In the Nov/Dec, 2014 issue of Poets and Writers Magazine there is a piece by Kevin Nance about Charles D’Ambrosio, a writer who uses words to write with imagined sympathy about his father, who found no fathering within himself. D’Ambrosio is the author of a new book of creative nonfiction essays called Loitering.
The article tells some of the painful story about a rejecting abusive father, two of whose sons attempted suicide, one succeeded the other survived. D’Ambrosio manages to conveys unimaginable yet imagined sympathy for a dad with whom he never could connect, despite efforts. The article revealed some information I had intuited, but not known, from an outside source about suicide dynamics and prevention. It also sent me a memory, one that told me I had an empathic heart—always a good thing to remember.
I remember Bradford, the name I will give this cousin. He used to stand in a corner looking sad, if not gloomy, at the annual, command performance, family Thanksgiving gatherings at my grandparent’s home. I used to look forward to these gatherings. The food was plentiful, the grandfather of choice was there with his quiet chuckle and enormous cigar, and the variety of cousins were fascinating to observe. I was particularly observant of Bradford.
He was ten or more years older than I was. Even at young ages I knew he was moviestar handsome—thick black hair, dark brooding intensity, and large eyes. He was an amazing tennis player, I’d heard, and went to some prep school I’d never heard of. He was not approachable, at least by me. I was probably just as shy and introverted as he was, yet I didn’t feel as sad as he looked.
Bradford’s mother was what today we would call certifiable. She was an angry little woman, a jokster who thought nothing of tormenting her children with belittling remarks she thought were hilarious. I shudder to think how she might have been treated as a child. I also couldn’t understand why my uncle, whom I thought pretty decent and kind, did nothing to reach out to his son, at least that I saw.
One seminal story is enough. When Bradford was a teen his mother began to screech at the elevator operator in the NYC apartment building to stop the elevator at once: “Stop, stop the elevator,” she shouted in front of several people. Then she turned to her son to say, “Bradford, we’ve forgotten your teddy bear.” Some personalities could slough this kind of humiliation off, but not sensitive Bradford who shrank from such assaults. It was cruel. I hated this woman. I refused to think of her as “aunt.”
We all grew up and life changed as it does. I didn’t think more about this until I heard from my parents that Bradford had committed suicide, in his late twenties I think. I remember my first nasty thought, something like “No wonder.” And I felt so sad, wishing I had tried harder to befriend him.
I know this is a small slice of life and I know few details. I know things were very much more complex than my own vicarious trauma for Bradford. I also know the family had a story and a history that is not mine to know. Bradford’s siblings survived well enough. Now I’m sure that Bradford probably suffered from ongoing untreated depression, which, back in the 40s, was misunderstood and shamed, just as suicide was. Depression is a medical diagnosis but despair is not. It’s a spiritual diagnosis.
When Bradford died I had another thought I kept secret: “She won.” I don’t remember any funeral or further talk. I forgot Bradford, and I never forgot him. I hope he rests in peace in the vast embrace of God whose love, I believe, compensates for all the failings of human love.
The new information on depression and suicide I referenced above is relevant to Bradford’s situation. D’Ambrosio’s "killer" father tyrannized his household and created despair in his sons. But his mother taught him sympathy.
“Suicide is very often granting someone else that person’s wish. In this case I believe that to be true,” D’Ambrosio said about his father, to whom “the idea of family was heinous—antithetical, really to how he saw himself,” according to Jon Fontana who is married to one of D’Ambrosio’s sisters. Of course D’Amrosio’s father was terrorized by his own father, but does the beat have to go on?
According to the late Edwin Shneidman, a professor of thanatology at UCLA and the putative father of suicidology, “In one way, suicide is homicide to the 180th degree.” I thought of Bradford. I also thought of the book This Is How It Feels written from the inside of suicidality.
Of course this is only one perspective about the issue, but it is an important one to consider. Kudos to Charles D’Ambrosio for using his writing gift to write with such poignancy, authenticity, and, yes, compassion about the terrorism and tragedy he survived.
So what’s preventive here and where is the good news?
-I’m not planning anything rash, in case my interest in this topic alarms anyone.
-Parents always reject their kids to varying degrees; it’s usually not personal to the child.
-Schools address this topic with honesty. Promote mental health. Don’t wait for a tragedy.
-Consider preventive parenting/mindful parenting: If you are contemplating having children, disregard religious pressure and any literalistic interpretations or the biblical mandate to procreate. Rather, know yourself, and the mate who will parent with you, very very very very well, history and all— even if you need therapeutic help to accomplish this. Love isn’t enough. If you're not fit to parent in any way, be humble. Forget the Holy Family model—sweet, but dated.
