

ann1962 wrote:

I understand the point they are making, but she isn't their daughter or my daughter. I will not take that claim from her parents. Now her parents don't have her, they shouldn't lose the claim to call her *their* daughter.

http://jezebel.com/5298676/neda-is-my-daughter-i-have-one-just-like-her

In an unrelated context, fillyjonk on Shapely Prose wrote:

Part of the reason we show such public interest in — and sense of entitlement to — women’s bodies is that they’ve historically been used to represent things that are at once greater and smaller than “individual woman.” When we’re accustomed to women’s bodies signifying virtues and values and cultural mores — instead of signifying, you know, a woman’s body — it’s no wonder we start to feel they’re public property.

From "We Watched a Woman Die. Now Let's Look Away" (Posted: June 25, 2009 at 7:57 AM By Vanessa M. Gezari):

Hanna is right about the Neda video. We really don’t have any idea what it records, except a young woman bleeding to death in the street. And ultimately that’s what is most arresting about the film: the experience of watching someone die. Like so many others, my reaction to it has been visceral. The first time I saw it, I burst into tears. Later, I focused on the whites of her eyes, the blood streaming from her mouth.

My interest in these details has nothing to do with my support for the protesters in Iran or my anger at her assassin, and it says absolutely nothing about who that assassin might be. It springs from my awareness of the vulnerability of the human body, and my physical empathy with this particular body in the moment it becomes a corpse. Meghan gets at this when she writes that the sight of Neda dying “is so difficult to hold in the mind that we have to transform it,” and that in making Neda’s death stand for more than the death of a single young women, we “rob it of meaning.” This is the same problem we encounter when we mix art, which captures the reality of life and death, with politics, whose aims are far more utilitarian. I don’t mean to suggest that the Neda video is art. But like art, it captures a profoundly significant moment in human existence, and that’s why it moves us. It’s the record of an individual death, not a revolutionary struggle.

I followed through the links in this post to co-bloggers and to the posts they reference and so on. I recommend it.

[Sidebar: According to the Guardian, "The police did not hand [Neda Agha Soltan's] body back to her family, her funeral was cancelled, she was buried without letting her family know and the government banned mourning ceremonies at mosques, the neighbours said."]

***

Even though I "seem to be very impressed by right-wing blogs like HotAir, and far-right ideologues and apologists like Volokh," in my (albeit somewhat limited) blogrolling I haven't encountered the rhetoric that Andrew Sullivan references in this cartoon.

Interesting reading includes "Bombing, Sanctions, And Rhetoric" (Posted on June 21st, 2009 by Daniel Larison).

I appreciate seeing the Left divided on this issue (see below excerpts from two posts from friends of friends). I don't think big issues like this have simple, always-true, answers, and I get frustrated when people talk as if they do.

ethrosdemon: This is the problem with the long-range FP strategy that Obama is going with: yeah, it makes sense as long-term FP strategy, but sometimes shit happens and you have to react. The problem with having a strictly non-interventionist FP is that it's morally repugnant. This is same damned thing that happened in the Clinton administration. Why does the American left have to have no teeth? Interventionism doesn't not equal warmongering. Christ, and they even have Joe Biden in the administration. He must be losing his entire mind. LISTEN TO JOE BIDEN, YOU IDIOTS. I don't even think there's all much we can even do (I mean, because, you know, engaged in two wars on either side of Iran...*takes a valium*). I understand all that, but so? Isn't what Obama sold us to get in the Oval Office the dream that we'd Do Better? This is not doing better.

liz_marcs: I can understand the neo-con call for us to do something even though I completely disagree with them and think it's probably the last thing we should do. The arc of history is against the U.S. in this, in it's for the best that we do our best to stay out of the clash between the protesters and the Iranian government. The U.S. coming in on the side of the protesters is exactly what the government wants, so they can blame the protests on "foreign influence" and discredit what the protesters are trying to accomplish.

And what they're trying to accomplish is justice, to force the government to live up to its promises and govern only by the consent of the governed. If the protesters succeed, will their democracy look like ours? Hell, no. It won't and it shouldn't. But it will be theirs and that's the point.

Who wouldn't want to do something after reading and seeing everything that's available online? Who wouldn't?

But in the end, I think President Obama struck the right tone here in reminding the Iranian government that world is watching, and that the rights of the Iranian people need to be respected.

It's hard sitting on the sidelines, but sometimes you have to because history needs witnesses.

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David Adesnik wrote:

OBAMA TAKES A PAGE FROM JIMMY CARTER'S PLAYBOOK: In today's news conference, President Obama came down hard on the Iranian regime for its failure to respect its citizens' universal rights. At the same time, the President insisted that he was absolutely, in no way, not at all meddling in Iran's internal affairs. In his words:

I've made it clear that the United States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran and is not interfering with Iran's affairs...If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect those rights and heed the will of its own people. It must govern through consent and not coercion.

