2016.01.31 Feminism, What Brand?

I am an unashamed feminist. In the same way I’m an Episcopalian, a Christian, and a woman. Feminism is a movement working on behalf of women to assure that they be accorded equal respect, status, and, yes, pay,  ($$$) all over the world and in the church.

I never burned a bra, just stopped wearing one—for the most part. I’m not militant, or a radical, and I don’t hate men. I just keep noticing and speaking and writing about women—what they do and say with courage, and what they suffer. I never stop wondering, questioning, observing, and working for gender equity. I'm a determined but not too noisy feminist—no warrior. 

 

My favorite definition of feminism comes from the writer Roxanne Gay, professor of English at Purdue University and author of an essay collection, “Bad Feminist.” Her definition of who feminists are: “Women who don’t want to be treated like [expletive] for being a woman.” 

  

Feminism is a movement, not an eccentricity.  Gay is a truth-telling feminist.

Gay expands on her pithy, expletive-reinforced definition to say that “women deserve to have full and satisfying lives in the same way that men do.” (NY Times Magazine, July 27, 2014) But I don’t mind the expletive. It gives clout to her commitment, and it’s not exactly violent speech.  We all know which four letters belong between those brackets. But isn’t it fun to pretend innocence with brackets?

Camille Paglia (b. 1947, Endicott, NY) writes essays on feminism, culture, art and politics for mainstream publications.

A self-described feminist, and a fierce one, Paglia is a critic of the movement. Paglia’s parents immigrated to New York from Italy. Her father, Pasquale, was a high school teacher and World War II veteran. Young Camille was argumentative in school; her former Latin teacher said of her in 1992, "She always has been controversial." Once, at camp, she poured too much lime into the latrine and it exploded. She told The New York Observer, "It symbolized everything I would do with my life and work. Excess and extravagance and explosiveness.”

This feminist is angry, and no narcissist. She observed that the increasing narcissism of feminist politics and spirituality has derailed the movement from its goal. She is a fighting feminist and a skilled writer, not afraid of her voice. 

Paglia wrote: "Let's get rid of Infirmary Feminism, with its bedlam of bellyachers, anorexics, bulimics, depressives, rape victims, and incest survivors. Feminism has become a catch-all vegetable drawer where bunches of clingy sob sisters can store their moldy neuroses." (A neurotic is one who takes too much responsibility for everything and loses her sense of herself. But, with focus, any good neurotic can also take some responsibility for change and making justice anew.

Barbara Tuchman (1912-1989), historian and author of the pulitzer prize winning book, The Guns of August, said: "If a man is a writer, everybody tiptoes around past the locked door of the breadwinner. But if you're an ordinary female housewife, people say, 'This is just something Barbara wanted to do; it's not professional.’" She probed deeply the annals of history and found pieces that had not been accurately recorded about the Great War. She exposed lies, a scholarly feminist.

And what about our biblical sisters? In the gospel of Mark (14) there is a story of a woman who is bold and wise enough to enter a gathering of men, Jesus' followers, with a plan to anoint Jesus with the only gift available to her, some costly ointment of nard. She knew a woman would not be welcome at such an in-house political gathering, yet she discerned that Jesus himself might need some soothing, given that he seemed to know he would face violence and death in Jerusalem. This  unnamed woman approached Jesus and anointed him (not just his feet) beforehand for death. Jesus' disciples were enraged at this intrusion and offense, but Jesus scolded them. He said: "Leave her. She has done a beautiful thing for me." This anointing woman took great risk to offer a tender and compassionate, also realistic, touch. She was a quietly compassionate healing feminist.

Supposedly, we are now in a fourth wave of feminism, one that will include attention to spirituality as well as politics, one that will pay attention to what is happening to women and children the world over, one that concerns itself with the quality of women’s lives both in church and society, one that lobbies for women in leadership positions, one that rages in protest at the current rise in violence against women,

We live in a celebrity-driven culture and it’s going global. The latest celebrity seems to be violence itself. Violence is part of our daily diet of news. Words like trauma, torture, horror are almost glamorized or at least over-sensationalized.  I mean who really wants to read about Whitey Bulger or see a movie about him and organized violent criminality? We do! Why are we Americans not beyond the Billy the Kid/Bonny & Clyde/Mafia/Don Corleone/Tony Soprano era?  Our tastes are conditioned to a degree by media, but that’s facile. 