-If you become a parent and can’t cope, don’t take it out on the child. To abandon is better than to destroy.
-Have conversations in church about the wisdom, or not, of setting up parental dynamics with God and clergy. Is that really a healthy projection? Jesus did grow up, remember.
-Pray for yourself.
I am filled with gratitude for my parents and all parents who do their very best, often against odds. I give thanks for those who choose against parenting for good reasons, and with cost. I am grateful for myself, my former and present spouses, my children and theirs. Thanksgiving.
Sunday, November 9, 2014
Sunday, November 2, 2014
2014.11.02 A Roman Catholic Priest Speaks Out—of Turn:)
To hear a “silenced” RC priest speak out was, to be honest, a pleasure. Tony Flannery, a Redemptorist Father and a native of Galway, Ireland, is on a speaking tour in the US, having refused to be silent about reforms in his Church. The group that arranges such reformist speakers is called Catholic Tipping Point. This event was sponsored by three organizations: Dignity, Call to Action, and Spirit of Life Organization.
In 2012, the Congregation of Doctrine of the Faith was “unhappy” with Flannery’s views, chiefly on the origins of the all-male priesthood, in part because of economics but mostly because of institutional misogyny and the necessity for collective discernment on matters of faith and morals. He declined to recant, was forbidden to minister as a priest, and silenced. His non-confirmity is, he said, “a question of conscience,” the title of his new book.
Jean Marchant, a woman Roman Catholic priest, introduced Flannery—with joy in her voice. I felt the lilt and remembered the joy so many of us felt when our Episcopal church finally deigned to ordain women as priests in 1976. We are a smaller and more limber institution, but, believe me, the issue of women’s place in the church is not settled. Women do not enjoy equity.
Tony Flannery spoke for an hour with Irish charm, humor, and little bombast. He is the founder of the Association of Catholic Priests, which, he quipped, is “not exactly al-qaeda.” He feels sad about what has happened to him— but not defeated. The Spirit will be alive in the Church if we get certain basic items understood, he told his listeners (perhaps 100 people, most RCs, I’m sure.)
Flannery believes that two very basic modus operandi must change in order for other things, such as women’s ordination and the rethinking of Catholic teachings on sex, will flow from these changes. They are:
1) Centralized authority: decisions can be handed down without processes of discernment. “When the church centralizes too much it loses its ability to listen. No conversation is possible. Centralized authority is the scourge of the Church.” He called the infallibility doctrine a “millstone” for popes who are, after all, human men.
(No woman can be chosen for this office, but I do wonder if she would accept it anyway. I think women in church politics will slowly change the way things operate.)
2) The Magisterium: Who exactly IS this magisterium, this teaching authority? The Vatican II Council reminded the Church that this authority is not just the Vatican’s, but rather the sensus fidelium, that is, the conscience of faithful people. Flannery cited the way Pope Francis presided over the recent Synod of Bishops, asking for discussion, input, feedback and discernment. Francis encouraged speaking without fear and offered his own willingness to listen, even though the final decision will be his. This is a conciliar model. Flannery called this “hugely important” and an openness for the voice of the Spirit.
Flannery said he wasn’t sure of many things about God, but said: “I am sure of the Holy Spirit—or we wouldn’t have a Francis.”
I believe that women hold up half the sky, over half the church, and half the divine image. (Genesis 2:27)
[I find it ironic that the originator of the idea that women hold up half the sky was Mao Tse-Tung, First Chairman of the Communist Party in China, and a dictator who, despite his progressive reforms, also oversaw many human rights abuses.]
Nothing, and no one, is pure. AMEN.
In 2012, the Congregation of Doctrine of the Faith was “unhappy” with Flannery’s views, chiefly on the origins of the all-male priesthood, in part because of economics but mostly because of institutional misogyny and the necessity for collective discernment on matters of faith and morals. He declined to recant, was forbidden to minister as a priest, and silenced. His non-confirmity is, he said, “a question of conscience,” the title of his new book.
Tony Flannery spoke for an hour with Irish charm, humor, and little bombast. He is the founder of the Association of Catholic Priests, which, he quipped, is “not exactly al-qaeda.” He feels sad about what has happened to him— but not defeated. The Spirit will be alive in the Church if we get certain basic items understood, he told his listeners (perhaps 100 people, most RCs, I’m sure.)
