Something highly conceptual, not too much work. I have no ideas. I need ideas!
(There were all these upsetting girls in Seattle for whom Halloween was like prom: expensive, labor-intensive, snotty. I used to love Halloween until it became this like small one-upping girl war. I want Halloween love to come back! Funness! Silliness!)
10.27.2007
Fraught lovers.
Me and my church. We love each other, but we fight like cornered dogs.
It's only since I've been interacting with people at General Theological (the Episcopal seminary in Chelsea which I very very chose not to attend) that I've realized that partnered white men are the cream of the f***ing crop in the Episcopal Church. They cruise. They get ordained super-fast. The rest of us, we wait. We get told to be more prayerful. We are told to wait, and wait, and wait. We are the Eternal Postulants. It's hard.
I had a few brief confrontational e-mails with my bishop about this, and she came to visit last week. We had lunch, good good lunch, where she made sure I knew she had my back. The Commission on Ministry has to be handled in particular ways, but she and I have bone-deep understandings, and I love her. It helped, but it doesn't fix the ways this happens systematically throughout the national church. I am trying to stay vocal about it, especially with these white boys who will have parishes very soon, to try and show them how NOT to do this to people who will go through the discernment process in their parishes.
This Polity class at General is making me frustrated. I am now just keeping a running tally of the frightening/misogynist remarks the bishop makes during each class. (One week there was a lovely combination of using a priest killing his wife as the example of what kind of information one should not preach on and of saying, "Well, why shouldn't we bless same-sex couples? We bless dogs. And cars." Um.) I have been told that one does not lodge complaints at General. We'll see. I wish someone other than me felt like hell about it.
Preaching is awesome. And I like teaching a lot. A lot a lot a lot a lot a lot a lot. I'm starting to think that if I do doctoral work, it will be about using Foucault and Butler and Spivak to talk about the politics of interpretation, particularly in relationship to the Greek Scriptures, and the implications for Christology. I want to talk about permeable, negotiated selves, and what happens when we attempt that process transtemporally, and with someone we make particular faith claims about. Still sorting this.
I'm playing a lot of Excuse 17 these days. And Neneh Cherry. And I think it may be time to let go of my prejudices against the Raincoats.
The Trazodone is helping me sleep, but now I'm sedated most of the day, and I don't know quite what to do about that. Check-up next week.
It's only since I've been interacting with people at General Theological (the Episcopal seminary in Chelsea which I very very chose not to attend) that I've realized that partnered white men are the cream of the f***ing crop in the Episcopal Church. They cruise. They get ordained super-fast. The rest of us, we wait. We get told to be more prayerful. We are told to wait, and wait, and wait. We are the Eternal Postulants. It's hard.
I had a few brief confrontational e-mails with my bishop about this, and she came to visit last week. We had lunch, good good lunch, where she made sure I knew she had my back. The Commission on Ministry has to be handled in particular ways, but she and I have bone-deep understandings, and I love her. It helped, but it doesn't fix the ways this happens systematically throughout the national church. I am trying to stay vocal about it, especially with these white boys who will have parishes very soon, to try and show them how NOT to do this to people who will go through the discernment process in their parishes.
This Polity class at General is making me frustrated. I am now just keeping a running tally of the frightening/misogynist remarks the bishop makes during each class. (One week there was a lovely combination of using a priest killing his wife as the example of what kind of information one should not preach on and of saying, "Well, why shouldn't we bless same-sex couples? We bless dogs. And cars." Um.) I have been told that one does not lodge complaints at General. We'll see. I wish someone other than me felt like hell about it.
Preaching is awesome. And I like teaching a lot. A lot a lot a lot a lot a lot a lot. I'm starting to think that if I do doctoral work, it will be about using Foucault and Butler and Spivak to talk about the politics of interpretation, particularly in relationship to the Greek Scriptures, and the implications for Christology. I want to talk about permeable, negotiated selves, and what happens when we attempt that process transtemporally, and with someone we make particular faith claims about. Still sorting this.
I'm playing a lot of Excuse 17 these days. And Neneh Cherry. And I think it may be time to let go of my prejudices against the Raincoats.
The Trazodone is helping me sleep, but now I'm sedated most of the day, and I don't know quite what to do about that. Check-up next week.
10.12.2007
Please support my friend.
The fabulous Nina is baking pies for many, many, many hours in order to honor her mother, who died ten years ago, and to raise money for low-income cancer patients. Please, please visit her website: Pieathon and sponsor baking time or (if you're in NYC) buy a pie. Good karma, God will love you even more, all that good stuff.
10.09.2007
I hate the Royal Tenenbaums.
10.08.2007
Warning: some hard stuff news stories.
Monday night.
Thinking about a lot of things. Thinking about this. And this. And this book. A lot because Onleilove and I want to make chapel for people who have experienced sexual trauma. We want to scream and make safe space to break things. We both think lighting candles (which Christians do for everything) is insufficient to the threat, and to the lived reality, of a lot of bodies.
Went to the Long Island wedding yesterday of Kenny B and Ally. A couple beautiful moments. The best photobooth pics ever. Hanging out with Jeremy and Emily. Talking to Allison's dad, who had gone to see her burlesque show (eep!), and who was so very very proud of her "for being so confident in her own skin...I see so many brides get married here, and some of them are just so uncomfortable. I'm proud of her, out there with her red dress and her tattoos." Hava Nagila. More food than H. and I had maybe ever seen in one place. Crazy dancing. (Side note: after 2 hour yoga Sunday morning and hours of walking and trains and dancing in 4 inch heels, my legs are totally shot). Lots of laughter on the LIRR.
