WARNING: spoilers, dirty words, suggestions of God having a sex drive, and excessive use of the impersonal “you”
Wednesday before last, when I entered the back room of the English lab, someone’s Norton Unwieldy Doorstop was sitting open on a desk, color-coded Post-Its pasted here and there on the page. Its owner sat in a swivel chair, facing away from the tome, but not far enough away that she wouldn’t notice if I tucked the Doorstop under my arm and fled from the premises.
She (we’ll call her “Hero”, because that requires less explanation than “Stripper”) was chatting with Anita on the subject of God sex. God sex and exploding, cannibalistic babies, to be precise, but the latter is from a separate work, and for the purposes of this post, I’ll be focusing on the God sex.
The story goes that, on the one day she hadn’t done the reading for Early English Lit class, Hero found herself sitting in on a conversation about God and Jesus having sex with some woman.
God first, then Jesus.
This woman, “banging” Jesus in her spiritual autobiography.
Hero flipped a few pages and handed the open Doorstop to Anita. “See? Do you see this?”
Anita began reading aloud, “I take you, Margery, for my wedded wife, for fairer, for fouler, for richer, for poorer…so long as you be buxom…” Then, “Sometimes she heard with her bodily ears such sounds and melodies that she might not hear well what a man said to her in that time unless he spoke the louder”, to which Anita commented, “It sounds like she’s having temporal lobe hallucinations.”
Being English majors all reading from the same canon, I naturally had access to the same passages of The Book of Margery Kempe in my own, albeit emasculated – seeing as its been broken down in three parts – copy of the Norton Doorstop. So, for fun and avoidance of my history paper, I read it.
Maybe I’ve been exposed to too many smutty romance novels at Girl Scout Camp*, because the God sex did not measure up to the tittering in the tutoring lab. Mind you, the Norton can only provide excerpts of Margery Kempe, so maybe they craftily sidestepped the more sultry scenes, but what was there fell short of my expectations. I wasn’t expecting long passages of solid, hardcore pornography, however I was expecting to be shocked with something explicitly erotic – as much, if not more, explicit than the details how of her husband, after he “turned childish again” in his old age, “voided his natural digestion in his linen clothes where he sat by the fire or the table, wherever it might be, he would spare no place”.
God telling Margery, “Therefore I needs[sic] be homely with you and lie in your bed with you” and that “you love me, daughter, as a good wife ought to love her husband” is different than the narrator showing us… la di da, you get it (thinking about it now, I’m glad I was spared).
The most detailed description of physical contact we get is when, in one of Margery’s visions, Jesus kissed the Virgin Mary “full sweetly”, but that was different, and not just because it wasn’t Margery. I’m not convinced that particular kiss is meant to be taken in a romantic/sexual manner, nor, therefore, an incestuous/Oedipal one. Sometimes in the Christian tradition, people kiss other people. It doesn’t necessarily happen in the nice, Calvinist venue I pop into once in a while (like most other contemporary church-goers, we shake hands when we pass the peace)… but, for instance, in the film Vision, nuns be kissin priests and other nuns all the time. It’s not sexual. They’re not getting fresh with each other. That’s just how it is.
Mind you, Vision was set several hundred years before The Book of Margery Kempe. I realize that, without the research that I slothfully resolved NOT to do, there is a potential anachronism there. Said realization domino-effected me into another, this time unflattering realization that I may have been recklessly grouping old-timey Christian mystics together into a fascinating, exotic group, potentially condescendingly otherizing them for my personal enjoyment, harkening to mind, in trajectory, crap like Orientalism. If you’re not following, it may or may not make more sense after you read...
WHY I LIKED MARGERY KEMPE
First, a sort-of digression, because there haven’t been enough already: remember when Jesus was at a dinner party and some woman busts in (depending on which gospel account you read, it’s one of the Marys) and pours all this expensive nard (perfume) on Jesus’ feet and starts crying and wiping it off with her hair?
If you’re anything like my mom, that passage probably annoys you, because, well, what self-respecting gentleman would want some crazy woman crashing a dinner party so she could be a big weirdo and put on such a display? On the other hand, every time I’ve heard it at my church**, the Calvinists have thought it’s a courageous act of love.
Margery experienced a farther reaching gamut of reactions,
For some said it was a wicked spirit vexed her; some said it was a sickness; some said she had drunk too much wine; some banned her; some wished she had been in the harbor; some would she had been in the sea in a bottomless boat; and so each man as he thought. Other ghostly men loved her and favored her more.
Because Margery would go into these INSANE crying fits every time she had a vision of and/or was reminded of the Passion (both happened a lot!). It probably doesn’t help that she sees Jesus in the face of every handsome man and young boy. Margery is so overcome with sorrow and compassion that she balls her eyes out to a point where it’s described as “roaring”.
Mind you, the woman in the gospels probably deliberately tracked down Jesus and poured nard all over his feet, while Margery “knew never time nor hour when they [the visions and corresponding crying fits] would come” and couldn’t handle herself. Zero say in the matter. BUT THE POINT IS, Margery cries with sorrow and compassion and ultimately LOVE for Jesus --> Margery is a big weirdo for Jesus, just like Nard Woman is.
And, yeah, if I were walking around with Margery in public for a prolonged period of time, maybe my wretched colors would come out bleeding out of me and I would find her utterly irritating and humiliating, too, however, I’m not walking around with her, I’m reading about her, and from where I’m sitting – safely, here, behind my Norton Doorstop, hella years after the fact – I think it’s beautiful. Hyperbolic and beautiful and weird and strangely appropriate given the “ghostly”, antiquated state of the text.
Frankly, I think it’s touching how much she loves Jesus, and given the anticlimax of the on-the-whole NOT sexual scenes, I don’t mean LOVE in an explicitly physical way. When Jesus is sitting next to Margery while God is asking Margery to marry her (yes, that happened – and, yes, that was weird), and she didn’t know what to say, partially because she was in love with the second Godhead of the Trinity, not the first*** - that was, oddly, fucking adorable.
I also liked how Margery was seeing angels everywhere like glorious dust motes. That was pretty cool. To which Anita might point out the possibility for temporal lobe hallucinations. Which makes it….no less cool.