Flannery believes that two very basic modus operandi must change in order for other things, such as women’s ordination and the rethinking of Catholic teachings on sex, will flow from these changes. They are:
1) Centralized authority: decisions can be handed down without processes of discernment. “When the church centralizes too much it loses its ability to listen. No conversation is possible. Centralized authority is the scourge of the Church.” He called the infallibility doctrine a “millstone” for popes who are, after all, human men.
(No woman can be chosen for this office, but I do wonder if she would accept it anyway. I think women in church politics will slowly change the way things operate.)
2) The Magisterium: Who exactly IS this magisterium, this teaching authority? The Vatican II Council reminded the Church that this authority is not just the Vatican’s, but rather the sensus fidelium, that is, the conscience of faithful people. Flannery cited the way Pope Francis presided over the recent Synod of Bishops, asking for discussion, input, feedback and discernment. Francis encouraged speaking without fear and offered his own willingness to listen, even though the final decision will be his. This is a conciliar model. Flannery called this “hugely important” and an openness for the voice of the Spirit.
Flannery said he wasn’t sure of many things about God, but said: “I am sure of the Holy Spirit—or we wouldn’t have a Francis.”
I believe that women hold up half the sky, over half the church, and half the divine image. (Genesis 2:27)
[I find it ironic that the originator of the idea that women hold up half the sky was Mao Tse-Tung, First Chairman of the Communist Party in China, and a dictator who, despite his progressive reforms, also oversaw many human rights abuses.]
Nothing, and no one, is pure. AMEN.
Sunday, October 26, 2014
2014.10.26 How Mercy Happens
The poet, perhaps, says it best. Would you do this kind of thing for someone you loved, or just for a pigeon? For some this act would seem gruesome, but I shed a tear for the gentle mercy in the gesture, coupled with this husband’s immediate and heroic act—without thought or delay—on behalf of his wife’s ease. Many would have spirited her away with some natural law explanation, as any rational person would do. Am I sentimental, or is there a powerful depth to this love poem—a kiss of divinity breaking into quotidian routines?
GRAND AVENUE
by Ron Koertge
My wife and I were jogging, like we do every morning. Down Mission, left
at Trader Joe's, then up Grand Avenue and past the stately houses we will
never be able to afford. We'd just turned the corner by Senior Fish, scattering
a flock of pigeons strutting their stuff. One of them took off late, veered
right into the path of a silver Lexus, then lay against the curb beating his
one good wing like he was trying to put out a fire. My wife asked me to, for
God's sake, do something, so I turned the delicate head clockwise until I
heard a click. Then darkness poured out of the small safe of his body. That
is when I realized I used to merely love my wife. Now I would kill for her.
Mercy is a piteous word, really. So many eschew pity, as if it were a sin to need pity, to be pity-full. But Mercy comes from old French, merci—as in thank you. Oh, thank you.
GRAND AVENUE
by Ron Koertge
My wife and I were jogging, like we do every morning. Down Mission, left
at Trader Joe's, then up Grand Avenue and past the stately houses we will
never be able to afford. We'd just turned the corner by Senior Fish, scattering
a flock of pigeons strutting their stuff. One of them took off late, veered
right into the path of a silver Lexus, then lay against the curb beating his
one good wing like he was trying to put out a fire. My wife asked me to, for
God's sake, do something, so I turned the delicate head clockwise until I
heard a click. Then darkness poured out of the small safe of his body. That
is when I realized I used to merely love my wife. Now I would kill for her.
Mercy is a piteous word, really. So many eschew pity, as if it were a sin to need pity, to be pity-full. But Mercy comes from old French, merci—as in thank you. Oh, thank you.
Sunday, October 19, 2014
2014.10.19 Flor y Canto—Assisted Dying
Recently a dear friend, with whom I have shared both affection and a medical bond, died. We would call each other “lung buddies,” because we both had lung disease. We did everything we were told to do, took our meds, and ran ourselves to panting on the treadmills, because exercise strengthens any organ. Her condition finally took her life. Just before she died she told me, in a passionate and lucid way, that she wanted to die and was ready. She wasn’t a lingering person in life, so in death she didn’t want to linger and drag along. Me either!
It got me thinking........ (OK, fuzzy thinking image, because this classic Thinker image is not really me:)
In our present culture and church we celebrate life, life, life—life abundant, the divine imperative to choose life (Deut 30), God’s gift of life in creation. And we worship a God who brings life out of death. Life seems the only option that accords with divine desire. (OK. St. Paul wanted to die to be closer to Christ, but that was a little whacko. And the blood of persecuted Christian martyrs is out of fashion, thank heavens.)
What if someone feels called, moved, motivated to choose death? What then? Some religious folks think God is against this, that it's a sin, called suicide. This idea gives people little choice but to blame God for their circumstances: Why doesn’t God take me? That would be the thing a compassionate God would do, right?