Sensationalizing of violence has two main effects: (1) It dulls our senses, inures us, so we hardly feel its impact or startle at the sound of guns and screams of victims. “Just Another Death In New York City,” a folk song by Australian singer Judy Small, says it all. Oh, someone jumped from a skyscraper window to crash on the pavement below—noticed and unmourned as quotidian.  (2) It attracts us to violence, so we think that large and small scale violence is actually a solution to any and all problems. It’s exciting and glamorous. We can be heroes, celebrities—dead or alive. It makes us violent! Have we made an idol of violence itself while preaching against it?

What to do? I don’t know. Just keep on singing, crying, howling, writing, praying, lamenting. Above all, use whatever gifts you have to make sure you don’t yawn at the next report of violence.

Be a Christian feminist. It only means that, as a Christian, you don’t want anyone to be treated like [expletive]. Jesus was treated very violently. He also advocated for women. Women first recognized the risen Christ and spread the word. No one believed them. They just wouldn't shut up. Women persuaded men to see this: resurrection is the divine last word.

God would be a great feminist if we’d let Him [sic] be free of any gender. 

2013.06.05 Women and Violence—Again and Forever?

I’ve just read The Anglican Journal’s small report on a meeting held on March 1-3, 2013, sponsored by Anglican Women’s Empowerment (AWE, nice acronym!). The meeting was held in Manhattan, New York and was attended by eleven women who traveled from Africa and America to have conversations.

Conversations took place in small groups with the goal of breaking the silence about violence against women.  The groups had the topic and the structure and, as the Indaba model encourages, each group established its own focus and process.

Indaba is a South African term that basically means meeting. The just retired Archbishop of Canterbury appropriated the term for the Lambeth Conference of Anglican clergy in 2008. The idea is that medium-sized groups (not plenaries) come together to converse about large, even global, issues and problems. Call it a family meeting.

Here’s an eye-opener that shot my eyes nearly out of my head.

A youngest woman participant  at the AWE gathering, Faith Meitiaki from Kenya, expressed surprise that women in the developed world struggle with life challenges and sexual abuse and domestic violence in the same way women in less privileged circumstances do.

She said: “For me it was an eye-opener: that, as long as you are a woman, you will always face violence. That was the common denominator between the women from Africa and America.”

As long as you are a woman. So why have I and so many other women continued to write, work and preach against violence against women?  Are we hopeless cases because of our gender? Is there safety for women without a man to protect her? 

I have no good answers but I will think and pray about this “eye-opener.”  The only one thing I am completely sure of is that this painful common denominator, which I suspect is no different for women in general than it was for those women at the AWE meeting, is not God’s will, God’s desire, God’s dream, or whatever else you want to attribute to a power greater than human power, a power more loving than human power—even if you don’t believe in God.

We earthlings with our free will and the best of our good will just aren’t doing very well with justice, compassion, truth and love.  Simply so.

But is it because we are godless or humanless?  Or both?

2012.10.14 Sprezzatura!

Picked up a new word. I love new words. And this one has glamor. Sprezzatura!

Doesn’t it sound like champagne popped open and poured? (No, not French. Sprezz... is Italian.)

It refers to feminine wiles, charm spiced with light flirtation, on the surface “all gossamer insouciance, spontaneity—an iron hand in a velvet and deftly stroking glove,” according to a July 30, 2012 piece in the British newspaper, The Guardian, in which  author Hannah Betts makes the case that feminism and flirtation are not necessarily unlikely bedfellows.

A certain amount of sex appeal, studied carelessness, can enhance and advance political and economic negotiations in the halls of government and business.  Betts uses Elizabeth I and Madeleine Albright as examples of how the “rules” of courtship, kept in balance with clear-headedness, can create a language of female authority in a patriarchal system where niceness is weakness.   Elizabeth the Virgin Queen could, for example, be paid court to as everybody’s mistress as well as everybody’s revered monarch.  That’s an art, not witchcraft.

I confess to some expertise in sprezzatura. I learned it from my mother who I thought was a shameless and embarrassing flirt, but then I went and copied her. Sprezzatura craftily employed made me feel powerful, and frankly, alive and attractive. 

It wasn’t very smart to experiment like this as an emotionally needful married woman in the context of the patriarchal Episcopal church with male clergy as my “prey.” I just wanted to be one of them.  My strategy was insane. Still, it felt inevitable. When awakening and radical liberation, from within and without, invites, you leap with little pause—and clean up later.

