2012.10.10 My Take

Every commentater and media blaster has a theory about why President Obama failed to be more forceful in the first presidential debate.  And everyone seems to be angry. And most people have a list of shoulds about what he should have done. And some are shifting their votes to Romney, one friend to the Green candidate Jill Stein.

I want to ring in with my own theory, which to date no one I've mentioned this to agrees with.  Nevertheless...........

A a religious woman I know the power of image and symbol to motivate and influence the human mind and emotions.  If I were lost in a foreign land with no compass and no companion and I saw an American flag I'd head for it. In like fashion I'd head for a Christian symbol, any kind of cross.

Gov. Romney presented a powerful symbol in the debate of last week, an image familiar, that of the political Marlboro man or the heroic cowboy: a man who stood straight and tall, facing anything with confidence—a man who looked the part of a hero who could save. A patriarchal figure, with stance and hand gestures and confrontational braveur to match. Romney is a white man.

President Obama had the body of language of someone who looked as if he had to answer to his opponent, his "master." He stood on one leg and shifted about. His eye contact was poor; he was taking notes and didn't face off much.  He also looked tight, angry and, to my projection, vulnerable.  He didn't look like a hero or a savior—far from the traditional American expectation of can-do spirituaity.  Obama is a man of color.

When my oldest daughter was about 5 we went to a neighboring home to deliver something and an African American woman, one of the "help"  answered the door.  My daughter said in a loud voice after the door was closed, thanks Godde, "WHAT was that?"  Anti-racism training began right away in our house. 

Four years ago Americans flocked with joy around Obama, the new image symbol of our land's value of diversity and equality—our first black president.  I thought the public energy was over the top and worried about that much expectation.  Perhaps Obama was destined to disappoint with this much to carry. I don't know.

From a psychological perspective from the Jungian theory of the collective unonscious I wonder if the history of racism in this country remained unconsciously in the memory of both viewers and participants.  Think attack dog and the dynamics that go with that symbol of power and dominance, then add skin color and it might have been a recipe for the imbalance.

Spiritually, nonetheless, I will vote for vision, future, and hope based in slow but sure progress, over plan, immediate economic fix, and bold optimism.

And I'll pray that the right vision will win and lead our democracy forward with liberty, justice and the pursuit of happiness for all.

2012.10.07 Patineur

Patineur is a French word meaning skater or ice-skater.  So? 

A friend of mine used the word recently to refer to a client who tended to skim the surface of life, not wanting to “dive into the wreck” a metaphor poet Adrienne Rich used to indicate the courage it took to take the plunge into the whole deep mess of one's life.

Spirituality is about the depth dimension. I remember when I decided to trust my therapist enough to descend emotionally the 14 inches from my head to my heart.  For years I’d managed life from the neck up—very efficiently.  It worked until it hurt too much because one day my heart escaped and went off on a wild love adventure of its own. It took my body along with it . They both went without my permission as, furiously protesting, I followed.

I could no longer be a patineur doing and saying the right things according to Hoyle or my mother.  I had to submit to transplant surgery, not to get a new heart but to readmit the one I thought had betrayed me but could lead me to truth.  The process of reconnection was long, messy, and downright dangerous as all breaking free, and bad, is.

One day I got all the way down to the ruined treasure.  

My therapist had been trying to convince me I was angry.  I only wanted the sorrow. Easier to cry than rage, especially for a woman/good/god girl like me.  I came to a session feeling agitated, annoyed I couldn’t smooth myself out.  

“What is the energy like,” my therapist asked.

“All penned up,” I said.

“Is it an animal? ”

“A bull,” I said.

"Be the bull,” she said.

Is she crazy or what?  I laughed.

“Be the bull,” she insisted.

I crossed my arms over my chest and smiled condescendingly.

Then she did something so rude and outrageous I couldn’t believe it. She got up from her seat, pronounced this session over, and went over to her desk to do paper work.

Feeling huffy and prissy and thinking my therapist a real ass I opened my bag, got out my checkbook and wrote out my check.  I’d show her!  As I was preparing to leave, cruelly abandoned but in a self-righteous huff, my bull stormed onto the scene.  I began to paw the carpet, snort and heave and eventually toss my head in the air and howl, a full-throated human roar. 

My God I can’t believe I’m writing about this. But it happened. My heart and body once again demonstrated they had a will of their own. And once again I followed them.