So, would I recommend Margery Kempe? Yes. If you’re not a hater who’s gonna be like, damn religious people and their rap music. Because when people get weird and religious, it’s kind of easy to be a hater. If you’re like me, and not my mom, you’ll find religious weirdoes much more admirable and loveable in the antiquated sense than in, say, in Flannery O’Connor, where peeps be flat out insane. If you’re like my mom, you’ll hate both, and you should read something else.
I think religious kooks of the universe have their place. They can be wonderful, in their way. Yeah, once in a while there’s a dark-side of it; a money-embezzling, Jew-bashing, gay-hating, heathen-killing part that rears its ugly head from time and time again, but if that makes its way into Margery Kempe, I was certainly blind to it. And if I did see that in her, I wouldn’t be recommending her to others. Religious weirdoes – especially of antiquity – are adorable and worth their weight in nard.
Good on you, Margery Kempe.
* Men penetrating women with wine bottles while in the back of a horse-and-buggy, whoa!
** Mom and I don’t go to the same church.
*** Perhaps could be construed as a wee Marcion-esque depending on how much you’ve been drinking that day (what?), in
retrospect, but The
Book of Margery Kempe is unlike Marcion in that she neither hates the god of the Old Testament, nor does he write Him off as a tyrannical douche bag.
Showing posts with label the Bible. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the Bible. Show all posts
16.3.13
Alright, Sister Exodus, I made a mistake.
In some translations, Exodus 20.13 (the sixth of the Ten Commandments) says you shouldn’t murder, while other translations say you shouldn’t kill. It may be interpreted as a style issue, but however you figure the reason behind the schism in word choice, it is worth taking the time to clarify. Murdering and killing are not the same thing.
The original Hebrew for the word in question is רָצַח (ratsach), which means “to murder”, not “to kill.”
There may be someone reading this blogpost who would say, That's adorable, Kathryn, you know how to use the Internet. Would you like a gold star?
No. I would not like a gold star.
Thank you for asking.
I’m regurgitating this not-trivial piece of trivia, because I used “Thou shalt not kill” as an argument against the death penalty in my last post, “Faster, Sister Exodus! Kill! Kill!” After I played the Exodus 20.13 card (thinking, at the time, that I had it right), Sister Exodus answered it with Exodus 21.12, which says that anyone who takes the life of another should be put to death. In light of the Sixth Commandment translation discovery, Exodus 21.12 is more strongly supported by the sixth commandment than I previously realized.
This is me fessing up to my former ignorance. I may not have considered it worth blogging about if it weren’t for the fact that I previously used bad information to argue my point.
Thank you for reading. I feel better now. I mean, about the oversight. I don't feel any different about capital punishment.
How about you? Have you ever (knowingly or unknowingly) given people bad information to support an important point?
 |
| I TOLD YOU TO FACT CHECK, KATHRYN! |
There may be someone reading this blogpost who would say, That's adorable, Kathryn, you know how to use the Internet. Would you like a gold star?
No. I would not like a gold star.
Thank you for asking.
I’m regurgitating this not-trivial piece of trivia, because I used “Thou shalt not kill” as an argument against the death penalty in my last post, “Faster, Sister Exodus! Kill! Kill!” After I played the Exodus 20.13 card (thinking, at the time, that I had it right), Sister Exodus answered it with Exodus 21.12, which says that anyone who takes the life of another should be put to death. In light of the Sixth Commandment translation discovery, Exodus 21.12 is more strongly supported by the sixth commandment than I previously realized.
This is me fessing up to my former ignorance. I may not have considered it worth blogging about if it weren’t for the fact that I previously used bad information to argue my point.
Thank you for reading. I feel better now. I mean, about the oversight. I don't feel any different about capital punishment.
How about you? Have you ever (knowingly or unknowingly) given people bad information to support an important point?
12.3.13
Faster, Sister Exodus! Kill! Kill!
There’s a 67% “recidivism” for murder in America. I know this. Sister Exodus told me so. “67% of murderers who are released from prison will kill again,” she insisted.
Just to clarify: Sister Exodus isn’t a nun. She’s my sister in Christ, and we’ve been emailing back and forth recently. Sister Exodus is all for the death penalty, which, she tells me, should be the sentence for every convicted murderer. And rapist. Every single one.
Kill ‘em all.
According to Sister Exodus, it wouldn’t be fair otherwise. They shouldn’t be “rewarded” for murder (or rape) with the privilege of living (...because once you’ve taken someone else’s life, you don’t have a right to your own?). Countless innocent lives would be spared if we’d please just kill these irrevocably sick convicts.
I could see the logic. But I couldn’t see the Judeo-Christian logic.
My decision to cite the Ten Commandments didn’t come without hesitation. As a general rule of thumb, when I make the choice to bring in the Word of the Lord for the purposes of arguing my point, I try to thump wisely.
I told her that it’s made very clear in those basic Ten - so basic to the faith that some say those very Ten are written on our hearts - among them: Thou shalt not kill.
Sister Exodus answered that God makes it very clear (couldn’t be any clearer, she said) that he wants murderers to die. She cited Exodus 21.12: “Anyone who strikes a person with a fatal blow is to be put to death.” (NIV) To that 33% who statistically won’t kill again, tough tittie. The Bible tells us so.
The Bible also has its fair share of dinner party scenes.
Allow me to tweak the general idea of inclusion at these dinner parties in order to illustrate what I understand to be the pillar of Sister Exodus's capital punishment theology:
Just like in the real Bible, Jesus broke bread with tax collectors, Pharisees, prostitutes, Gentiles... Jesus didn’t discriminate, except for, apparently murderers and rapists. Sure, those other people around the table sinned, but some transgressions are just plain too despicable.
Does that sound right to you?
Don’t get me wrong.
If one of my loved ones was murdered or raped, in my anger, I’d crave some significantly damaging comeuppance unto the head of the soul responsible (which is NOT the way of peace, by the way). The fulfillment of such a craving would be destructive and unsatisfying to say the least.
I made a suggestion to Sister Exodus, “What about life without parole?”