How do men assert this charm, or do they I wondered?  I see it in various charm-laden ways, none of them boastful — eyes, talk and tilt of head.  Sprezzatura in men reveals innocence, and in women it reveals power.

When our youngest son John was two he and his sweet cousin bit off at mid-stem all the just blossomed tulips that Dad had meticulously planted, a rare domestic endeavor. But Dad, enraged at the damage stood above tiny John breathing fire. John, outfitted by Mom in a double diaper, looked up, tilted his head, and smiled brightly, saying “I love my daddy.”  A lot of salvation both ways happened in that deft sweet stroke.

Sprezzatura isn’t gender-bound, but is a way to steady relationships. Straightforward and clear is best most all the time for both genders. Charm, however, assists, like a good field hockey wing. With it one can be both wily and innocent, a strategy Jesus advocated, for disciples out to transform.

“Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without asking a clear question.”  Camus wrote.

I’m sure the God of scriptures did a bit of charming for the sake of moving the vision forward. Think Moses who needed heavy courting.

2012.09.23 Politics de Jour

Watching the recent Elizabeth Warren/Scott Brown debate, I decided I did not know anymore what a debate was, because this felt more personal than political— unwinnable war. Now there’s a familiar term. (Think Afghanistan, Iraq, et. al. )  Nor did I know what politics was really good for.

This putative “debate” between the two candidates for the U.S.Senate seat now occupied by Brown, a Republican who advertises himself as the most bipartisan Republican since the beginning of time and led off this “debate” with a challenge to his Democratic opponent Warren. He said she’d checked off the box declaring herself Native American, which “clearly she’s not” (just look at her blond hair and cute pug nose—she should’ve left her hair its naturally dark color perhaps?).......and this “lie” besmirched her character. He wondered why she didn’t release her personnel records.

I  wondered why, too,  but maybe Harvard where she teaches law doesn’t do that. I don’t know.  Warren said she believed her parents who told her her father’s parents disapproved of the marriage because her mother was Native American. She never did a fact check. Statements from her employers testified she was hired on merit.

But...did she check the box to give herself an edge?  Godde knows....and probably Godde doesn’t care.  And certainly I don’t either.  If she did use her heritage as a qualification, so what? I doubt Harvard would hire anyone who wasn’t fully qualified. They have a rep. Still, Warren was a woman breaking into a patriarchal system. Shouldn’t she use every legitimate edge she can?  She, like many women, has proved herself. I hope I have too in the patriarchal church that ordained me almost against its almighty will.

To Warren’s credit she tried to steer the debate to a creative exchange of position statements on issues.  I noticed her tongue swirling inside her closed lips.  Was that nerves or a “be still my tongue” gesture? She cited Brown’s voting record on issues as opposed to putting down his good guy image, big gas-guzzling truck, his victim story, or the fact that he based his pro-women politics on being on the side of women since he was six in an abusive family system. Is he using that line to get elected? 

Both candidates made some points and counterpoints and left unanswered questions, but the tone of the non-debate was one of hostility, the tension camouflaged by too many thank-you’s for the “great questions” etc. and ridiculous acknowledgements that each was a “nice woman” and a “nice man.”

Not a true debate. No grit on the guts of policy,  and not enough opportunity for honest articulation of the visions for the future of the country each candidate stands behind and why. 

Maybe the rules for political debating these days need to be altered to be more in line with true debate, or the moderator, who did a good job of refereeing, should have more freedom to intervene, to cry foul.   There should be no need for a referee.

Two true confessions: 1) I’m a Democrat and lean toward the vision of that party right now in history because the values of justice for the disadvantaged aided by government policies and programs are more in line with the gospel of Jesus Christ, my plumb line. (I remember the day I snuck into Town Hall in a small CT. town to change my party affiliation, looking around every corner to make sure my father, a staunch Republican I loved and thought I should follow, was nowhere in sight. I bet if he were alive now he might follow me.
    
And 2) ...I’m a feminist who believes that the personal IS the political. (I first got political with intention when I joined the League of Women voters in midlife. I hated it, not because I didn’t believe in its purposes but because I’m really bad at standing on street corners flailing big signs about and waving, knocking on doors, or calling strangers who might yell at me or hang up.  Thin skin.)  Still, I didn’t think the principle meant politicians should snipe in such personal ways,  the media joining the fray with glee. Feminism meant that decisions made in the halls of government deeply affected women’s personal lives, and therefore all people's lives, so politics mattered, not as a sport but as a way to serve humanity, the common good, and Godde. 