Maybe God doesn’t take anyone, like a body snatcher. Maybe God doesn’t take as much control as we’d like. Maybe God defines life by its quality not its quantity, though "length of days" is a good in scripture. And too, what if death is God’s idea? What if the freedom many believe to be granted by a Creator God really is free? Didn’t Jesus choose death?
Freedom is the hardest darn gift ever given. Damn! Still, it is amazingly respectful; it makes me love this Godde more and more.
Personally, I’d like to take advantage of this great gift. I’d like the chance to choose death without guilt or shame, and with hope, while I’m still in state of mind, heart and soul which is sane, healthy, alert, that is, not distorted by physical pain, mental illness, or being under the influence of addictive substance.
But it’s illegal.
We have assisted living. Why not assisted dying? I mean for real, and legal. Statistics show that in Oregon, where assisted death is legal, the option is not exercised frequently. The feared rash of “suicides” just didn’t happen. Hospice care assists death, but is it enough?
I know this is complex, but if we don’t have serious conversations about it in families, in our churches, and at the level of public discourse, death remains enemy. I know when I bring this up with my children they shrink. I understand, yet I wish I’d had the chance for such a conversation with my parents.
IN THE MEANTIME............. Here is a lovely way to celebrate life even in death, and while still being realistic about the pains and limitations in our celebrated freedom of life: flor y canto, flower and song.
The Amerindian ancients looked to BEAUTY as a reflection of the divine. Their intuition survived in the Spanish phrase flor y canto and in the tradition of fiesta. Beauty signified the blessing of the divine and also was used to communicate back with the Sacred. They arrived at divine truth, not through linear abstractions, but in an aesthetic praxis. They trusted in the hidden power emanating from flor y canto. Social justice and ethical conduct proceeded from the practice. First things first.
The Eucharistic banquet is our flor y canto—a little stiff and pale in comparison, but we're anglos.
This is what we can learn from the U.S. Hispanic community. A people whose lives have often been marred by great suffering, currently in the immigration crisis, find God in a party—first. They don’t sit down to deliberate doctrine and form a plan, or write wordy blogs full of questions (see above); they form the Beautiful and live life in the subjunctive mode—as if. It’s their spirituality, their theology. Mi casa, tu casa first—telling stories at table and getting to know each other comes first.
Maybe we have things backwards? Maybe we should throw a celebrative coffee hour before we hit the pews, right in the narthex?
Yet, maybe too, each people and culture has its own mystical ways to celebrate God EVERYWHERE EVERYONE ANYWAY. But I wouldn’t mind a little flor y canto as I die.
It got me thinking........ (OK, fuzzy thinking image, because this classic Thinker image is not really me:)
In our present culture and church we celebrate life, life, life—life abundant, the divine imperative to choose life (Deut 30), God’s gift of life in creation. And we worship a God who brings life out of death. Life seems the only option that accords with divine desire. (OK. St. Paul wanted to die to be closer to Christ, but that was a little whacko. And the blood of persecuted Christian martyrs is out of fashion, thank heavens.)
What if someone feels called, moved, motivated to choose death? What then? Some religious folks think God is against this, that it's a sin, called suicide. This idea gives people little choice but to blame God for their circumstances: Why doesn’t God take me? That would be the thing a compassionate God would do, right?
Maybe God doesn’t take anyone, like a body snatcher. Maybe God doesn’t take as much control as we’d like. Maybe God defines life by its quality not its quantity, though "length of days" is a good in scripture. And too, what if death is God’s idea? What if the freedom many believe to be granted by a Creator God really is free? Didn’t Jesus choose death?
Freedom is the hardest darn gift ever given. Damn! Still, it is amazingly respectful; it makes me love this Godde more and more.
Personally, I’d like to take advantage of this great gift. I’d like the chance to choose death without guilt or shame, and with hope, while I’m still in state of mind, heart and soul which is sane, healthy, alert, that is, not distorted by physical pain, mental illness, or being under the influence of addictive substance.
But it’s illegal.
We have assisted living. Why not assisted dying? I mean for real, and legal. Statistics show that in Oregon, where assisted death is legal, the option is not exercised frequently. The feared rash of “suicides” just didn’t happen. Hospice care assists death, but is it enough?
I know this is complex, but if we don’t have serious conversations about it in families, in our churches, and at the level of public discourse, death remains enemy. I know when I bring this up with my children they shrink. I understand, yet I wish I’d had the chance for such a conversation with my parents.