“That’s not how the American Judicial System works,” she corrected. “Prisoners can get out of jail on parole.”
In these fantasy solutions, Sister Exodus, as long as you’re entitled to your hypothetical death camps, may I please have my hypothetical life camps? Because if I lived in a country where the government not only had no trouble with killing off hella people, but also wove it into their law as The Right Thing To Do, I would be sickened and sad. I realize Sister Exodus desires protection over the lives of the potential victims on the outside. I do, too. But I also want protection for the criminals on the inside.
Those we judge to be hermetically despicable… in this case, to the point where it’s insisted that their bad choices have disqualified them from life itself... even they are God’s children. Irredeemable, hard-wired killing machines unable to change their ways ever? We don’t know that. That’s between them and God.
Far earlier in the same email thread, Sister Exodus expounded to me, with as much vehemence as mere text on a screen can convey, that I am made perfect in Christ Jesus. (In all-caps, too: PERFECT.) I’ll say now that I, every single fiber of me, is no more or less human than anyone who has ever murdered, ever raped, ever collected taxes, or cast lots with their purity. The sins remain unacceptable, but those people - those murderers, those rapists - are also made perfect in Christ Jesus.
What do you think?
UPDATE: A relevant note on Ten Commandments translations can be read here.
Just to clarify: Sister Exodus isn’t a nun. She’s my sister in Christ, and we’ve been emailing back and forth recently. Sister Exodus is all for the death penalty, which, she tells me, should be the sentence for every convicted murderer. And rapist. Every single one.
Kill ‘em all.
According to Sister Exodus, it wouldn’t be fair otherwise. They shouldn’t be “rewarded” for murder (or rape) with the privilege of living (...because once you’ve taken someone else’s life, you don’t have a right to your own?). Countless innocent lives would be spared if we’d please just kill these irrevocably sick convicts.
I could see the logic. But I couldn’t see the Judeo-Christian logic.
My decision to cite the Ten Commandments didn’t come without hesitation. As a general rule of thumb, when I make the choice to bring in the Word of the Lord for the purposes of arguing my point, I try to thump wisely.
I told her that it’s made very clear in those basic Ten - so basic to the faith that some say those very Ten are written on our hearts - among them: Thou shalt not kill.
Sister Exodus answered that God makes it very clear (couldn’t be any clearer, she said) that he wants murderers to die. She cited Exodus 21.12: “Anyone who strikes a person with a fatal blow is to be put to death.” (NIV) To that 33% who statistically won’t kill again, tough tittie. The Bible tells us so.
The Bible also has its fair share of dinner party scenes.
Allow me to tweak the general idea of inclusion at these dinner parties in order to illustrate what I understand to be the pillar of Sister Exodus's capital punishment theology:
Just like in the real Bible, Jesus broke bread with tax collectors, Pharisees, prostitutes, Gentiles... Jesus didn’t discriminate, except for, apparently murderers and rapists. Sure, those other people around the table sinned, but some transgressions are just plain too despicable.
 |
| This is a Warhol. He did a whole series of them. |
Does that sound right to you?
Don’t get me wrong.
If one of my loved ones was murdered or raped, in my anger, I’d crave some significantly damaging comeuppance unto the head of the soul responsible (which is NOT the way of peace, by the way). The fulfillment of such a craving would be destructive and unsatisfying to say the least.
I made a suggestion to Sister Exodus, “What about life without parole?”
“That’s not how the American Judicial System works,” she corrected. “Prisoners can get out of jail on parole.”
In these fantasy solutions, Sister Exodus, as long as you’re entitled to your hypothetical death camps, may I please have my hypothetical life camps? Because if I lived in a country where the government not only had no trouble with killing off hella people, but also wove it into their law as The Right Thing To Do, I would be sickened and sad. I realize Sister Exodus desires protection over the lives of the potential victims on the outside. I do, too. But I also want protection for the criminals on the inside.
Those we judge to be hermetically despicable… in this case, to the point where it’s insisted that their bad choices have disqualified them from life itself... even they are God’s children. Irredeemable, hard-wired killing machines unable to change their ways ever? We don’t know that. That’s between them and God.
Far earlier in the same email thread, Sister Exodus expounded to me, with as much vehemence as mere text on a screen can convey, that I am made perfect in Christ Jesus. (In all-caps, too: PERFECT.) I’ll say now that I, every single fiber of me, is no more or less human than anyone who has ever murdered, ever raped, ever collected taxes, or cast lots with their purity. The sins remain unacceptable, but those people - those murderers, those rapists - are also made perfect in Christ Jesus.
What do you think?
UPDATE: A relevant note on Ten Commandments translations can be read here.
24.2.13
I Stole God's TV (and a good time wasn't had by all)
She’s not 100% like God, of course. I don’t think God is addicted to diet pills or squanders much of the day watching a gratuitous amount of infomercials – although, I do believe he manifests in and works through all living beings, including but not exclusive to addicts of any variety. I also believe that God is love. This is something I have in common with the author of 1 John, a small but powerful book you can find toward the end of the New Testament. God cannot help but to love, because God is love. The fourth chapter (v.10) (NIV) says that:
“This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
I bring this up as a belated rebuttal to one of my beautiful buddies when he said, “Why do you see it as a problem when you purposefully and repeatedly ‘sin,’ Kathryn? If you enjoy it, and Jesus forgives you, why not? It’s not like God’s going to stop loving you.” He’s right about the God-forgiving-me/God-loving-me thing: God is love. God cannot help but to love. God pours out his love indiscriminately, recklessly, infinitely.
But I don’t like me when I steal God’s TV.
My conscience hurts when I am so consumed with the pursuit of experiencing a minor, fleeting feeling of exhilaration, comfort, or what have you by means that God has made clear in my heart he would strongly prefer that I not partake in. God doesn’t encourage me to indulge in anything I want whenever I want it – especially if it’s something as blatantly destructive as heroin. Consider the example C.S. Lewis gave of who God is not:
“We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven, as a grandfather in heaven – a senile benevolence who, as they say, ‘liked to see young people enjoying themselves’, and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, ‘a good time was had by all.’”*
Because if I tell God, “Thanks for the capacity to feel happiness, now I will exercise it by stealing your TV many times over,” and I claim to have any inkling of love for the Lord in return… Do you see the problem with this picture? It makes me inconsiderate. It makes me self-serving and advantageous. It makes me a lot of things. A lot of things I don’t want to be.