I am up writing an analysis of a 15-minute lecture I delivered last week in my pedagogy class about thinking about gender in the church. I'm sick (I kept pushing it off and today it came back and bit me), and I'm not thinking well, although the experience was pretty big. Something will get written.
I'm falling in love with Dan Bern all over again. Especially this song. It's important for me to remember faith, past belief.
Can I just say how much I love my best friend? A TON. I've been thinking a lot lately about how important it is for me to have a best friend, finally, after so many years. I have a complete wealth of good friends right now in my life, for which I am thankful and bewildered (what did I do to deserve these fan-TAS-tic people in my life?). I am also experiencing a real lack of babies. For the past 10 years, I've been taking care of someone's bubs, and now there is a lack of baths and bubbles and little crackers and naps and warm heads and snuggling and laughing hysterically. It's a big place of emptiness, although when baby Grace left last year, I got so lonely for Jane and Ben and Alice and Bea that I knew I couldn't keep doing that kind of loss again and again. It's an interesting void that I will be living with for a while.
Must continue to write paper. For real. Kisses.
Thinking about a lot of things. Thinking about this. And this. And this book. A lot because Onleilove and I want to make chapel for people who have experienced sexual trauma. We want to scream and make safe space to break things. We both think lighting candles (which Christians do for everything) is insufficient to the threat, and to the lived reality, of a lot of bodies.
Went to the Long Island wedding yesterday of Kenny B and Ally. A couple beautiful moments. The best photobooth pics ever. Hanging out with Jeremy and Emily. Talking to Allison's dad, who had gone to see her burlesque show (eep!), and who was so very very proud of her "for being so confident in her own skin...I see so many brides get married here, and some of them are just so uncomfortable. I'm proud of her, out there with her red dress and her tattoos." Hava Nagila. More food than H. and I had maybe ever seen in one place. Crazy dancing. (Side note: after 2 hour yoga Sunday morning and hours of walking and trains and dancing in 4 inch heels, my legs are totally shot). Lots of laughter on the LIRR.
I am up writing an analysis of a 15-minute lecture I delivered last week in my pedagogy class about thinking about gender in the church. I'm sick (I kept pushing it off and today it came back and bit me), and I'm not thinking well, although the experience was pretty big. Something will get written.
I'm falling in love with Dan Bern all over again. Especially this song. It's important for me to remember faith, past belief.
Can I just say how much I love my best friend? A TON. I've been thinking a lot lately about how important it is for me to have a best friend, finally, after so many years. I have a complete wealth of good friends right now in my life, for which I am thankful and bewildered (what did I do to deserve these fan-TAS-tic people in my life?). I am also experiencing a real lack of babies. For the past 10 years, I've been taking care of someone's bubs, and now there is a lack of baths and bubbles and little crackers and naps and warm heads and snuggling and laughing hysterically. It's a big place of emptiness, although when baby Grace left last year, I got so lonely for Jane and Ben and Alice and Bea that I knew I couldn't keep doing that kind of loss again and again. It's an interesting void that I will be living with for a while.
Must continue to write paper. For real. Kisses.
9.27.2007
God repents.
I'm really interested right now in texts that deal with God changing God's mind. We're looking at Exodus 32:1-14 today in class on my suggestion. Any thoughts, people?
I like the idea that we, people, human beings, agents, free will-ers, have a say in the making of God's mind. What I'm finding is that there aren't too many scholarly articles willing to cope with this in depth.
I like the idea that we, people, human beings, agents, free will-ers, have a say in the making of God's mind. What I'm finding is that there aren't too many scholarly articles willing to cope with this in depth.
9.16.2007
Sunday night.
Went to my new favorite place: World Yoga Center. Little teeny anusara studio on the UWS. The teacher, a sub, kicked my tuchus. I got to demo handstands and then do a bunch of handstands, and thought about all that love and goodness Lisa has poured into me for the past five years. We also did nineteen hundred lunges. And then pigeon. I hate pigeon. My knees are quivering still. Really deep sivasana.
Then Jerry and I walked to the 70th Street pier, where there was a carnival for toddlers and saw the teensiest Ferris Wheel ever (we agreed neither of us would trust our kids in it). We drank beer and I had a Hebrew National with sauerkraut and good mustard for $3. Yum. We talked classes, and selves, and love, and figuring out who gets to decide who you are (answer: God. And you. And people who love you and have known you for a long time. But mostly really just you and God). We watched the sunset. A good night.
I have more work than I have time for tonight, but whatever.
Then Jerry and I walked to the 70th Street pier, where there was a carnival for toddlers and saw the teensiest Ferris Wheel ever (we agreed neither of us would trust our kids in it). We drank beer and I had a Hebrew National with sauerkraut and good mustard for $3. Yum. We talked classes, and selves, and love, and figuring out who gets to decide who you are (answer: God. And you. And people who love you and have known you for a long time. But mostly really just you and God). We watched the sunset. A good night.
I have more work than I have time for tonight, but whatever.
9.15.2007
One Saturday night.
Well, two good nights. Last night watching The Eyes of Tammy Faye, which actually made me MADDER at Jerry Falwell. I didn't know that was possible.