So the United States is not meddling, but it is threatening to make Iran's position abroad dependent on its actions at home.

Obama's paradoxical statement on this subject reflects a much deeper and enduring tension in the liberal approach to international politics. On the one hand, liberals cherish non-intervention. On the other hand, they cherish human rights. Is there any way to reconcile the two?

[...]

On a related note, Carter often tried to assert that focusing on human rights is not intervention, because international law recognizes human rights. Thus, in his first address to the UN General Assembly, Carter insisted:

All the signatories of the U.N. Charter have pledged themselves to observe and to respect basic human rights. Thus, no member of the United Nations can claim that mistreatment of its citizens is solely its own business.

Yet in another prominent address on human rights, Carter stated,

In the life of the human spirit, words are action, much more so than many of us may realize who live in countries where freedom of expression is taken for granted. The leaders of totalitarian nations understand this very well. The proof is that words are precisely the action for which dissidents in those countries are being persecuted.

So words represent a dangerous threat to totalitarian governments, but they are not a form of intervention. Got it?

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I often like Will Wilkinson (though I think he can also be a real jerk sometimes -- but I should know by now that this isn't necessarily a dealbreaker), and he has a series of smart posts (reposted with most recent on top):

"History Repeats Itself" by Will Wilkinson on June 23, 2009

As I admitted below, I don’t know much about Iran, but I suppose exiled Iranian journalist and filmaker Lila Ghobady does. She says:

There has been no real election. Candidates are all hand-picked and cleared by a central religious committee. It is a farcical imitation of the free nomination/ election process that we have pictured in the free world. There is no possibility that a secular, pluralistic, freedom-loving democratic person who loves his or her country can become a candidate to run for president (or any other office) in Iran.

Twelve years ago, we went through the same process. Mohamad Khatami became the favorite of the western media, which called him a “reformist” who spoke beautifully about freedom of speech, civil rights and dialogue between cultures. But when he became president there was a crack down on a student uprising – a crackdown against the same students who voted for him. Many were killed, many disappeared, and many were tortured. Artists, authors and intellectuals disappeared and were found “mysteriously” murdered. The smooth-talking president Khatami, whom westerners loved, never tried to stop the violence and never showed sympathy to his supporters. Instead, he openly avowed that his responsibility was to respect the wishes of the supreme leader, Ayotollah Khameni, and to protect the security of the Islamic regime.

Now, the passionate and oppressed young generation of Iranians are going through exact same situation. They are supporting Khatami’s friend, Mousavi. It is sad that history repeats itself so quickly in my beloved country of birth. The people of Iran were fed up with poverty, injustice, corruption and international embarrassment with the knuckle-dragging, anti-Semitic, war-mongering cretin who was President Ahmadinejad. They chose to support a bad choice – Mousavi – rather than the worse choice, Ahmadinejad. However, when an election is really a selection, choice is an illusion. Mousavi is from the Islamic regime; he is inseparable from it, and all its abuses and cruelties.

The reality is that Iran has not had a democratic, free election for the past 30 years. Mr Mousavi, if elected, will not make any changes, not because he is powerless to do so (as Khatami’s supporters claimed during his presidency), but because he doesn’t believe in a democratic state as his background shows. He belongs to the fanatic dictatorial era of Ayotollah Khomeini and he believes in the same command-and-control system of government. We should not forget Khomeini’s statement in one of his speeches after the revolution about democracy. He said that “if all people of Iran say ‘yes” I would say no to something that I would believe is not right for the Islamic Nation”.

Let us not forget that Mousavi was Prime Minister of Iran in the 1980s when more than ten thousand political prisoners were executed after three-minute sham trials. He has been a part of the Iranian dictatorship system for the past 30 years. If he had not been, he would not be allowed to be a candidate in the first place.

Do you have any reason to think she’s wrong?

Ghobady observes that no matter who comes out on top, he would stone her for her many “crimes” against Islam. This is not the situation I prefer, but it does seem to be the situation we have.

***

"Further Meditations on the Objective Meaning of Green Twitter Avatars" by Will Wilkinson on June 23, 2009

Some people were really ticked off by my Twitter avatar post, and I can see why. I guess it’s bad enough to accuse people of empty moral posturing. It’s another thing to accuse people of empty moral posturing that helps the people who worked like crazy to start an unjustified war in Iraq. So let me say that I completely understand the impulse to express solidarity with Iranians who seek freedom. I feel it very strongly myself, but I also don’t trust it. Why not?