I would strongly prefer to not be the kind of person who has no trouble being overtly inconsiderate toward someone else. It doesn’t matter if “someone else” happens to be someone I’m head over heels for, or someone whose company I find very difficult to enjoy. From time to time my words and actions may contradict this, but when it comes down to the wire, I’d prefer not to be a jerk.
* The Problem Pain
14.2.13
Ayn Rand's Space Ship: in which the Tragic Gamer Kid's shameless audacity gets him what he thinks he needs.
This time last year, on Monday evenings, you could find me in a small classroom on the second floor of the Liberal Arts building at my school. My best friend, the Anarchist, had a class on the first floor – a class taught by one of those subversive professors who will start talking louder to compensate for the complacency of others. One of those professors who pulls back society’s curtains so that his students may catch a glimpse of its pretension, its pitfalls, its capitalist corruption… the whole, miserable, bureaucratic, human-rights-violating shebang. One of those professors who teaches classes from which students are sent home under a heavy black cloud, looking like they got the wind knocked out of them, and experiencing a touch of resentment that the blissful ignorance they enjoyed at the breakfast table that morning is lost. Or at least the students who cared.
…anyway…
On these Monday nights of yore, my history class on the second story would get out earlier than the Anarchist’s, so I would sit and wait on the concrete outside Professor Subversion’s room. Sometimes he walk outside after clicking “play” on a YouTube video or DVD to run to his office or something, see me sitting there, and invite me to go inside and watch it.
One night, I left history, turned on my family’s “emergency” cell phone, and stuck it in my sweatshirt pocket as I descended the stairs. I was starting across the LA building’s quad when I saw the Tragic Gamer Kid standing outside the closed door of Professor Subversion’s classroom. As much as I’ve waxed about lecture hall logistics and inconvenient truths, this story is really centered on the Tragic Gamer Kid (and the cell phone).
Sorry if you feel misled.
Being the Anarchist’s senior by not much, and my junior by a little more than not much, the Tragic Gamer Kid wasn’t a kid per se. But he did play a lot of video games, and shouted his life’s narratives as if they were as tragic, important, and ignored as the ones Professor Subversion would speak of with increasing volume.
The Tragic Gamer Kid… actually, we’ll call him Horatio, because “Tragic Gamer Kid” is cumbersome …was supposed to be in his Farsi class in the next building over, but, no. Horatio was here, the light from the door’s tiny window illuminating his face, and his fingers that twinkled and pointed to places he wasn’t supposed to be.
I knew exactly what Horatio was doing. He did the same to me last week.
“Horatio!” Although I wanted to get his attention, I also didn’t want to disrupt any classes, and he was all the way across the quad. My voice came out mangled and croaking, a confused stage whisper. I broke into a run, which prompted the family “emergency” phone – which I frequently carried because, to my small, self-serving mind, aimless texting with the Anarchist and the Fundamentalist Atheist were equivalent enough to emergencies – to bounce out of my pocket. Its major parts cleanly cracked away from each other when it hit the pavement.
I paused, torn. It’s not like the quad was teeming with collegiates like it was during the daytime, but there was still something uneasy about the notion of leaving cell phone innards on the ground in the dark. As I stooped to pick up the closest piece I could locate, I realized that rescuing the cell phone and stopping Horatio weren’t possible.
If it weren’t for that phone, I swear, I could have stopped him. Because in the modicum of time I spent in conflict over the splattered device, Horatio made his move. When I looked up again, his hand was on the doorknob, and me and my mangled croaks of, “HORATIO! HORATIO!” weren’t even close to half-way across the quad. He disappeared into the room.
From what I’ve been told, it transpired like this:
When Horatio initially entered, Professor Subversion offered, “Would you like to take a seat? We’re about to watch a video…”
Horatio stopped the professor, saying, “Excuse me, Mr. Subversion,” then pointed at my best friend when he addressed him: “Anarchist.”
“What do you want, Horatio?” It’s hard to tell if the Anarchist couldn’t help but to laugh at the absurdity at the time of the event, or it was just him laughing as he recounted to me later.
“We need to talk after class,” Horatio said, still pointing at the Anarchist.
“This couldn’t wait until later, Horatio?”
“No. See you then,” Horatio said, and left.
Although the Tragic Gamer Kid had never been a student of his, Professor Subversion knew Horatio well enough have an acceptance that, That’s Horatio. He’ll do what he wants… and resume where he left off.
Horatio was exiting the classroom when I finally caught up to him. “Horatio!”
“Kathryn!”
“You’re helping me find the pieces of my cell phone!”
I’ll give Horatio this much – he didn’t bail on me while I groped around on the cement. After he returned to Farsi class, with the image of him exceeding the threshold replaying in my mind, it struck me how extraordinarily human Horatio was: a parable, an extreme illustration of what I either actually look like, or of what I am afraid I’ll look like when I ask for help.
Horatio needed a lot of help, to levels at which he would be obnoxious in seeking it. It was a battle to maintain boundaries while in his company. Once any desire to leave was expressed, Horatio would do his best to manipulate his guests into staying longer. Suckers like me (or the Anarchist, although he wasn’t a sucker for as long as I was) would get stuck in phone “conversations” that would last upwards to four or five hours, with nary a word in edgewise. The average call would begin with Horatio complaining about girl problems, which would turn into confident and searing statements that all girls in California were c-nts and whores, or how everyone and their mother were bottom-feeding “betas.” Then it might end with some long verbal dissertation of how Mexico has an “inefficient culture,” why the Germans should have won the war, or how all of Horatio's problems could be attributed to Ayn Rand.
Horatio the Tragic Gamer Kid, makes me not want to ask for help, because I don’t want be obnoxious and overstep my boundaries, blinded by a personal audacity I can’t even tell is there, and misjudging exactly how urgent my First World problems are not. I don’t want to do that if I can help it. I’m not saying all of Horatio’s problems were First World or trivial – I’m just saying that if I need to ask for help, I don’t want to be more of a bother than I can avoid.