Then, tonight, Danielle and I watched Phat Girlz and it's my new favorite thing. (OK, there's one OJ joke that's totally unacceptable, it's true.) One perfect pork chop, two glasses of red wine, four loads of laundry, and Mo'nique. Really, really good Saturday night.
Then, tonight, Danielle and I watched Phat Girlz and it's my new favorite thing. (OK, there's one OJ joke that's totally unacceptable, it's true.) One perfect pork chop, two glasses of red wine, four loads of laundry, and Mo'nique. Really, really good Saturday night.
Newsy York.
I'm back. Whew.
Here's a quick rundown of all the news:
1) I am taking a leave of absence in the spring to collect myself and be with my mom. I will be doing some kind of two-day-a-week field ed placement, probably in Seattle but possibly in Yakima. I will probably be asking folks if there are places I could stay one or two nights a week in the spring, if I do end up in Seattle.
2) That's getting ahead of myself. As most of you know, this was a difficult year for each member of my family. (I am reluctant to divulge very personal emotional information on this blog. If you don't know about all this, ask and we'll talk.) Thank you for your prayers and support. I am also of course emotionally shaky because of holding the world-record for number of traumatic break-ups in 12 months. Again, thank you for the support. I feel like taking some time to feed both my mom and myself is a GREAT decision. And I've been supported. Props to my financial aid officer, the dean of the seminary, my beloved bishop Nedi, Bishop George with whom I work at 815. All have been dreams to ask for help in this shaky time. I love being able to go to my mom when she needs me. And who knows? Maybe I'll take Spanish lessons! Voice lessons! I will also be going to Alaska in the summer to relieve some dead salmon of their internal organs, hanging out all bloody on the boat with my dad, soaking up water and salt and a community of people drinking coffee and wearing Xtra Tufs.
3) That said, any love and shout-outs you would like to give me in comment or e-mail form would be so welcome right now. (I am surviving one moment of outreach and comfort to the next right now.) I just got back from my friend Emily's ordination to the priesthood at St. John the Divine, and was compiling the extraordinary list of people I will be able to invite to my ordination in a couple years, and I was crying on the sidewalk thinking about the people I've been blessed to meet in my life. Y'all better come.
4) An aside: I'm rediscovering Reasonable Doubt after a summer of The Black Album, and you know, it's just so easy to fall in love with Jay-Z all over again.
5) I am taking Luke with Joanna Dewey (!!!!!!!!! Joanna Dewey!), which is going to be a ton of work because visiting profs always forget you're taking a million classes. Because they're only teaching one class, they always give a ton of assignments. Also, I think they get nervous about impressing the institution they are visiting and make their classes really hard. Argh. But it should be good. I don't like the Gospel of Luke real well: lots of female characters but they all get silenced and a "softer, prettier, less threatening" Gospel for rich people. But I LOOOOOOVE her work on Mark, and I hope she busts something open for me.
Also, The Practices of Teaching, a pedagogy class taught by my advisor, Mary Boys. Should be interesting.
Also, Intro to Preaching and Worship. Co-taught by some seriously kick-ass women.
Also, Exegesis. Taught by my Greek Bible prof from last term, the one who helped me so much.
Also, finally and painfully, Episcopal Polity and Canon Law, at General. Taught by the bishop of Long Island, who I've heard "doesn't like to be contradicted." They give letter grades at General. Expect a punitive C+.
What I'm most excitied about is that Pedagogy, Preaching, and Exegesis are all asking me some serious questions about who I am in the world. Where am I located? Who AM I? I can only bring that person to what I do and how I do it. This is connected to:
6) Surviving CPE. Some very good learning. But also massive frustration. One of the big pieces of learning was that I bring this person, this skeptical, hopeful, questioning, engaged person to the people I pastor. I can't bring someone else, someone less messy, someone more conservative theologically. I can't be tidy. I can't fit a little box. And this messy person I am can take care of people. Showing people that I am broken too, but that I keep looking for the places God and Hope poke their collective nose around the darkest corners, helps. Sighs of relief. I don't have to be a monolith. I am learning that SO intensely right now. Who I am as a prophet, who I am as a teacher, who I am as a pastor, are all who I am right now. A part of me is thinking, "Well, goodness. I'm only 27. I have to know who I am NOW? You're kidding, right?" But I do know a lot about myself, about my primary commitments, about myself and God. I know I need to be always holding the big picture and the teeny picture together. I know I want to break systems and cycles of injustice as much as I want to hold one little baby and baptise it with tears streaming down my cheeks. I know I see God all over the place: my lack of a Sunday School education enables me to not compartmentalize God-ness. God's in hip-hop, God's in the bookstore, God's in Spike Lee movies, God's in Gloria Steinum, God's in Prokoviev, God's in the turtles, God's in the sidewalk and in the cracks. God loves sushi and God loves me and God is skin and God is the magical math that explains how airplanes fly.
7) Bishop Katherine preached at Union's convocation. That was awesome.
8) Ghostface Killah's Fishscale was so hyped when it came out I just couldn't listen to it. I am now. I am cautiously pretty hot for it.
Also, this is a really interesting article about the responsibility white people have to hip hop. I'm going to post, but I'm still thinking on it. Racialicious is a great blog anyway.
9) I really need to do homework. Really. Much love. I'll be posting here again soon. Once I'm caught up at work I will also be posting back at the work blog too. I'm also going to be offering up a little political round-up, stuff I think is pertinent to media, race, representation, and gender.