When my bull subsided I came back into the room and looked at my therapist again for the first time. She’d returned to her accustomed seat across from me.  She was an attractive women anyway, but suddenly she was beautiful—striking, bright and brilliant— for the first time. 

I had new eyes. Eyes that didn’t slide quickly over the surface, not patineur eyes, but I will say her face had a patina as she looked at me, the now quiet bull,  and smiled. 

Did I have any words? she asked.  What came to me has stayed with me as a kind of measuring stick for my own integrity, and that of others, even nation and church.  Some days I think we live in a patineur world, slip-sliding along the surface of cliché, slogan, bombast, and empty rhetoric, refusing to let go of our fear of the deep because it might just force us to take a true look at ourselves and the other "side" we imagine will destroy what we love, that they equally love.

The words of the hymn that arose are stunning for their emotional rigor. It’s a violent hymn, a prayer,  not a patineur hymn, its poetry digs deep— “in wrath and fear jealousies surround us,”  “led by no star,”  “love is mocked, derided,” “there is no meekness in the powers of earth . . .building proud towers which shall not reach to heaven.”  "Bind us in thine own love for better seeing.”    The refrain after each of verse is..........................

Thy kingdom come, O Lord, thy will be done.

2012.10.03 Daughters/Mothers/Grandmothers

My oldest granddaughter is 16, and actually sweet! She has everything going for her—vitality, good looks and figure, thick black hair she thins, bodacious talent for singing and acting, her first tiny pay check from her first tiny job, and a high grade on mothering a newborn (the high school's attempt to prevent teen pregnancy by giving girls a taste of motherhood via 24-hour care of a baby doll who wets, screeches, and wakes up every two hours for another feeding—imagine!)

A good and loving "mommy" AND becoming a feminist.  Here we go again!—a new generation.

As a blossoming feminist, my granddaughter complains about the thin lanky models in Seventeen magazine and wants to volunteer in a rape crisis center.  "Yes I love it, a feminist! I feel like I'm turning more and more into my mom day by day it's crazy! she emailed.  I wrote back that she was also becoming like her Grammy, great and great great Grammies, too.

I feel complimented, grateful and joyful that my daughter and her daughter are in my life.  The poet/novelist says it all.............


Song for a Daughter
by Ursula Le Guin

Mother of my granddaughter,
listen to my song:
A mother can't do right,
a daughter can't be wrong.

I have no claim whatever
on amnesty from you;
nor will she forgive you
for anything you do.

So are we knit together
by force of opposites,
the daughter that unravels
the skein the mother knits.

One must be divided
so that one be whole,
and this is the duplicity
alleged of woman's soul.

To be that heavy mother
who weighs in every thing
is to be the daughter
whose footstep is the Spring.

Granddaughter of my mother,
listen to my song:
Nothing you do will ever be right,
nothing you do is wrong.

"Song for a Daughter" by Ursula K. Le Guin, from Finding My Elegy: New and Selected Poems 1960-2010. © Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012. Reprinted with permission.

2012.09.30 Jesus Married? OH, Scandal...

Jesus woulda, shoulda, coulda been married—but was he? The Risen Christ is obviously “married” soulfully to every Christian, but in the flesh?

Who really cares?  I value Jesus for his historic presence and all the ministry he did in his short time on earth, and I value all the teachings and accounts that were later written, as history goes, and published in time in the Bible. Maybe the four gospels didn't  mention much about Jesus’ personal life because he was too busy, or because they were too busy just trying to tag onto this dynamo of Love with the far-reaching transformative vision. They must have been pretty single-minded just to keep up.

On the other hand, they might not have written about it because it was the norm in first century Palestine for a Jewish man to be married. Wives weren't mentioned much.

I know scholars will ascertain the authenticity, or not, of Harvard Professor Karen King’s papyrus fragment with its wifely references for Jesus, so I’ll wait. I’m too old for another vocation but if I weren’t I might be a papyrologist.

I confess I’d love it if Jesus did have a personal helpmate who is just now getting her say about things in a fragment provocatively, tentatively titled,  “The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife.”

Now that would be a best selling memoir, maybe give my own memoir a boost. This is how women are finally getting onto the scene these days.  They speak and write and act like Jesus, whose ethic of compassionate equivalency demands its due.

The breadth and depth of the One Holy Godde as fully male and fully female is my image.

Jesus married doesn’t matter much to me. However, that Jesus called and trusted women disciples does matter. And that patriarchal cultures and religions squished women’s words and presence does matter.  And that this historical error be corrected matters. And that Roman Catholic men and women get to loosen the stays on their sexual corseted religious vocations (forced celibacy and the all-male priesthood)  matters.