Because I realize that I have no idea what I’m talking about. I don’t understand Iranian politics very deeply. I will now proceed to make some mistakes that prove this. For example, I did not know until this episode that Mousavi was Prime Minister of Iran for many years under Khomeni, which pretty much guarantees he’s no angel. I did not understand anything about the internal divisions within the Council of Guardians and the Assembly of Experts. Indeed, I still don’t completely grasp how these various bodies are related to each other. What I gather is that that Khameni and Ahmadinejad are aligned against former Prime Minister Mousavi and former President Rafsanjani (who is now the head of the Assemby of Experts, the body that chooses the Supreme Leader. Thank you Wikipedia). I don’t really grasp whether Mousavi and Rafsanjani are in it together, or are in a “the enemy of my enemy is a friend of mine” sort of thing, or what. As far as I can tell, the ruling axis got worried A’jad might lose the election, botched the vote-rigging, but validated the result anyway. I don’t know who would have won had the vote been counted (I think this remains quite unclear), but in any case, it seems clear enough that Ahmadinejad is staying in power despite a pretty transparent flouting of the rules of an already deeply anti-democratic constitution. This provided a great opportunity for the anti-Khameni/Ahmadinejad faction to encourage a popular uprising, which I am sure is fueled by real discontent with the current regime. And much of this discontent I am sure is surely rooted in an authentic desire for a more liberal and democratic Iran.

Is that what we get if the Mousavi-Rafsanjani axis comes to power? A more liberal and democratic Iran? I honestly don’t know, and I don’t think many people do. I do know that these guys are deeply embedded in the larger status quo power structure, have had power before, and their records don’t look so good. They may well represent improvement, but I don’t honestly know that. As far as I know, the outpouring of desire for change that we see so clearly on YouTube is being exploited by one faction of the Iranian ruling class to depose another. I’d like to see the whole theocratic structure of Iran fall. I’d like to see the whole country radically liberalize, but I think that’s unlikely, largely because I doubt very much that that’s what most Iranians want. I want Iran to be free, and I want Iranians to want to be free. And I’m quite willing to cheer for freedom. Go freedom! But given my ignorance of exactly what and who I’d really be cheering on should I alter my Twitter avatar to reflect the campaign color of the former PM of the Islamic Republic of Iran, I think the intellectually and morally responsible course of action is to watch with colorless hope.

I am, however, quite confident that the powerful faction within American politics that argued for and got a war in Iraq has been arguing for a much harder line against Iran in order to set up a familiar dynamic of sanctions, UN Security Council demands, and so on. [...]

***

"Signaling and Solidarity" by Will Wilkinson on June 19, 2009

So folks on Twitter have been turning their avatars (little profile photos) green to show solidarity with the protesters in Iran. There are websites to help you do this. But why do this? How does it help? I want the Iranian people to live in freedom, just as I want all people to live in freedom. But the point of the gesture eludes me, unless the point of the gesture is to be seen making the gesture by others who will credit you for it. Like so many political gestures, it is vanity dressed up as elevated moral consciousness. It doesn’t help. Is it harmless? Unlike the stupidly grandstanding House resolution, the ruling regime probably won’t be pointing to verdant Twitter avatars as evidence that the uprising is an American plot. So I wouldn’t worry about that. Here’s what I do worry about. When people feel pressure to signal, and it’s free, they’ll signal. But sending the signal creates a small emotional investment in the overt message of the signal — solidarity with opponents of the ruling Iranian regime. As every salesman knows, getting someone to make a big, costly commitment is best achieved by getting them to first make a tiny, costless commitment. The tiny, costless commitment of turning Twitter avatars green is thin edge of the persuasive edge for the neocons who would like to sell the public a war in Iran. Since I would rather not be Bill Kristol’s useful idiot, I will conspicuously leave my avatar as is, and continue hoping for the best.

***

Apparently HuffPo's Nico Pitney caused a stir, though I didn't see anything about that (on any side of the controversy) in almost any of the blogs I read.

"Mr. President, Iran Has a Question: How Obama is using the media to destroy and improve the traditional press conference." By John Dickerson [Posted Friday, June 26, 2009, at 3:30 PM ET]

in which I complain about a World Religions class

So, I'm auditing a World Religions class at Harvard Summer School (taught by a guy with a PhD from BU), the first session of which was Tuesday of this week.

A friend of mine had criticized one of the main texts we're using, saying, "she [the author] makes some cringingly simplistic statements, and her bias against traditional Christianity was so apparent (to me, anyway) that I didn't fully trust her appraisal of other religions I know less well. I wish I knew of a better comparative religion text to recommend."

Early in class, the prof spoke praisingly of the author (whom he has become friends with). I'm only about ten pages into the text, though, so I didn't have an opinion of my own to make me hesitant.