Here's a quick rundown of all the news:
1) I am taking a leave of absence in the spring to collect myself and be with my mom. I will be doing some kind of two-day-a-week field ed placement, probably in Seattle but possibly in Yakima. I will probably be asking folks if there are places I could stay one or two nights a week in the spring, if I do end up in Seattle.
2) That's getting ahead of myself. As most of you know, this was a difficult year for each member of my family. (I am reluctant to divulge very personal emotional information on this blog. If you don't know about all this, ask and we'll talk.) Thank you for your prayers and support. I am also of course emotionally shaky because of holding the world-record for number of traumatic break-ups in 12 months. Again, thank you for the support. I feel like taking some time to feed both my mom and myself is a GREAT decision. And I've been supported. Props to my financial aid officer, the dean of the seminary, my beloved bishop Nedi, Bishop George with whom I work at 815. All have been dreams to ask for help in this shaky time. I love being able to go to my mom when she needs me. And who knows? Maybe I'll take Spanish lessons! Voice lessons! I will also be going to Alaska in the summer to relieve some dead salmon of their internal organs, hanging out all bloody on the boat with my dad, soaking up water and salt and a community of people drinking coffee and wearing Xtra Tufs.
3) That said, any love and shout-outs you would like to give me in comment or e-mail form would be so welcome right now. (I am surviving one moment of outreach and comfort to the next right now.) I just got back from my friend Emily's ordination to the priesthood at St. John the Divine, and was compiling the extraordinary list of people I will be able to invite to my ordination in a couple years, and I was crying on the sidewalk thinking about the people I've been blessed to meet in my life. Y'all better come.
4) An aside: I'm rediscovering Reasonable Doubt after a summer of The Black Album, and you know, it's just so easy to fall in love with Jay-Z all over again.
5) I am taking Luke with Joanna Dewey (!!!!!!!!! Joanna Dewey!), which is going to be a ton of work because visiting profs always forget you're taking a million classes. Because they're only teaching one class, they always give a ton of assignments. Also, I think they get nervous about impressing the institution they are visiting and make their classes really hard. Argh. But it should be good. I don't like the Gospel of Luke real well: lots of female characters but they all get silenced and a "softer, prettier, less threatening" Gospel for rich people. But I LOOOOOOVE her work on Mark, and I hope she busts something open for me.
Also, The Practices of Teaching, a pedagogy class taught by my advisor, Mary Boys. Should be interesting.
Also, Intro to Preaching and Worship. Co-taught by some seriously kick-ass women.
Also, Exegesis. Taught by my Greek Bible prof from last term, the one who helped me so much.
Also, finally and painfully, Episcopal Polity and Canon Law, at General. Taught by the bishop of Long Island, who I've heard "doesn't like to be contradicted." They give letter grades at General. Expect a punitive C+.
What I'm most excitied about is that Pedagogy, Preaching, and Exegesis are all asking me some serious questions about who I am in the world. Where am I located? Who AM I? I can only bring that person to what I do and how I do it. This is connected to:
6) Surviving CPE. Some very good learning. But also massive frustration. One of the big pieces of learning was that I bring this person, this skeptical, hopeful, questioning, engaged person to the people I pastor. I can't bring someone else, someone less messy, someone more conservative theologically. I can't be tidy. I can't fit a little box. And this messy person I am can take care of people. Showing people that I am broken too, but that I keep looking for the places God and Hope poke their collective nose around the darkest corners, helps. Sighs of relief. I don't have to be a monolith. I am learning that SO intensely right now. Who I am as a prophet, who I am as a teacher, who I am as a pastor, are all who I am right now. A part of me is thinking, "Well, goodness. I'm only 27. I have to know who I am NOW? You're kidding, right?" But I do know a lot about myself, about my primary commitments, about myself and God. I know I need to be always holding the big picture and the teeny picture together. I know I want to break systems and cycles of injustice as much as I want to hold one little baby and baptise it with tears streaming down my cheeks. I know I see God all over the place: my lack of a Sunday School education enables me to not compartmentalize God-ness. God's in hip-hop, God's in the bookstore, God's in Spike Lee movies, God's in Gloria Steinum, God's in Prokoviev, God's in the turtles, God's in the sidewalk and in the cracks. God loves sushi and God loves me and God is skin and God is the magical math that explains how airplanes fly.
7) Bishop Katherine preached at Union's convocation. That was awesome.
8) Ghostface Killah's Fishscale was so hyped when it came out I just couldn't listen to it. I am now. I am cautiously pretty hot for it.
Also, this is a really interesting article about the responsibility white people have to hip hop. I'm going to post, but I'm still thinking on it. Racialicious is a great blog anyway.
9) I really need to do homework. Really. Much love. I'll be posting here again soon. Once I'm caught up at work I will also be posting back at the work blog too. I'm also going to be offering up a little political round-up, stuff I think is pertinent to media, race, representation, and gender.
3.08.2007
Other blog.
I thought you might like to know that the Bishop of my office, Bp. George Packard, is now on the blogging bandwagon, and has asked me to blog for him. I am one of two contributors to a blog for diocesan chaplains, and you can find it here.
I work at a really great place.
I work at a really great place.
3.05.2007
Le Rire de la Medusa
Can I just say how glad I am to be back in grad school? The last time I had this much fun with my brain was when I was dating that tragically unsorted boy and we went to queer theory reading group, and I got to start thinking about discursive creation of bodies, about norms materializing human beings, and about how series of acts create (not develop out of) naturalization. Super, super fun, and now I get to interpret that theologically.