At the same time, I have to admit that I also admire Horatio’s boldness in asking for help. At some point, life’s going to rip me a new one (or at least it’ll feel that way) in ways where I can’t deal it by myself, and I’m going to need to go to someone and say, “I need help.” You know, situations like...
Where did the “emergency” cell phone charger go?
What the hell is wrong with my car defroster?
All these people showed up at my house! Would you happen to have any bread I could feed them with?
My space ship crash-landed and got stuck in the mud!
My girlfriend just left me, and she was the only one who knew how to make the baby's diarrhea go away!
I have two broken arms / a bad case of vertigo / suicide ideation / a burst appendix, may I impose on you to give me a ride to the hospital?
I told my friend, who’s in the hospital because she broke both her arms / got a bad case of vertigo / told everyone she’d eat three bottles of sleeping pills and was serious / her appendix burst, that I’d bring her clean socks and underwear, but her parents aren’t home like we thought they’d be. Do you have a key to her house?
I guess it comes down to some things that are obvious, and simple enough: knowing what’s truly worth making a spectacle out of yourself and interrupting Professor Subversion’s lecture, realizing you may very well annoy someone when you ask for help but that shouldn’t be the reason why you decide against it, and empathizing when someone goes to very stupid lengths to get you to help dislodge their space ship from the mud.
What does it come down to for you? Do you know of any special trick to make diarrhea go away? What do you think of Ayn Rand? Would you ask Ayn Rand to help you fix your space ship? How about my ex-girlfriend?
…anyway…
On these Monday nights of yore, my history class on the second story would get out earlier than the Anarchist’s, so I would sit and wait on the concrete outside Professor Subversion’s room. Sometimes he walk outside after clicking “play” on a YouTube video or DVD to run to his office or something, see me sitting there, and invite me to go inside and watch it.
One night, I left history, turned on my family’s “emergency” cell phone, and stuck it in my sweatshirt pocket as I descended the stairs. I was starting across the LA building’s quad when I saw the Tragic Gamer Kid standing outside the closed door of Professor Subversion’s classroom. As much as I’ve waxed about lecture hall logistics and inconvenient truths, this story is really centered on the Tragic Gamer Kid (and the cell phone).
Sorry if you feel misled.
Being the Anarchist’s senior by not much, and my junior by a little more than not much, the Tragic Gamer Kid wasn’t a kid per se. But he did play a lot of video games, and shouted his life’s narratives as if they were as tragic, important, and ignored as the ones Professor Subversion would speak of with increasing volume.
The Tragic Gamer Kid… actually, we’ll call him Horatio, because “Tragic Gamer Kid” is cumbersome …was supposed to be in his Farsi class in the next building over, but, no. Horatio was here, the light from the door’s tiny window illuminating his face, and his fingers that twinkled and pointed to places he wasn’t supposed to be.
I knew exactly what Horatio was doing. He did the same to me last week.
“Horatio!” Although I wanted to get his attention, I also didn’t want to disrupt any classes, and he was all the way across the quad. My voice came out mangled and croaking, a confused stage whisper. I broke into a run, which prompted the family “emergency” phone – which I frequently carried because, to my small, self-serving mind, aimless texting with the Anarchist and the Fundamentalist Atheist were equivalent enough to emergencies – to bounce out of my pocket. Its major parts cleanly cracked away from each other when it hit the pavement.
I paused, torn. It’s not like the quad was teeming with collegiates like it was during the daytime, but there was still something uneasy about the notion of leaving cell phone innards on the ground in the dark. As I stooped to pick up the closest piece I could locate, I realized that rescuing the cell phone and stopping Horatio weren’t possible.
If it weren’t for that phone, I swear, I could have stopped him. Because in the modicum of time I spent in conflict over the splattered device, Horatio made his move. When I looked up again, his hand was on the doorknob, and me and my mangled croaks of, “HORATIO! HORATIO!” weren’t even close to half-way across the quad. He disappeared into the room.
From what I’ve been told, it transpired like this:
When Horatio initially entered, Professor Subversion offered, “Would you like to take a seat? We’re about to watch a video…”
Horatio stopped the professor, saying, “Excuse me, Mr. Subversion,” then pointed at my best friend when he addressed him: “Anarchist.”
“What do you want, Horatio?” It’s hard to tell if the Anarchist couldn’t help but to laugh at the absurdity at the time of the event, or it was just him laughing as he recounted to me later.
“We need to talk after class,” Horatio said, still pointing at the Anarchist.
“This couldn’t wait until later, Horatio?”
“No. See you then,” Horatio said, and left.
Although the Tragic Gamer Kid had never been a student of his, Professor Subversion knew Horatio well enough have an acceptance that, That’s Horatio. He’ll do what he wants… and resume where he left off.
Horatio was exiting the classroom when I finally caught up to him. “Horatio!”
“Kathryn!”
“You’re helping me find the pieces of my cell phone!”
I’ll give Horatio this much – he didn’t bail on me while I groped around on the cement. After he returned to Farsi class, with the image of him exceeding the threshold replaying in my mind, it struck me how extraordinarily human Horatio was: a parable, an extreme illustration of what I either actually look like, or of what I am afraid I’ll look like when I ask for help.
Horatio needed a lot of help, to levels at which he would be obnoxious in seeking it. It was a battle to maintain boundaries while in his company. Once any desire to leave was expressed, Horatio would do his best to manipulate his guests into staying longer. Suckers like me (or the Anarchist, although he wasn’t a sucker for as long as I was) would get stuck in phone “conversations” that would last upwards to four or five hours, with nary a word in edgewise. The average call would begin with Horatio complaining about girl problems, which would turn into confident and searing statements that all girls in California were c-nts and whores, or how everyone and their mother were bottom-feeding “betas.” Then it might end with some long verbal dissertation of how Mexico has an “inefficient culture,” why the Germans should have won the war, or how all of Horatio's problems could be attributed to Ayn Rand.