Women have the vote, but political discourse needs some cleaning up. I guess all women are called to be suffragettes all the time really, and in their own ways.

I could actually stump for Jesus—and debate the politics of the “kingdom” without snark.  

2012.09.12 Back To Basics

 I met Joan Chittister, OSB, up close and personal over a bathroom sink at Regis college where she was about to deliver an address to hundreds of fans—hers and Godde’s. She was frantically searching the sink bowl for her contact lens. I told her to stop up the drain and secretly thanked heaven this wasn’t a toilet bowl.  We peered in, groped about, seeking a tiny transparent flap of plastic, essential to Sister Joan’s full vision. We saw nothing.

THERE IT IS! she suddenly shrieked with the joy of a child, scooped it up gingerly, indelicately slapped it into her eye, gave me a hug, and whisk! she was gone—at a near gallop, still a filly at 75.  

Her talk was swoonable: classic religio-spiritual themes of love, justice, peace for all, the Godde-given power of women to transform the world and church, disloyalty as obedience, feminist theology, and a God who delivers the goods with the help of good men AND good women.

Here is Joan Chittister as a newly minted nun with the Benedictine sisters of Erie PA. The photo is old, her face and body young, and her soul eternal. Her proclamations and vision are the same yesterday today and tomorrow, even though the traditional nuns' habit has been replaced by civvies and her eyes need contacts to see—but not to have vision.

Text:  I do not believe that just because you're opposed to abortion that that makes you pro-life. I fact, I think in many cases your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed.       And why would I think that you don't?       Because you don't want any tax money to go there.   That's not pro-life.  That's pro-birth.  We need a much broader conversation on the morality of pro-life"                  -We the People

INDEED WE DO.  SAY IT SISTER.   

(Myself, I'm pro-life—all life . . . AND pro-choice.)











 

Last Last Suppers

Our last two suppers before we retire and move, one on Friday and one on Sunday, were held in the parish church sanctuary. Both were overseen by Christ, Host of the Christian faith; both were holy banquets.

We and all honored guests arrived Friday night to see the entire sanctuary set up as a feast, our penultimate last supper. Space had been made for milling and spilling. Tables and the altar itself were laden with every kind of delicious food and our choir’s baritone soloed as bar tender serving wine and soft drinks. Acolytes in black circled and weaved their way in and out with serving trays and little paper napkin/purificators (the name for the white cloth used to wipe the chalice as it is passes from communicant to communicant at Communion.)

A grand swell of organ music like a shofar summoned the people to be seated for a tasteful, funny and dear program. No one had to say “The Lord is with you.” We knew it. We all sat in prayer with unbowed heads. The parish comic acted as emcee; a parishioner guitarist, his young son at his feet playing air guitar, played his favorite Beatles song; and a poet with eloquence read “Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver. The wardens, a boy one and a girl one, gave brief tributes as Dick and I reached for the Kleenex.

Carol presented a beautiful book stand made by parish woodworkers to serve as perch for a huge Memory Book in which every parish individual or family created a page. Usually one puts a Bible on such a stand but for now this Book will be our bible of remembrance and thanksgiving. It represents a people who know how to be eucharist, how to give thanks for all things, how to remember and honor the best and the worst of times, and above all how to come regularly to dine at God’s holy dining room table for better or worse to receive the grace of God. The Church at its gracious unconditional best.

Rick presented us with a purse. I half expected him to lift up a small purse like the one Queen Elizabeth always has draped over her arm. But instead he held aloft an envelope. Suspense rose as in the academy awards while he slowly opened the envelope and announced in solemn tones, “There’s a check here for $42.50. Oops, move that decimal point over two.” The Magi never had such treasure, such richness of heart.

Dick and I gave our celebrative thanks. I don’t remember what either of us said, only that I asked Jesus to hold onto my tears so I could speak my gratitude without blubbering. But we both choked up.

To be known just as you are and loved just as you are is grace.

It was tribute enough to see that all our teaching and preaching over the years about being a eucharistic community, about bringing God into the middle of our lives on Sunday and every day, of not being afraid to let the sanctuary be holy all the time and filled with Spirit and joy whatever event was going on there. Just like a cathedral!