I bet Jesus did call women as well as men.  I woulda been in the group I’m sure.  Or I might’ve been too timid; or I’d have insistently dragged my best friend or my own marriage partner along. If I weren’t married I’d have tried to get Jesus to propose to me for sure. 

That’s how smitten I am with his presence and his ideas and his ongoing Christic energy.

2012.09.26 Outrageous!!??

I had an outrageous thought just this morning, one so heretical I gave it a mental cancellation—but it wouldn’t go null or void. 

I thought: What if writing were not all that important and as crucial to communications as educators and others, writers for example, think?

I’d been reading laments and worrisome statistics about the high percentages of today’s college students who simply don’t know how to write, that is to construct an intelligible sentence with decent grammar and punctuation.  It seemed a catastrophe. How would they get jobs? Get along in their relationships? Write papers?  Sermons?  Be a professional of any kind???—and more.

I’m a word person. I love words all by themselves,  and words strung together to make a meaning. I’m also someone who has always loved to read which is how I learned that writing was important.  I’m also a wordy, and sometime last-wordy, person. AND I write books—not for a living I’d starve. Still, to say in writing what I mean so that other literate persons can understand means my life to me—it’s a sacred practice.

Could my heretical insight mean that a whole new language, way of writing is emergent? A whole new language evolving thanks to the internet and texting? What if abbreviations and shorthands and acronyms become the way to write—for everyone? 

Esperanto didn’t work well as a universal language. Language is too personal, a sign of one’s identity, one’s flavor.  Who would sing their ABC’s?  Or practice each stroke of lovely symbolic letters of Eastern languages?  Will we have a language called Unitext? Scriptext? OMGI<3u br="br" dlt="dlt" pos.="pos.">
This is crazy. Or is it?

If it’s not nutz (see?) I hope I’ll be dead to “see” it.  And even more dead if Robo-books (books put together by googling a title of interest and then compiling all the data on that topic into a book which Nimble Books will then print and bind and sell for cents—automated publishing and a proliferation of books of all kinds) becomes the norm. 

Ah well LOL..........what the wise priest in the Bible, Qoheleth of Ecclesiastes, wrote is true: There is  nothing new under the sun.  Thank Godde everything IS under the sun.

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.  

2012.09.19 Spinning Spider Spirit

I have just today observed, or should I say noticed, an astounding phenomenon.

Under my home altar there is a box, the cover of a computer paper box from Staples. In it are mementoes, small spiritual tchotchkes, all of significance to me and a few with universal symbolic meaning.

Here are a few of my favorite things: my first pair of brilliant red shiny party shoes, now dulled, the leather cracked; a tiny red plastic bull I took from some pep-you-up drink maybe even Red Bull—he represents the anger I buried from, say 4 to 34; a small glass dancing owl (my totem,) missing one jauntily flung leg, sitting in my maternal grandmother’s china teacup now filled with old award pins I earned for good memorization of holy texts and creeds in Presbyterian Sunday School; a two inch high tri-fold wooden triptych with Mary ever blessed in the centerfold flanked by two adoring angels; wooden statues of Don Quijote, one of my christs, and Sancho Panza, his acolyte and himself a christ, from a shop in a grand cathedral in Toledo, Spain in 1960; a postcard propped against the edge of my box painted by a monastic artist and picturing a woman, meant to be Mary giving birth to a baby, meant to be Jesus, and a hand, meant to be Joseph’s or Godde’s, cradling the small dark emerging head; my first tiny and meekly bristled hair brush; a photo in a miniscule frame: me at three and my mother at 25+ dressed alike in pinafores with wings, me scowling and mom smiling; a photo of dad in his National Guard uniform, so handsome and so sad he missed the war;  and a cross of Jesus fully alive—an obvious impossibility.

There’s more but you get the picture.

I saw what I thought was dust and thought, it’s time to dust! Under closer scrutiny the dust turned out to be a spider web. I followed its tracings and marveled at the miniature spider in its midst. ( I call all spiders Charlotte and imagine they speak in the dulcet tones of Julia Roberts.)  This Charlotte had practiced her spinning art and with the daintiest ingenuity had connected every single one of my sacred items each to each and all in one.  The web image riveted my attention on the glories of life itself.

I won’t be dusting my holy under-altar box or its contents any time soon.