Horatio the Tragic Gamer Kid, makes me not want to ask for help, because I don’t want be obnoxious and overstep my boundaries, blinded by a personal audacity I can’t even tell is there, and misjudging exactly how urgent my First World problems are not. I don’t want to do that if I can help it. I’m not saying all of Horatio’s problems were First World or trivial – I’m just saying that if I need to ask for help, I don’t want to be more of a bother than I can avoid.
At the same time, I have to admit that I also admire Horatio’s boldness in asking for help. At some point, life’s going to rip me a new one (or at least it’ll feel that way) in ways where I can’t deal it by myself, and I’m going to need to go to someone and say, “I need help.” You know, situations like...
Where did the “emergency” cell phone charger go?
What the hell is wrong with my car defroster?
All these people showed up at my house! Would you happen to have any bread I could feed them with?
My space ship crash-landed and got stuck in the mud!
My girlfriend just left me, and she was the only one who knew how to make the baby's diarrhea go away!
I have two broken arms / a bad case of vertigo / suicide ideation / a burst appendix, may I impose on you to give me a ride to the hospital?
I told my friend, who’s in the hospital because she broke both her arms / got a bad case of vertigo / told everyone she’d eat three bottles of sleeping pills and was serious / her appendix burst, that I’d bring her clean socks and underwear, but her parents aren’t home like we thought they’d be. Do you have a key to her house?
I guess it comes down to some things that are obvious, and simple enough: knowing what’s truly worth making a spectacle out of yourself and interrupting Professor Subversion’s lecture, realizing you may very well annoy someone when you ask for help but that shouldn’t be the reason why you decide against it, and empathizing when someone goes to very stupid lengths to get you to help dislodge their space ship from the mud.
What does it come down to for you? Do you know of any special trick to make diarrhea go away? What do you think of Ayn Rand? Would you ask Ayn Rand to help you fix your space ship? How about my ex-girlfriend?
10.11.12
Dead Dreamers and Greek Words
“Emotional instability… Basically, what we have here is a dreamer. Somebody out of touch with reality. When she jumped, she probably thought she’d fly.” This is what a boy said after inspecting the stolen diaries of Cecilia Lisbon. For those of you unfamiliar with Jeffery Eugenides’s novel, The Virgin Suicides, (or Sofia Coppola’s film adaptation) thirteen-year-old Cecilia jumped from her bedroom window to be impaled on the spike of a fence: the first of the five Lisbon sisters to end themselves.
There are points in our lives, however long those points last, that we’ve endured emotional hells. We’ve all had our turn(s) at finding ourselves separate from the better lives we want to lead. In this hell, it is too easy to give up hope on remedying the situation – perhaps even despairing of life itself.
It is true that we must die to escape hell on earth. But Cecilia was tragically wrong in the way to go about it. When I say we must die, I mean the death Jesus was referring when he said, “Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” (John 12.25, NIV)
In this particular passage, the original Greek word for “love” is φιλέω (phileó). This of course is not to be confused with agape (there are several Greek words for “love” in the New Testament). “Phileó” is widely understood to mean a brotherly love. Vine’s Expository Dictionary for Old and New Testament Words expounds further that phileó “conveys the thought of cherishing the Object above all else.”
To cherish something above all else gives that object a lot of power. It would influence our decision-making, how we spend our money and manage our time. Such an object could be a relationship that needs to end because you want different things, or there’s abuse or something else, but you can’t bring yourself to end it because you love the person so much. I’m going to take this business of cherishing a step further and say that in the context of John 12.25, it could be something you hate that exerts the same power and influence over your life. It may consume you to the point where you perceive the object to be as much a part of you as your hands or your feet. In the case of our friend Cecilia, it would be what Daniel Goleman calls “intrusive thoughts” that life is not worth living.
In which case, we must consider Matthew 18.9, in which Jesus tells us that, “if your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.” And how we manage to do this is a matter of repentance.
In the New Testament, the original Greek word for “repentance” is μετάνοια (metanoia). Metanoia means a change of mind, of perception: giving us new eyes to see and new ears to hear. If you prefer psych-speak to this Bible jargon, you can refer to Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence, where he touches on challenging our thoughts, “cognitive reframing” and the required self-awareness for the task.
But let’s go back to speculating Cecilia. What if Cecilia likes drawing, and would prefer not to stop drawing? What if there is a possibility that, in her personal μετάνοια process, she finds that drawing and misery are mutually exclusive. If what she draws could be used to identify her as “emotionally unstable,” it must be connected somehow! This side of the mind change, if it will cost her something she likes doing, then how is Cecilia supposed to believe the mind change is worth it?
I’ll say this: if, for Cecilia, this purpose to draw is not a parasite parading as a body part, but the authentic stuff of eternity; if, for Cecilia, when she puts pencil to paper, it infuses and enthralls her with the real joy and beauty and love that comes from The Legit Source – then drawing will still be written on her heart after the appropriate death. But, if drawing is the cherished object that needs to be sacrificed in order to enter life, the sacrifice will be worth it. In his book Love Wins, Rob Bell describes this life as “an extraordinarily complex, interconnected, and diverse reality, a reality in which individual identities aren’t lost or repressed, but embraced and celebrated. An expansive unity that goes beyond and yet fully embraces staggering levels of diversity.”
Cecilia was a dreamer. Imagine what might have happened if she stuck around. Her individual identity could have blessed the world in ways we can’t even imagine. The contributions of dreamers are invaluable, regardless of what medium they manifest in. And imagine how fulfilling it must be for the dreamer to see their dreams take flight!
And who isn’t a dreamer?
How is that which you phileó holding you back?
There are points in our lives, however long those points last, that we’ve endured emotional hells. We’ve all had our turn(s) at finding ourselves separate from the better lives we want to lead. In this hell, it is too easy to give up hope on remedying the situation – perhaps even despairing of life itself.
It is true that we must die to escape hell on earth. But Cecilia was tragically wrong in the way to go about it. When I say we must die, I mean the death Jesus was referring when he said, “Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” (John 12.25, NIV)In this particular passage, the original Greek word for “love” is φιλέω (phileó). This of course is not to be confused with agape (there are several Greek words for “love” in the New Testament). “Phileó” is widely understood to mean a brotherly love. Vine’s Expository Dictionary for Old and New Testament Words expounds further that phileó “conveys the thought of cherishing the Object above all else.”