The second last supper at the parish was the regular Sunday liturgy for the third Sunday after Pentecost. Many of the same people returned for the second banquet, the altar still dressed up for a celebration. We priests wore red vestments, the color of the Holy Spirit— She who would not be called He.

The Sunday Mass/Holy Eucharist was as alive and vibrant with Presence divine and human as it was on Friday night and, for me and my personal Jewish roots as well as the roots of Christianity, connected Friday Shabbat holy meal with our Sunday Eucharist.

The reading from the Old Testament (I Kings) was a long story about King Ahab lusting over the vineyard of Naboth who refused to sell in spite of over the top royal purchase offers. Never mind, said Ahab’s wife Jezebel, I will get you the vineyard. She did by an elaborate ruse that included murder. Naboth dead the vineyard was now Ahab’s. What some women will do for their husbands! BUT of course God intervened with disapproval and Ahab and Jezebel suffered dire consequences for their crimes. There are consequences for everything and I can believe that God’s justice in the human soul sparks human action and conscience.

The lector read the whole drama with particular animation and a bass voice. Half way through the amazing but sadly true to human nature plot he interjected without missing a beat, “I’m not making this up you know.” And the people, already full of amused shock and awe, broke into open laughter. The place was alive, alert and authentic, as down to earth and true in fact as all Old Testament stories.

The gospel reading was from Luke 7, the story of the woman sinner, reputed to be Mary Magdalene, whom Jesus had healed of seven demons. Grateful for her wholeness she anointed him with perfumed oil of blessing as she kissed his feet and wiped them with her hair. A romantic gesture to be sure. Still, I can imagine someone feeling such gratitude and humility after healing by whatever means. But today such an extravagant gesture would be eschewed by doctors, therapists or clergy— bad professional boundaries.

What price boundaries when love is the message? I wonder.

I couldn’t resist a little post-homily (Dick's) addendum: Notice who gets to go down in history over centuries with the bad reputations! I had to keep up my feminist rant. Later I thanked everyone for their amused acceptance of my politics. For some it was to humor me; for some it was genuine appreciation, and for a few I’m sure it was teeth-gritting tolerance. Still I felt loved. Even when I met a former parishioner in the elevator at the hospital who asked me, “Is he gone yet?” I could tell him “not quite” and chuckle, he having no idea who I was as a priest, woman, spouse of the "real" priest.

Later as I presented the children with Bible quotes. I told them these wouldn’t mean much now but to keep them and one day they would dig them up and discover some spiritual wisdom. The Word in the words. I have heard many adults in this work tell me that they had received such a quote at Confirmation or something and years later found it hidden in a dresser drawer and suddenly light shone.

After the Holy Eucharist banquet was over and everyone had been fed Dick and I offered brief closing remarks. I thanked for many things, most importantly for this community having given me over the years an opportunity to blossom and grow into the fullness of myself as a woman priest. With very few exceptions I have never felt like a sidekick or some kind of subsidiary priest at St John’s. It is a gift of unimaginable blessing to me.

My exit line went something like: This parish is full of amazing creativity, musicians, artists, poets, dancers, writers, orators, woodworkers, liturgists and the unsung beauty of just plain good humor and kindness. I firmly believe that the arts will restore the world to its natural beauty and god-given goodness But now........get out there and recruit some corporate types. You need money.”

Then Dick with his own art of oratory made an elegant tribute, presented a flow chart of who will take care of what, said fear not in many ways, announced the end of his rectorship and our priestly ministry here, then said with a brief sob. “We will no longer be your priests and pastors, but we will always be your friends.”

We should have sold little tissue packets for an almighty sum as a last fund raiser as Dick suggested on Friday!

Dick then read a formal proclamation that officially turned full ecclesiastical authority over to the wardens until such time as the 21st rector of St. John’s parish church was elected to begin a new chapter in the life of Christ at St. John’s.

As our gift to the parish we had framed and gave them a blessing we have frequently used. Dick graciously invited honored guest, the Rev. Claude G. Hopper, the only grasshopper with a clerical collar, ordained as an Episcopal priest by the late Blair McElroy, to join us. Claude hopped between us as we said the final blessing together.

Life is short.
We do not have much time to gladden the hearts and minds of those who travel the way with us. So be swift to love and make haste to be kind.
And the blessing of God Almighty, Creator, Christ and Holy Spirit be upon you and remain with you always. AMEN.

PS Just one more holy banquet, a festive coffee hour with just the right amount of too much food.