IN THE MEANTIME............. Here is a lovely way to celebrate life even in death, and while still being realistic about the pains and limitations in our celebrated freedom of life: flor y canto, flower and song.
The Amerindian ancients looked to BEAUTY as a reflection of the divine. Their intuition survived in the Spanish phrase flor y canto and in the tradition of fiesta. Beauty signified the blessing of the divine and also was used to communicate back with the Sacred. They arrived at divine truth, not through linear abstractions, but in an aesthetic praxis. They trusted in the hidden power emanating from flor y canto. Social justice and ethical conduct proceeded from the practice. First things first.
The Eucharistic banquet is our flor y canto—a little stiff and pale in comparison, but we're anglos.
This is what we can learn from the U.S. Hispanic community. A people whose lives have often been marred by great suffering, currently in the immigration crisis, find God in a party—first. They don’t sit down to deliberate doctrine and form a plan, or write wordy blogs full of questions (see above); they form the Beautiful and live life in the subjunctive mode—as if. It’s their spirituality, their theology. Mi casa, tu casa first—telling stories at table and getting to know each other comes first.
Maybe we have things backwards? Maybe we should throw a celebrative coffee hour before we hit the pews, right in the narthex?
Yet, maybe too, each people and culture has its own mystical ways to celebrate God EVERYWHERE EVERYONE ANYWAY. But I wouldn’t mind a little flor y canto as I die.
Sunday, October 12, 2014
2014.10.12 Emily Brontë Poet of Spirit
The poet employs her quatrain form, not for a simple song of praise, but to assert a balance of power, a delicate exchange of breath for Life: God-in-Soul/Soul-in God.
Perhaps it's significant that this is one of the last poems Emily Brontë wrote before the creative upsurge of Wuthering Heights, her only and great novel, published in 1847. In her poem she is praising an immortal deity, while preparing for her own immortal life as a writer.
It's said that Emily Dickinson chose this poem to be read at her funeral. It's a pleasing thought. Emily BrontĂ« had a good deal in common with a sister poet, Emily Dickinson: their solitude and independence, their hymn-like metres, the pointed use of the m-dash—like this—and of course language as brisk and crystalline as a surgeon’s cut. Both women thought big on a miniature scale.
The poem is as bold as its title suggests. I love the massing of verbs for the Spirit: animate, pervade, brood, change, sustain, dissolve, create, and rear. Such a résumé!
We live now, according to the ancient desert sages, in the era of the Spirit’s dominance; that is, a time when we awaken to and recognize the presence and work of God Spirit. God Creator and God Christ enjoyed each a thousand. Now we notice and study pneumatology with more care.
Pneumatology is the study of God Spirit. It’s amazing what we have attributed to the first two persons of the Trinity that is likely the work of Person #3. One obvious example is how different cultures creatively appropriate religion to fit their languages, customs and circumstances. Think Spirituals or hispanic devotions to Mary. Is Jesus God son or Mary’s itty-bitty baby? Both, no? We say these are interpretive distortions, but scholars wonder if these are the work of God Spirit.
BrontĂ«’s verbs “creates” and “rears” are parental terms. Perhaps the poet is suggesting that her deity is motherly as well as fatherly, enfolding the qualities of the mother she had lost in early childhood into the Godhead.
Poets like Emily Brontё, under-mothered, under-schooled, make their own nurturance. This poem is honest and brave and brimming with life. For someone so closely acquainted with death and loss she is terrifyingly on the side of life.
No Coward Soul Is Mine
No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere:
I see Heaven's glories shine,
And faith shines equal, arming me from Fear.
O God within my breast,
Almighty, ever-present Deity!
Life - that in me hast rest,
As I - Undying Life- have power in Thee!
Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men's hearts, unutterably vain;
Worthless as withered weeds
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,
To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by Thine infinity;
So surely anchored on
The steadfast rock of immortality.
With wide-embracing love
Thy Spirit animates eternal years,
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears
Though Earth and moon were gone,
And suns and universes ceased to be,
And Thou wert left alone,
Every Existence would exist in Thee.
There is not room for Death,
Nor atom that his might could render void:
Thou - Thou art Being and Breath,
And what Thou art may never be destroyed.
Perhaps it's significant that this is one of the last poems Emily Brontë wrote before the creative upsurge of Wuthering Heights, her only and great novel, published in 1847. In her poem she is praising an immortal deity, while preparing for her own immortal life as a writer.
It's said that Emily Dickinson chose this poem to be read at her funeral. It's a pleasing thought. Emily BrontĂ« had a good deal in common with a sister poet, Emily Dickinson: their solitude and independence, their hymn-like metres, the pointed use of the m-dash—like this—and of course language as brisk and crystalline as a surgeon’s cut. Both women thought big on a miniature scale.