To cherish something above all else gives that object a lot of power. It would influence our decision-making, how we spend our money and manage our time. Such an object could be a relationship that needs to end because you want different things, or there’s abuse or something else, but you can’t bring yourself to end it because you love the person so much. I’m going to take this business of cherishing a step further and say that in the context of John 12.25, it could be something you hate that exerts the same power and influence over your life. It may consume you to the point where you perceive the object to be as much a part of you as your hands or your feet. In the case of our friend Cecilia, it would be what Daniel Goleman calls “intrusive thoughts” that life is not worth living.
In which case, we must consider Matthew 18.9, in which Jesus tells us that, “if your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.” And how we manage to do this is a matter of repentance.
In the New Testament, the original Greek word for “repentance” is μετάνοια (metanoia). Metanoia means a change of mind, of perception: giving us new eyes to see and new ears to hear. If you prefer psych-speak to this Bible jargon, you can refer to Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence, where he touches on challenging our thoughts, “cognitive reframing” and the required self-awareness for the task.
But let’s go back to speculating Cecilia. What if Cecilia likes drawing, and would prefer not to stop drawing? What if there is a possibility that, in her personal μετάνοια process, she finds that drawing and misery are mutually exclusive. If what she draws could be used to identify her as “emotionally unstable,” it must be connected somehow! This side of the mind change, if it will cost her something she likes doing, then how is Cecilia supposed to believe the mind change is worth it?
I’ll say this: if, for Cecilia, this purpose to draw is not a parasite parading as a body part, but the authentic stuff of eternity; if, for Cecilia, when she puts pencil to paper, it infuses and enthralls her with the real joy and beauty and love that comes from The Legit Source – then drawing will still be written on her heart after the appropriate death. But, if drawing is the cherished object that needs to be sacrificed in order to enter life, the sacrifice will be worth it. In his book Love Wins, Rob Bell describes this life as “an extraordinarily complex, interconnected, and diverse reality, a reality in which individual identities aren’t lost or repressed, but embraced and celebrated. An expansive unity that goes beyond and yet fully embraces staggering levels of diversity.”
Cecilia was a dreamer. Imagine what might have happened if she stuck around. Her individual identity could have blessed the world in ways we can’t even imagine. The contributions of dreamers are invaluable, regardless of what medium they manifest in. And imagine how fulfilling it must be for the dreamer to see their dreams take flight!
And who isn’t a dreamer?
How is that which you phileó holding you back?
1.11.12
Chicken Noodle Dark Night of the Soul
 | ||||
| One of Warhol's famous soup cans, as shown on gallerywarhol.com |
Call me unimaginative, but I didn’t think I could find any similarities between Andy Warhol’s work and Psalm 23 …although I may have implied otherwise during one of my church’s fabulous sermon discussion groups. In retrospect, it may have been because the two are so dissimilar that our associate pastor, Paul, who was sitting across the table from me, said he’d love to read something on that very subject.
Paul has led many conversations at our church about living into God’s story as opposed to living into culture’s story. Living into God’s story requires trusting in God and finding our meaning and comfort in Him. Psalm 23 uses organic imagery – still waters, green pastures – to illustrate how God comforts His beloved.
Warhol’s imagery is synthetic. The images Warhol is known for are not rendered to be realistic, but simplistic, making them easier to reproduce en masse. Warhol and his team would churn out this kind of work at his studio, “The Factory,” like how Campbell’s churns out cans of soup. This is the consumer culture’s story. The NIV translation of Psalm 23 says that The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing. But in consumer culture, you have to lack something, otherwise you wouldn’t need to buy soup or art or cars or Brillo pads or any of those other thingamabobs out there for purchase.
However, God is not altogether absent from Warhol’s work, and I don’t just mean his series of silk-screened Last Suppers. For holiness, I would look to the movie star portraits (not to make them Golden Calves). What Warhol does with chicken soup, he does with movie stars. The problem therein being that movie stars are people, and when it is attempted for them to be mass produced and treated like soup, a few things fall through the cracks. Dimension is lost. Flat representations of faces are colored with unrealistic, garish hues. In half of Marilyn Diptych, for example, Marilyn Monroe’s skin is Pepto Bismol pink.
Diptych is a solid block of Marilyns: the same picture repeated over and over and over again, with minor imperfections. She is set up to be the supply for any public demand of her, something to be used then thrown away…then used again. On the second half of the canvas, the Marilyns are in black and white. They’re dark, blotched, blackened, their quality even less consistent than those of the left half. After the faces get the blackest, the Marilyns then start fading, until she is depleted to whispers of facial features at the right end of the canvas.
Marilyn Diptych demonstrates a consequence of living into culture’s story. It’s true that when we seek comfort in things that are not eternal, ultimately they will not nourish or satisfy. Tragic still is when people themselves are treated and/or treat themselves as mere commodities to be sold and used. However you invest yourself in culture’s story, faith in the temporal has a way of culminating into a serious why have you forsaken me? moment, because here, in the black, synthetic darkness, it’s terribly difficult to find those green pastures and quiet waters.
When looking for God in Warhol, go to the blackest faces in Marilyn Diptych. When the garish colors’ promise turns out to be false, it doesn’t feel like the aforementioned waters and pastures are a reality. But God is also in the suffering, as Mother Teresa would say, Jesus in a distressing disguise. Even if they’ve been putting their trust into something else until then, God is with those whose stories have failed them.
29.6.12
Book Review: Frameworks, by Eric Larson
For some, there are big question marks regarding how to approach Scripture. The New Testament alone has twenty-seven books, and someone might suggest to start with John or Romans even though they’re not the first in canonical order. Once the reading starts, the cultural differences between our modern milieu and first century Palestine can make certain things hard to understand. Readers who are in want for a guide through this very important book written in a very different time may look no further than Eric Larson’s Frameworks for their navigational needs.