I am starting to do thinking and talking around how to organize the gender conversation at Union. I am starting to reread Butler and bits of the French feminists. They are HILARIOUS. Not always useful, but completely, adorably insane. (How can you not love someone who wrote a book called "The Speculum of the Other Woman"?) I mean, there's an awful lack of any whisper of postmodernity on this campus (OMG, it's SO overwhelmed with "good" white "liberal" "mainline" Protestants chugging away at this doomed and glib and facile modernist happy "progress"-centric project. Ack!). So I feel like I'm starting from scratch. But who loves a challenge? Me!
The revolution is pending. Union is stuck in a place where it's not even willing to cede the aims of the second wave. And the second wave was racist and classist and all kinds of problematic, but Union isn't even there yet. It's slightly horrifying. But one of my profs has promised me space, and I just heard about someone's thesis about Paul's queering of gender dynamics in the early Jesus movement. It's a start.
I am starting to do thinking and talking around how to organize the gender conversation at Union. I am starting to reread Butler and bits of the French feminists. They are HILARIOUS. Not always useful, but completely, adorably insane. (How can you not love someone who wrote a book called "The Speculum of the Other Woman"?) I mean, there's an awful lack of any whisper of postmodernity on this campus (OMG, it's SO overwhelmed with "good" white "liberal" "mainline" Protestants chugging away at this doomed and glib and facile modernist happy "progress"-centric project. Ack!). So I feel like I'm starting from scratch. But who loves a challenge? Me!
The revolution is pending. Union is stuck in a place where it's not even willing to cede the aims of the second wave. And the second wave was racist and classist and all kinds of problematic, but Union isn't even there yet. It's slightly horrifying. But one of my profs has promised me space, and I just heard about someone's thesis about Paul's queering of gender dynamics in the early Jesus movement. It's a start.
2.08.2007
Religious illiteracy.
We've begun our academic journeying into Islam this week in my Religions and the City class, and today we had a prof from Harvard Divinity come speak with us. Dr. Ali Asani spoke with us about the insanity that comes from a nation of religiously illiterate people (like, um, Americans). We're so spooked about religion and schools that we refuse to teach people good methodologies around thinking about religions, and histories of religions (which are, actually, only histories of loci of interpretation). As a result, we get a nation of bumper stickers about hunting Osama, a nation of people who wrongly equate Islam with the "Middle East" ("middle" according to whom, exactly?), an entire city on Puget Sound that will not stop telling me, "But Christianity says that women are less than men and that abortion is wrong and gay people are going to hell." I mean, goodness. You would never tell me that "Art" or "Literature" says that "gay people are going to hell," right? I mean, some writers says that and they are wrong, but don't hold the whole damn field accountable for it, K? You don't stop reading books just because some books are bad. People who are religiously illiterate eventually resort to caricature and humiliation, and when in power, acts of dehumanization.
Another of the manifestations of religious illiteracy is the equation of religion with devotional practice. We are socialized to think about religion as churches, festivals, people praying, etc. We are taught to think of religions as individual practice, instead of a complex interweaving of economics, politics, culture, gender, text, art, literature, etc. Which, of course, they are. Yet another manifestation is the use of religion as the EXCLUSIVE lens used to explain the actions of an individual or a community. ("Well, s/he was a suicide bomber/was an abstinence "educator"/supports the State of Israel BECAUSE s/he is Muslim/Christian/Jewish." Not because they're poor or scared or living under colonial rule or entire family was killed in a genocide or their human rights are being compromised on a daily basis or or or...) This is reductionist, and it's wrong. It's particularly salient in light of the dangers faced by American Muslims in contemporary America. People are now talking about "the Muslim problem" in the same way they used to talk about "the Jewish problem."
In other news, next Thursday I am going to be in an ankle-length skirt and a headscarf at a mosque in the east 90's for the afternoon. I will then catch a cab back to school, throw on my red dress, and proceed to play a sex worker in the Union production of the Vagina Monologues. So multiculti!
And, for just a moment, I would like to formally thank you readers. This blog contains a lot of blather, and it's rather poorly written. I don't edit. I just go. I promise I do hand in real essays that are elegantly and concisely written. I just want to pour some of this out sometimes. Thanks, loves!
Another of the manifestations of religious illiteracy is the equation of religion with devotional practice. We are socialized to think about religion as churches, festivals, people praying, etc. We are taught to think of religions as individual practice, instead of a complex interweaving of economics, politics, culture, gender, text, art, literature, etc. Which, of course, they are. Yet another manifestation is the use of religion as the EXCLUSIVE lens used to explain the actions of an individual or a community. ("Well, s/he was a suicide bomber/was an abstinence "educator"/supports the State of Israel BECAUSE s/he is Muslim/Christian/Jewish." Not because they're poor or scared or living under colonial rule or entire family was killed in a genocide or their human rights are being compromised on a daily basis or or or...) This is reductionist, and it's wrong. It's particularly salient in light of the dangers faced by American Muslims in contemporary America. People are now talking about "the Muslim problem" in the same way they used to talk about "the Jewish problem."
In other news, next Thursday I am going to be in an ankle-length skirt and a headscarf at a mosque in the east 90's for the afternoon. I will then catch a cab back to school, throw on my red dress, and proceed to play a sex worker in the Union production of the Vagina Monologues. So multiculti!