[Sidebar before I start complaining in earnest: I will give the prof credit for recommending to us that we get to know people from other faith traditions -- and other countries, other ethnicities -- and sit down and have a drink with that person, that you'll learn more from that than you will from a class. Though it came across a little uncomfortably tokenizing, with an implication of "tell me about your faith tradition" without an understanding that everyone's experience of a given faith tradition is going to be unique and often very different from someone else's ... though he did sort of touch on this at other moments ... and he's traveled to lots of places around the world getting to know different Buddhist practitioners, so I think he really is aware of the diversity that exists within a given faith tradition.]

Later, he told a story of saying to his parents, "Isn't it interesting that two out of your three kids became Buddhists" (his parents were Methodists, possibly ministers), and his sister turned to him and said, "You're not a Buddhist." He said he was -- he meditates some, the Buddhist philosophy is very important in his life. She insisted that he didn't actually practice it (she gets up every morning and chants, has an altar, etc.), sure he goes all over the world and writes books, but "it's a hobby for you." (As the class went on, I returned to this as an articulation of my problem with him -- that he's not a practitioner of religion but rather an outsider ... though admittedly my problem may simply be that he's an outsider talking about my faith tradition.)

A friend of his suggested he take the Belief-O-Matic quiz to settle the question. So he read us his results, mentioning an important belief of his (concern for social justice, the environment, church that doesn't have lots of talking) that explained why he had scored high for that faith tradition (until he finally got to a kind of Buddhism, which I think was #8).

Later in the class, he talked about how we're going to focus on elements common across many religions, but that he's not trying to say that all/most religions are at heart the same. For example, he said, suffering is a central theme of Buddhism, Judaism, and Christianity, but if you actually dig down, the way that suffering is central to their faith traditions are very different. Buddhism: everyone suffers, this is the first Noble Truth, doesn't matter how much material wealth or anything you have you're still as susceptible to suffering as anyone else. Judaism: a people who have faced threats of extermination over and over again (the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Nazis), so suffering is understood in community. Christianity: Jesus on the cross is a central image, but that's an individual suffering, albeit suffering to atone for the sins of the whole world.

I couldn't point out to anything he said during class that was factually wrong [maybe "untrue" is more the word I want?], and I tried to remind myself that of course in an introductory overview you have to oversimplify and you can't necessarily be constantly caveating (e.g., "Substitutionary atonement is the traditional understanding of Jesus' death on the cross, but there are many different ways to understand Jesus' salvific work, and many progressive churches in particular reject the idea of substitutionary atonement") but much of what he said still really rankled.

Plus, of course, "suffering" is not something I would posit as a central theme of Judaism or Christianity (or Buddhism).

The next evening, I told my friend Cate that if I were asked to list major themes of Judaism I would say: enslavement, exile, liberation, being a people set apart, having a covenant with God, a legalistic understanding but along with that a tradition of arguing with God ("see the fine print here... oh you didn't specify that... what if there are only ten righteous people in the city? etc."), holidays of "They tried to kill us but they didn't succeed; let's eat!"

I then went to say, "If I were asked to list major themes of Christianity... actually I'm not sure what I would say. Maybe because it is my tradition and so I'm very aware of how much disagreement there is?"

Cate said she was never particularly observant even when she went to church with her family, but that her main takeaway from church was: "Jesus loves you, so go and love everyone else." She later said that she would also list "hope" as a major theme of Christianity.

***

Seven(!) years ago I took the the Belief-O-Matic quiz.

I took it again today and ugh, my beliefs do not fit into your options... I can pick an approximate, but your statement has resonances I don't intend and elides certain things that are important to me. Yes, multiple choice quizzes are inherently problematic. And this does help the prof's commentary on his results feel less offensive. "Concern for the enivironment" would not be the key phrase I would pull out were I asked to talk about Neo-paganism, for example, but given the questions and answers in this quiz I can see how someone like him could score high for Neo-paganism in large part because he has strong concern for the environment.

The top score on the list below represents the faith that Belief-O-Matic, in its less than infinite wisdom, thinks most closely matches your beliefs. However, even a score of 100% does not mean that your views are all shared by this faith, or vice versa.

Belief-O-Matic then lists another 26 faiths in order of how much they have in common with your professed beliefs. The higher a faith appears on this list, the more closely it aligns with your thinking.

In 2002, my top 10 were:

1. Reform Judaism (100%)
2. Liberal Quakers (87%)
3. Orthodox Judaism (83%)
4. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (82%)
5. Unitarian Universalism (82%)
6. Sikhism (79%)
7. Bahá'í Faith (78%)
8. Islam (76%)
9. Neo-Pagan (69%)
10. Mahayana Buddhism (68%)

My 2009 results:

1. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (100%)
   
2. Liberal Quakers (83%)
   
3. Orthodox Quaker (80%)
   
4. Unitarian Universalism (72%)
   
5. Reform Judaism (70%)
   
6. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (62%)
   
7. Seventh Day Adventist (61%)
   
8. Eastern Orthodox (48%)
   
9. New Age (48%)
   
10. Roman Catholic (48%)