The poem is as bold as its title suggests. I love the massing of verbs for the Spirit: animate, pervade, brood, change, sustain, dissolve, create, and rear. Such a résumé!
We live now, according to the ancient desert sages, in the era of the Spirit’s dominance; that is, a time when we awaken to and recognize the presence and work of God Spirit. God Creator and God Christ enjoyed each a thousand. Now we notice and study pneumatology with more care.
Pneumatology is the study of God Spirit. It’s amazing what we have attributed to the first two persons of the Trinity that is likely the work of Person #3. One obvious example is how different cultures creatively appropriate religion to fit their languages, customs and circumstances. Think Spirituals or hispanic devotions to Mary. Is Jesus God son or Mary’s itty-bitty baby? Both, no? We say these are interpretive distortions, but scholars wonder if these are the work of God Spirit.
BrontĂ«’s verbs “creates” and “rears” are parental terms. Perhaps the poet is suggesting that her deity is motherly as well as fatherly, enfolding the qualities of the mother she had lost in early childhood into the Godhead.
Poets like Emily Brontё, under-mothered, under-schooled, make their own nurturance. This poem is honest and brave and brimming with life. For someone so closely acquainted with death and loss she is terrifyingly on the side of life.
No Coward Soul Is Mine
No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere:
I see Heaven's glories shine,
And faith shines equal, arming me from Fear.
O God within my breast,
Almighty, ever-present Deity!
Life - that in me hast rest,
As I - Undying Life- have power in Thee!
Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men's hearts, unutterably vain;
Worthless as withered weeds
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,
To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by Thine infinity;
So surely anchored on
The steadfast rock of immortality.
With wide-embracing love
Thy Spirit animates eternal years,
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears
Though Earth and moon were gone,
And suns and universes ceased to be,
And Thou wert left alone,
Every Existence would exist in Thee.
There is not room for Death,
Nor atom that his might could render void:
Thou - Thou art Being and Breath,
And what Thou art may never be destroyed.
Sunday, October 5, 2014
2014.10.05 Don't Suffer Fools Foolishly
While writing my memoir, I connected with my women lunch buddies at Yale Divinity School, my God-school. We were mostly commuters, somewhere in the middle of our lives, and of different denominations. We majored in lunch. It wasn’t for the food; it was for the spiritual food of this small company of women, sharing gallows humor about the church, and perfecting the fine spiritual art of the lament while honing our debating skills on arguments about each one’s favorite heresy.
Excited by all the new knowledge we were exposed too, and being fools about how much we really understood, we weren't foolish to celebrate it in this informal way—a holy communion that felt just as holy as the altar one.
Beneath our ignorance and hilarity lurked truth: the late 70s was a crucial time for women in the churches. Doors were opening wider than before to welcome female flesh as ordained presiders at the altar and preachers from pulpits. We weren’t sure who could fit through.
Oh, it was so hard to leave the refectory and trudge back down halls, and more halls, to get to the next class, or to the library where we read, and read, and read—alone.
I loved these women as much as I loved God—more because they gave hugs. When I found them all years after we left our seminary, we swapped memories. I asked each one the same question: Which big Christian idea is the hardest for you to believe? Incarnation won. It’s crazy to think of God becoming human. Or was it that humanity, chiefly of the masculine sort, inflated to fill big shoes?
Incarnation seemed too demeaning for a big God, and yet, too impossible grand for humanity, even those at the top of the food chain. Is there a narrowing, a claustrophobic squeeze into which divinity is willing, for the sake of love, to enter? Do we suppose that our humanity, chiefly of the masculine sort, inflates to become God? Although Incarnation is more common in world religions, it’s easier for Christians to swallow resurrection, the idea for which we cheer mightily and sing plethoras of alleluias in or out of Easter season.
Ah, we had so much fun battling out all these puzzles, not solving a thing but loving each other in the suffering of it all. We all knew that suffering was the mark of a good Christian, after all, so why not suffer intentionally over theology too slippery for any of us individually, or all of us collectively, to hold onto. Perhaps the point:)
I find Incarnation easier to swallow than Resurrection, possibly because it feels more intimate, and possibly because I like to think that my own fleshly womb has participated in Creation’s unfolding, and contributed its share of labor and suffering. This could be a control issue of course, or it could be simply a wonderment. God knows, having children transformed my life and still does.