And, for just a moment, I would like to formally thank you readers. This blog contains a lot of blather, and it's rather poorly written. I don't edit. I just go. I promise I do hand in real essays that are elegantly and concisely written. I just want to pour some of this out sometimes. Thanks, loves!
2.07.2007
FIVE HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS.
This is what my books are costing this semester. Jiminy Crickets.
Can somebody call them and tell them I only make $150/week?
I have a feeling that I'm going to have to provide artifical respiration to my bank account this semester. Between doing my CPE in Seattle (paying rent in two places, here and there, and paying Swedish) and buying plane tickets, I'm going to be eating a lot of cereal and tuna fish. Well, I already eat a lot of cereal and tuna fish, but you get the point.
And, interestingly, the front page article in Episcopal Life this month was about how much debt seminarians accumulate in the process of attempting to follow a call to ordained ministry. Which I felt great about, right? Until the part about how the people trying to relieve that debt are only willing to do it if the seminarian is going to an Episcopal seminary. Apparently those of us who are trying to prepare for the ecumenical future of the church at truly excellent seminaries are not worthy of being supported financially. Puh-leeze. This is the 21st century. The studies tell us that no one is choosing a church family on the basis of denomination anymore. And, as a friend of mine at an Anglican seminary told me, "I feel like I'm being taught how to be a really good Anglican but not necessarily how to be a really good Christian." I am at Union because the academics are stellar, and because I need to learn how to make good church. I am learning how to be a good Christian and not isolate myself in an Anglican enclave. I need to learn how to speak God, not just Canterbury-ian.
And all of these things are making me more intensely Episcopalian than I've ever been: I defend and speak up for my beloved, beloved tradition all the time. So I'm not losing identity: I'm gaining it. But apparently that's not exactly worthy of support. Yeesh.
Can somebody call them and tell them I only make $150/week?
I have a feeling that I'm going to have to provide artifical respiration to my bank account this semester. Between doing my CPE in Seattle (paying rent in two places, here and there, and paying Swedish) and buying plane tickets, I'm going to be eating a lot of cereal and tuna fish. Well, I already eat a lot of cereal and tuna fish, but you get the point.
And, interestingly, the front page article in Episcopal Life this month was about how much debt seminarians accumulate in the process of attempting to follow a call to ordained ministry. Which I felt great about, right? Until the part about how the people trying to relieve that debt are only willing to do it if the seminarian is going to an Episcopal seminary. Apparently those of us who are trying to prepare for the ecumenical future of the church at truly excellent seminaries are not worthy of being supported financially. Puh-leeze. This is the 21st century. The studies tell us that no one is choosing a church family on the basis of denomination anymore. And, as a friend of mine at an Anglican seminary told me, "I feel like I'm being taught how to be a really good Anglican but not necessarily how to be a really good Christian." I am at Union because the academics are stellar, and because I need to learn how to make good church. I am learning how to be a good Christian and not isolate myself in an Anglican enclave. I need to learn how to speak God, not just Canterbury-ian.
And all of these things are making me more intensely Episcopalian than I've ever been: I defend and speak up for my beloved, beloved tradition all the time. So I'm not losing identity: I'm gaining it. But apparently that's not exactly worthy of support. Yeesh.
2.04.2007
I forgot to tell you.
That last night I went with Andrew from work to St. Mary the Virgin in Times Square for the 6:00 Eucharist celebrating the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple.
WOW.
There was so much incense choking the air that by the end of the 2-hour service I could barely see the altar. And it was sung! For those of you who remember my Christianities and the City course last semester, you'll recall I went one morning to a Methodist service where we sang 14 hymns in their entirety and I was about ready to bolt, screaming. Sung services are really alienating to people who don't sing. It actually felt strange to take the Eucharist because I didn't feel like I was part of the community's life and affirmation in the service! I couldn't sing it, and I felt awkward consuming something I didn't help make.
But it was quite an experience, and there was a schmancy wine-and-pate, WASP-centric recetion afterward where everyone was very nice. And it is certainly a show. I don't think I've ever - even when I was attending Catholic Mass - been to a service where the priest has his or her back to the congregation (I almost said audience). It was astonishing! But overall it was beautiful. I am going to bring my mom when she comes.
My friend Andrew was somewhat worried about me, I think, because he knows I am much less of an Anglican-ist, a traditionalist, than he is (even though I'm more of a traditionalist than most of the people I know at St. Mark's). I think he thought I would be in a tizzy about how traditional it was. And, I mean, I don't use the language they use, but they are preserving a cultural legacy, they are making something beautiful, they are preserving a part of my narrative, and for that I am truly thankful. It works for a lot of people, and I'm all about what works.
WOW.
There was so much incense choking the air that by the end of the 2-hour service I could barely see the altar. And it was sung! For those of you who remember my Christianities and the City course last semester, you'll recall I went one morning to a Methodist service where we sang 14 hymns in their entirety and I was about ready to bolt, screaming. Sung services are really alienating to people who don't sing. It actually felt strange to take the Eucharist because I didn't feel like I was part of the community's life and affirmation in the service! I couldn't sing it, and I felt awkward consuming something I didn't help make.
But it was quite an experience, and there was a schmancy wine-and-pate, WASP-centric recetion afterward where everyone was very nice. And it is certainly a show. I don't think I've ever - even when I was attending Catholic Mass - been to a service where the priest has his or her back to the congregation (I almost said audience). It was astonishing! But overall it was beautiful. I am going to bring my mom when she comes.