Frameworks is designed to be accessible and unintimidating, introducing the New Testament book by book in words and graphics arranged on the page in simple, uncluttered layouts. The chapters begin with metaphors relevant to the books’ themes, running the gamut from skyscrapers to hurricanes to the goddess Fortuna (in the case of that introduction, the anecdote describes how she contrasts with Jesus). The chapters include tools like pictures, maps, outlines, verses to look out for, and “Did you know” factoids. Larson’s insightful commentary and invitations to spiritual reflection promise to also satisfy the interest of the seasoned Bible reader who does not find navigating the New Testament all that challenging.
The content of Frameworks has its overlaps with what might be discussed by non-religious scholars, such as the gospel of Matthew being written with the audience of a Pharisaic community in mind. However, despite overlaps, Frameworks is not the stuff of your Oxford Study Bible footnotes. Larson is a believer, writing to and for believers and people interested in viewing the Bible from a Christian perspective. Larson does not hem and haw, trying to cover all his bases by prefacing, “Well…not everyone believes this particular interpretation, and you know, whatever floats your boat, but…” Larson will point-blank refer to Jesus as “our Savior,” and similar titles of divinity, from time to time. While Larson makes no apologies about his faith, he also does not digress into compare and contrast essays about how his is better than yours.
Being a believer myself, the last thing I’d have a problem is Jesus sincerely being addressed as “Savior.” I did my best in trying to find a problem with Frameworks, because it felt The Thing for a book reviewer to do. In the end, all I could come up with was the absence of the Greek vocabulary Larson shares in his Bible study classes (which I’ve had the privilege of sitting in on). But in the interest of staying concise and equipping readers instead of bogging them down, I appreciate the lack of the lexicon. Frameworks as it is accomplishes its purpose: giving an introduction to the New Testament in a format that balances information and simplicity.
Frameworks is designed to be accessible and unintimidating, introducing the New Testament book by book in words and graphics arranged on the page in simple, uncluttered layouts. The chapters begin with metaphors relevant to the books’ themes, running the gamut from skyscrapers to hurricanes to the goddess Fortuna (in the case of that introduction, the anecdote describes how she contrasts with Jesus). The chapters include tools like pictures, maps, outlines, verses to look out for, and “Did you know” factoids. Larson’s insightful commentary and invitations to spiritual reflection promise to also satisfy the interest of the seasoned Bible reader who does not find navigating the New Testament all that challenging.
The content of Frameworks has its overlaps with what might be discussed by non-religious scholars, such as the gospel of Matthew being written with the audience of a Pharisaic community in mind. However, despite overlaps, Frameworks is not the stuff of your Oxford Study Bible footnotes. Larson is a believer, writing to and for believers and people interested in viewing the Bible from a Christian perspective. Larson does not hem and haw, trying to cover all his bases by prefacing, “Well…not everyone believes this particular interpretation, and you know, whatever floats your boat, but…” Larson will point-blank refer to Jesus as “our Savior,” and similar titles of divinity, from time to time. While Larson makes no apologies about his faith, he also does not digress into compare and contrast essays about how his is better than yours.
Being a believer myself, the last thing I’d have a problem is Jesus sincerely being addressed as “Savior.” I did my best in trying to find a problem with Frameworks, because it felt The Thing for a book reviewer to do. In the end, all I could come up with was the absence of the Greek vocabulary Larson shares in his Bible study classes (which I’ve had the privilege of sitting in on). But in the interest of staying concise and equipping readers instead of bogging them down, I appreciate the lack of the lexicon. Frameworks as it is accomplishes its purpose: giving an introduction to the New Testament in a format that balances information and simplicity.
9.6.12
Buffy Doesn't Get It.
In the Buffy episode “I Only Have Eyes For You” (season 2, episode 19), Sunnydale High has a poltergeist. The ghost of a student from four decades previous, James, possesses various people to work out an unresolved issue by playing out over and over again the night he shot and killed his teacher and lover, Miss Newman, then turned the gun on himself. Angry and tormented, James does this in pursuit of forgiveness and experiencing a new, happy ending to his tragic story. To which Giles concludes, after thinking all of this out loud, “Forgiveness is impossible.”
“Good,” Buffy says. “He doesn’t deserve it.” Buffy’s harsh reply reminded me of a conversation I had not too long ago, in which a friend of mine railed at length against certain figures in the media who profess to be Christian. My friend refuses to validate these people and call them Christian, because he insists they haven’t “earned” it.
Well, my friend is right about the latter bit: they haven’t “earned” it at all. If salvation was something any of us could earn, then Jesus as we know him, from a basic, mainstream, Pauline Christianity standpoint, died in vain. Jesus died and rose again so that we may have salvation: something we need but cannot achieve on our own strength. Like the apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 2.8 (NIV): “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift from God.” Or, as Giles explained, “To forgive is an act of compassion, Buffy. It’s not done because people deserve it. It’s done because they need it.”
Giles described James’s situation as a purgatory, but to my untrained eye, with all of James’s unquenchable rage and strife, it really looks more like a hell. If James could get out of his hell by himself, this Buffy episode would not exist, because this cycle James is in wouldn’t have begun in the first place. James is far too lost in his own anger and sadness to forgive himself; he needs the outside help of Miss Newman’s forgiveness to save him. What’s more, James’s hell is in turn making hell for other people when he possesses them, in one case causing the janitor to shoot a faculty member.
So in that context of how James cannot get out of his hell without forgiveness he does not deserve and cannot earn, and how that lack of forgiveness, in extension, hurts others, why is it still hard for Buffy to understand why James should be forgiven? Even after she herself is possessed by James, experiences the whole thing from his eyes, and can, in retrospect, see herself in James, Buffy admits, “A part of me just doesn’t understand why she should forgive him.” Why is this so difficult for Buffy?
As the old saying goes, “To forgive is divine.” Forgiveness requires transcendence. It might mean transcendence from (letting go of) our own, old understandings of justice. Or transcendence from emotional ties to opportunities lost. Transcendence from any way we’ve centered our identity on how we’ve been wronged or done wrong to others...
What do you think? Why is it so hard to forgive? What else might one have to transcend to get there?
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)