And if suffering means anything at all it’s transformative. Franciscan priest Richard Rohr wrote in April of 2014 in a Meditation "Transforming Our Suffering":
"All healthy religion shows you what to do with your pain. Great religion shows you what to do with the absurd, the tragic, the nonsensical, the unjust. . . . Unless we can find a meaning for human suffering, that God is somehow in it, and can even use it for good, humanity is in major trouble."
A God who comes into human flesh as in Jesus Christ, and me too, help me live through suffering—not without much kvetching and lament, but with some assurance that the God in my flesh suffers with me. Incarnational spirituality sacralizes my smallness and my wounds, and resurrection spirituality gives me an out with hope.
Theology aside, I prefer the religion of Christmas (Incarnation) to Easter (Resurrection.) This may change as I get older—and older! Yet even the secular images represented by infants in creches or fat old men in red suits with beards, or by bunnies, chickies and colored eggs, carry spiritual messages of divine generosity and humility (Incarnation) and generativity (Resurrection.)
Whatever your preferences, we all must face the truth of our condition and its limitations, the sheer humility of the flesh with all its foolishness.
I must admit, however, that, foolishness and preferences aside, both the Christmas idea of Incarnation and the Easter idea of Resurrection merge divinity with humanity in such inextricably lovely ways that either way we, what?, are not alone—ever.
Excited by all the new knowledge we were exposed too, and being fools about how much we really understood, we weren't foolish to celebrate it in this informal way—a holy communion that felt just as holy as the altar one.
Oh, it was so hard to leave the refectory and trudge back down halls, and more halls, to get to the next class, or to the library where we read, and read, and read—alone.
I loved these women as much as I loved God—more because they gave hugs. When I found them all years after we left our seminary, we swapped memories. I asked each one the same question: Which big Christian idea is the hardest for you to believe? Incarnation won. It’s crazy to think of God becoming human. Or was it that humanity, chiefly of the masculine sort, inflated to fill big shoes?
Incarnation seemed too demeaning for a big God, and yet, too impossible grand for humanity, even those at the top of the food chain. Is there a narrowing, a claustrophobic squeeze into which divinity is willing, for the sake of love, to enter? Do we suppose that our humanity, chiefly of the masculine sort, inflates to become God? Although Incarnation is more common in world religions, it’s easier for Christians to swallow resurrection, the idea for which we cheer mightily and sing plethoras of alleluias in or out of Easter season.
Ah, we had so much fun battling out all these puzzles, not solving a thing but loving each other in the suffering of it all. We all knew that suffering was the mark of a good Christian, after all, so why not suffer intentionally over theology too slippery for any of us individually, or all of us collectively, to hold onto. Perhaps the point:)
I find Incarnation easier to swallow than Resurrection, possibly because it feels more intimate, and possibly because I like to think that my own fleshly womb has participated in Creation’s unfolding, and contributed its share of labor and suffering. This could be a control issue of course, or it could be simply a wonderment. God knows, having children transformed my life and still does.
And if suffering means anything at all it’s transformative. Franciscan priest Richard Rohr wrote in April of 2014 in a Meditation "Transforming Our Suffering":
"All healthy religion shows you what to do with your pain. Great religion shows you what to do with the absurd, the tragic, the nonsensical, the unjust. . . . Unless we can find a meaning for human suffering, that God is somehow in it, and can even use it for good, humanity is in major trouble."
A God who comes into human flesh as in Jesus Christ, and me too, help me live through suffering—not without much kvetching and lament, but with some assurance that the God in my flesh suffers with me. Incarnational spirituality sacralizes my smallness and my wounds, and resurrection spirituality gives me an out with hope.
Theology aside, I prefer the religion of Christmas (Incarnation) to Easter (Resurrection.) This may change as I get older—and older! Yet even the secular images represented by infants in creches or fat old men in red suits with beards, or by bunnies, chickies and colored eggs, carry spiritual messages of divine generosity and humility (Incarnation) and generativity (Resurrection.)
Whatever your preferences, we all must face the truth of our condition and its limitations, the sheer humility of the flesh with all its foolishness.
I must admit, however, that, foolishness and preferences aside, both the Christmas idea of Incarnation and the Easter idea of Resurrection merge divinity with humanity in such inextricably lovely ways that either way we, what?, are not alone—ever.
Sunday, September 28, 2014
2014.09.28 Women Who Talk Too Much?
When I’m in an informal group of women, 2 or 3 but no more than 6 or 7, I notice a phenomenon. It’s enough to die laughing over—or die for.
I only notice it when I stop talking myself and listen—detached from my own thoughts enough to hear the whole.
All the other women talk at once and keep right on talking. It sounds like the proverbial hen or chicken house, but, at closer hearing, it’s not.