My friend Andrew was somewhat worried about me, I think, because he knows I am much less of an Anglican-ist, a traditionalist, than he is (even though I'm more of a traditionalist than most of the people I know at St. Mark's). I think he thought I would be in a tizzy about how traditional it was. And, I mean, I don't use the language they use, but they are preserving a cultural legacy, they are making something beautiful, they are preserving a part of my narrative, and for that I am truly thankful. It works for a lot of people, and I'm all about what works.
Seattle summery-ness.
I got in! To the Swedish CPE program! Whoot!
It was funny - I called Mark VERY despondent the evening of the day they told me they were going to inform me by, and was tremendously grumpy on the phone, wailing about how if they wanted me they would have calllllled already and obviously they didn't want me. He was so patient, and told me that hospitals tend to have bad administration practices, and they just didn't get around to informing me. He reminded me about all the other times I've been waiting to hear back from places (Union, the COM) and gravely sad, and how I always passed before. The very next day I e-mailed them and they e-mailed right back saying their staff person was out of town but I was in and would I accept? Yes!
So for all the Seattle readers: I will be back this summer to take the little bunnies on picnics, to eat good and proper fish, to run around Greenlake (Sarah, want to train for a 10K this summer?), to sit in the warm pretty sunshine. And I will be learning how to be broken open to God through pastoring to people in crisis. A little Holy Spirit tells me that that will be the defining part of this summer. Thanks be to God.
It was funny - I called Mark VERY despondent the evening of the day they told me they were going to inform me by, and was tremendously grumpy on the phone, wailing about how if they wanted me they would have calllllled already and obviously they didn't want me. He was so patient, and told me that hospitals tend to have bad administration practices, and they just didn't get around to informing me. He reminded me about all the other times I've been waiting to hear back from places (Union, the COM) and gravely sad, and how I always passed before. The very next day I e-mailed them and they e-mailed right back saying their staff person was out of town but I was in and would I accept? Yes!
So for all the Seattle readers: I will be back this summer to take the little bunnies on picnics, to eat good and proper fish, to run around Greenlake (Sarah, want to train for a 10K this summer?), to sit in the warm pretty sunshine. And I will be learning how to be broken open to God through pastoring to people in crisis. A little Holy Spirit tells me that that will be the defining part of this summer. Thanks be to God.
1.30.2007
Thoughts on spiritual direction.
So I realized when I was back in Seattle that a lot of my anger and anxiety that I was feeling about St. Mark's had disappeared. It was a huge relief, a weight lifted. And I started thinking about that. I went to spiritual direction today - with the (overly?) erudite spiritual director I'm still feeling conflicted about - and realized that part of what was going on was that I had learned to parse my anger about the wretched track-to-ordination system (I mean, seriously, asking for my Pap Smear? SO invasive!) from the actual people I love. In Seattle, there wasn't much space to separate out my feelings, since church was the only place I got to talk about God (hello, secular friends! I still love you even though we never talked about the biggest thing in my life!) and I couldn't quite figure out which parts of me were mad at God, mad at my process, mad at life, mad at my church (where, even though I've been there for years and served in a wide variety of ministries and supposedly they are commissioning me for ministry, I still get welcomed in the morning with a handshake and a blank look and a cheery "Welcome to St. Mark's!" Uh, thanks.). And, of course, I was supposed to be utterly grateful for the mere chance to beg for a place at the table (as the lady said to Jesus, even the dogs get to eat the crumbs...). It all coalesced to make me feel frustrated. And I did a stupid thing: I started identifying that frustration with individual peoples and ministries at my parish. Wrong, wrong, wrong. They love me. I love them. We support each other and laugh together. It's the system that is wearing. The system where no one tells me what's expected of me, where my paperwork is, who I'm supposed to report to. The system that offers no pastoral support for people defending their very real calls to ministry (because of the supposed state of our eternal gratitude, as mentioned before). And then they get mad when I'm not psychic. Sheesh. But when I went back, I had a little epiphany. And the feelings fell into their proper places. And I am really glad for that.
I have started thinking more intentionally about these things in part because my dear friend Carolina, one of the most beautiful/glowy/holy people I've ever met, told me that over the break she realized she can no longer pursue ordained ministry. She can no longer do it because the process is destroying her relationship with God. And I had sudden pang of very real sympathy - realizing that I didn't always feel as far away from God as I do now, that I didn't always have such a hard time praying. It was about in the middle of my process when it started to fade, when I was experiencing a serious amount of classism at St. Mark's (they really assume everyone has some kind of middle-class job that can support all the meetings and volunteer service and paperwork and doctor's appointments that the process requires, some kind of job where you don't lose much-needed paid-by-the-hour rent money for trying to make meetings on time or meet with your mentoring priest during the day or paying for required shrink visits, some kind of job that lets you say, "Yes, I will be there whenever you need me" so as not to incur stares that imply "Are you REALLY serious about this?" Well, yes, I am, but I also need to eat and buy gas and I'm already working a 60 hour work week and the little one has what we think might be the chicken pox but sure, yes sir, I'm all yours even though you have never once asked me how I am). Again, with the conflation of God and church, I started feeling like since the process was so lonely, God must be somehow leaving me, God also somehow thought I wasn't trying hard enough and was too much in the service class to be any good, even though I was trying and trying, and, as the Lark can attest, crying. I was wrong. God was still there, good old eternal magnet that God is, calling me back to God's warm breast whenever I was ready to recognize that the churchly struggle was not God. (Apologies for the mixed metaphor.) The work that my spiritual director has been doing with me - nudging me back to prayer, particularly unashamed unabashed petitionary prayer - has been really helpful in this. God and I are going to be OK. That's an excellent thing about God: you come back, and you always come back to joy.