Women seem to be able to talk and listen at once. Everyone talks at once, everyone listens and hears at once, and everyone comes away knowing what was said and mostly by whom—and still with her own reflections intact and often enriched or altered by what she has heard. Now that’s amazing! My husband says it's baloney! (He really used another b word.)
It seems to me that the key to this phenomenon is in the breathing pauses. We all do have to breathe after all. Perhaps it is in the breathe that the thread of meaning and content is picked up. How Spirit-uelle.
Of course you might not want to count on such a group in any formal way. Such groups have only one agenda: being together. We’re usually not trying to accomplish a task. I’ve been in groups where we women take turns in an ordered way, a linear way. I prefer the breath-filled chaos.
Learning theories about women suggest that in fact some women learn best by connection or in relationship—in a group. Connected learning.
YAK IT TO ME, BABY!
This practice can be risky. Occasionally, a gavel might be useful. Also, basic relational rules, to say nothing of courtesy, suggest that one person should speak at one time, a space should be left, and then a response made. ONe. ONe. ONe. Such rules of conversation work better for my own "sin" of interrupting—usually out of the fear I may not get heard at all, an old conditioned habit.
My spouse, a man, sometimes shouts out, “Stop talking.” He clutches his hands to his head: “I can’t get my thoughts together. You don’t know what I was going to say. Let me finish!” He thinks I’m interrupting, filling in his blanks. He has a point. I tell him I'm only commenting, interjecting stuff as we go along. To me, I interject as HE goes along. I don't understand why he just doesn't pick up and keep going. “This is a conversation,” I say, and add, “Besides, you go on and don’t stop.” Then I talk some more, just to clarify—until one of us exits the space.
I mentioned this phenomenon to my male dentist and his female hygienist. She and I laughed. The dentist said: “Tell me about it, I eat lunch with all of them,” and waved his hand, referring to a good-sized all-female office staff.
Perhaps Godde made women multi-task thinkers and talkers needing snatches of breath—a mind on several tracks. It could be a gift to help us hold onto women friends and keep track of children, or even lively canine pets, who dart and race through the world exploring recklessly, in their developing years and beyond. It’s like having antennae.
As we evolve, and gender roles lose their grip, men and fathers might develop this capacity, though I suspect not to the same breathy degree.
Godde the Spirit breathes in us, in each one differently, as any sensitive deity would.
I only notice it when I stop talking myself and listen—detached from my own thoughts enough to hear the whole.
All the other women talk at once and keep right on talking. It sounds like the proverbial hen or chicken house, but, at closer hearing, it’s not.
Women seem to be able to talk and listen at once. Everyone talks at once, everyone listens and hears at once, and everyone comes away knowing what was said and mostly by whom—and still with her own reflections intact and often enriched or altered by what she has heard. Now that’s amazing! My husband says it's baloney! (He really used another b word.)
It seems to me that the key to this phenomenon is in the breathing pauses. We all do have to breathe after all. Perhaps it is in the breathe that the thread of meaning and content is picked up. How Spirit-uelle.
Of course you might not want to count on such a group in any formal way. Such groups have only one agenda: being together. We’re usually not trying to accomplish a task. I’ve been in groups where we women take turns in an ordered way, a linear way. I prefer the breath-filled chaos.
Learning theories about women suggest that in fact some women learn best by connection or in relationship—in a group. Connected learning.
My spouse, a man, sometimes shouts out, “Stop talking.” He clutches his hands to his head: “I can’t get my thoughts together. You don’t know what I was going to say. Let me finish!” He thinks I’m interrupting, filling in his blanks. He has a point. I tell him I'm only commenting, interjecting stuff as we go along. To me, I interject as HE goes along. I don't understand why he just doesn't pick up and keep going. “This is a conversation,” I say, and add, “Besides, you go on and don’t stop.” Then I talk some more, just to clarify—until one of us exits the space.
I mentioned this phenomenon to my male dentist and his female hygienist. She and I laughed. The dentist said: “Tell me about it, I eat lunch with all of them,” and waved his hand, referring to a good-sized all-female office staff.
Perhaps Godde made women multi-task thinkers and talkers needing snatches of breath—a mind on several tracks. It could be a gift to help us hold onto women friends and keep track of children, or even lively canine pets, who dart and race through the world exploring recklessly, in their developing years and beyond. It’s like having antennae.
As we evolve, and gender roles lose their grip, men and fathers might develop this capacity, though I suspect not to the same breathy degree.
Godde the Spirit breathes in us, in each one differently, as any sensitive deity would.
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