I am also starting to think that part of my frustration with my spiritual director is that he was not counselling me. Well, I think maybe if I need counselling and crying and emotional catharsis, I need a real live therapist. I think he's actually doing a good job as a spiritual director, asking how everything I tell him affects my spiritual well-being. No one has done that in ages. (And yes, OK, he finishes my sentences too often for comfort and overthinks things and talks a bit too much but we are working together to unlearn these things.)
Sigh. Folks, I'm sorry I'm so grumpy. Also, today I was supposed to hear back from the folks at Swedish about my Clinical Pastoral Education, and they didn't call and I have eaten too many pieces of toast and feel really unwanted. It's the worst feeling, that no one wants you. It does resemble that loneliness felt during my process - that I have a call, I want to serve, I do good work, I work hard, but it's not exactly being reciprocated. It's worth it. Right?
I have started thinking more intentionally about these things in part because my dear friend Carolina, one of the most beautiful/glowy/holy people I've ever met, told me that over the break she realized she can no longer pursue ordained ministry. She can no longer do it because the process is destroying her relationship with God. And I had sudden pang of very real sympathy - realizing that I didn't always feel as far away from God as I do now, that I didn't always have such a hard time praying. It was about in the middle of my process when it started to fade, when I was experiencing a serious amount of classism at St. Mark's (they really assume everyone has some kind of middle-class job that can support all the meetings and volunteer service and paperwork and doctor's appointments that the process requires, some kind of job where you don't lose much-needed paid-by-the-hour rent money for trying to make meetings on time or meet with your mentoring priest during the day or paying for required shrink visits, some kind of job that lets you say, "Yes, I will be there whenever you need me" so as not to incur stares that imply "Are you REALLY serious about this?" Well, yes, I am, but I also need to eat and buy gas and I'm already working a 60 hour work week and the little one has what we think might be the chicken pox but sure, yes sir, I'm all yours even though you have never once asked me how I am). Again, with the conflation of God and church, I started feeling like since the process was so lonely, God must be somehow leaving me, God also somehow thought I wasn't trying hard enough and was too much in the service class to be any good, even though I was trying and trying, and, as the Lark can attest, crying. I was wrong. God was still there, good old eternal magnet that God is, calling me back to God's warm breast whenever I was ready to recognize that the churchly struggle was not God. (Apologies for the mixed metaphor.) The work that my spiritual director has been doing with me - nudging me back to prayer, particularly unashamed unabashed petitionary prayer - has been really helpful in this. God and I are going to be OK. That's an excellent thing about God: you come back, and you always come back to joy.
I am also starting to think that part of my frustration with my spiritual director is that he was not counselling me. Well, I think maybe if I need counselling and crying and emotional catharsis, I need a real live therapist. I think he's actually doing a good job as a spiritual director, asking how everything I tell him affects my spiritual well-being. No one has done that in ages. (And yes, OK, he finishes my sentences too often for comfort and overthinks things and talks a bit too much but we are working together to unlearn these things.)
Sigh. Folks, I'm sorry I'm so grumpy. Also, today I was supposed to hear back from the folks at Swedish about my Clinical Pastoral Education, and they didn't call and I have eaten too many pieces of toast and feel really unwanted. It's the worst feeling, that no one wants you. It does resemble that loneliness felt during my process - that I have a call, I want to serve, I do good work, I work hard, but it's not exactly being reciprocated. It's worth it. Right?
1.21.2007
Back.
But not back "home." Seattle is home. My Lark is home. Pad Thai is home, Mt Rainier is home, Franz Bainbridge Island Swirl Bread is home.
First, please go to this website of these right-wing activists and vote yes in their poll, vote that the NCCC is doing a fabulous job. Because it is, and you know they are going to use this poll as "data" or "evidence" somehow in their paranoid attacks on the NCCC. Please. Here it is: Institute for Religion and Democracy.
Lots happened over the break. Lots of family things. Lots of eating and snuggling with the kitties. I feel ready to start school again, the old rejoicing as a strong man to run a race. I did very well last semester and I am game for more. I will be taking two Greek Bible classes, two church history classes, intermediate Hebrew, and Religions and the City (the companion class to the Christianities and the City class I took last semester which you all helped me out with very kindly).
I am working pretty much non-stop for the next week setting in a store of cushion money for the semester. So I will post more probably after school begins again on the 31st.
Love!
First, please go to this website of these right-wing activists and vote yes in their poll, vote that the NCCC is doing a fabulous job. Because it is, and you know they are going to use this poll as "data" or "evidence" somehow in their paranoid attacks on the NCCC. Please. Here it is: Institute for Religion and Democracy.
Lots happened over the break. Lots of family things. Lots of eating and snuggling with the kitties. I feel ready to start school again, the old rejoicing as a strong man to run a race. I did very well last semester and I am game for more. I will be taking two Greek Bible classes, two church history classes, intermediate Hebrew, and Religions and the City (the companion class to the Christianities and the City class I took last semester which you all helped me out with very kindly).
I am working pretty much non-stop for the next week setting in a store of cushion money for the semester. So I will post more probably after school begins again on the 31st.
Love!
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