Is it my imagination, or does Pussy look relieved to jump back through the looking-glass?
Author Archives: Jendi Reiter
Toward a Gender-Inclusive Understanding of “One Flesh”
In the comments below my last post, Simon, a lay reader in the Church of England who describes himself as a conservative Christian, asks:
How do you feel the doctrine of ‘one flesh’ applies (or not) to gay marriage? Eve was taken out from Adam’s side and in heterosexual marriage the circle is closed as genders are reunited, but how does this work for gay couples? I have concluded that most apparently anti-gay proof texts have been wrongly translated and wrongly interpreted by sincere but mistaken homophobic cultures, but can’t get my head around a gay interpretation of ‘one flesh’. Can you help?
In addition to my response that you can read in the comments box, I put the question out to some Facebook friends. The poet Karen Braucher suggested, “I think the answer lies in the fact that we all have both masculine and feminine sides to our personality. So all those sides are joining, in gay and in hetero couples.”
Another poet and mutual friend, Carolyn Moore, observed, “I always have trouble with the line between the Biblical literal and the Biblical parable. We seem to know when we are in parable in the New Testament but are so rigid in the Old Testament about what is literal and what may not be. We never allow for something there functioning as a Fatherly parable to help us grasp a spiritual concept….[In the Garden of Eden] some knowledge was forbidden and we are to trust God to keep it to God’s self, right?…Well, isn’t it vain of us to assume we were told ALL of God’s plans? Why was he obligated to tell us if he was also trying out life on other planets? Why is he obligated to tell us why he created some people who are attracted to their own gender? Aren’t we to have faith that God knows best and we are here to help one another towards peace and light and not appropriate his power of final judgment?”
I also sought advice from Pastor Romell Weekly, an evangelical minister who runs the Gay Christian Fellowship website. He’s given me permission to reprint his thorough and Bible-based analysis below.
Pastor Weekly writes:
“What you’re ultimately referring to is called Complementarity. It’s a theory that male and female complement one another in a way that two people of the same sex cannot. As you have indicated, the primary basis for this theory is the Creation narrative. However, there are a few major problems with this theory.
“1) The theory is not in Scripture. It’s derived from conclusions based off of the biblical narrative; but nowhere does Scripture actually teach this theory as a principle.
“2) The theory REQUIRES all humans to get married, lest they live a lifetime incomplete. If the male is incomplete until his missing rib returns in the person of his wife, then no man without a wife is complete… and it would CERTAINLY mean that no woman is complete without a husband, as she only represents the rib, while he represents the rest of the body.
“3) The theory indicts all single people as not being whole, including Elijah, Elisha, John the Baptist, John the apostle, Paul, and, dare I say, Jesus Himself. All of these mighty men of God were single. Can we say that they were incomplete because they were not married, especially considering point #1–that Scripture doesn’t actually teach this theory?
“4) We have to ask what the point of the Genesis narrative is in relation to marriage. Is it that woman completes man, or is it that marriage provides a means for two people to become as one? I think the latter.
“I believe that the creation narrative shows a beautiful picture of two distinct people coming together in both body and soul and becoming as one through the joining of the heart and of the body. This principle certainly does not contain a mechanism that prevents it from being applied to people of the same sex in precisely the way that it’s applied to people of the opposite sex. They can, indeed, unite in soul (through emotional intercourse). They can, indeed, unite in body (through sexual intercourse).
“I think about David and Jonathan. God told Eve that she would “cling” to her husband. The Bible tells us that Jonathan’s soul was “knit” to David. There was, indeed, a clinging involved. In fact, the two Hebrew words used in both passages are synonyms of one another. Did the fact that Jonathan was a man prevent his soul from clinging or being knit to David? And, even more important, does it matter to God?
“When God created Adam and realized that it wasn’t good for Adam to be alone, what did He do? Most people immediately state that He created Eve; but this isn’t true. He first brought every animal He’d already created and presented it before Adam in order for Adam to do to things: 1) name the animal, and 2) determine whether the animal was a suitable companion for him. After going through every animal life, “there was not found a companion suitable for him” (Gen. 2:20).
“This doesn’t mean that God would have been perfectly fine if Adam wanted a giraffe. But, God went through this process to demonstrate a principle to us. The point is that He allowed Adam to determine suitability. It wasn’t determined by the Divine, but my the human perspective. It was only after Adam found nothing suitable that God put him to sleep and took his rib to create Eve.
“But, even then, God brought Eve and presented her to Adam, much as He did with the other animal lifeforms. God didn’t pronounce her suitable. It was ADAM who said, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh…” It was Adam who basically said, “Alright now, God. THIS one works!”
“The suitable companion for Adam was Eve. But, the suitable companion for Doug might be Jason, while the suitable companion for Danielle might be Elise. We each determine suitability. We each determine the person that complements us, and allows our soul to join together in the way that Eve’s joined Adam’s, and Jonathan’s joined David’s. This is not determined in Heaven. It’s very much determined in the heart of each human being.
“So, I don’t think the doctrine of “one flesh” precludes same-sex couples at all. It’s not at all about whether the one has a penis and the other has a vagina. It’s much more about whether the soul is knit together in love. This certainly can be the case with same-sex homosexual couples, exactly as it can be with opposite-sex heterosexual couples. Contrarily, it CANNOT take place with opposite-sex homosexual or mixed-orientation couples.
“So, if love truly is what God is after, and if He truly looks upon the heart, while man looks at the outward appearance (1Sa. 16:7)–e.g. whether one has a penis and the other has a vagina–then gay couples absolutely fit into the paradigm of one flesh.”
Book Notes: Sara Miles, “Jesus Freak”
Who is Jesus? For liberals, a political role model; for conservatives, the heavenly gatekeeper. But for Sara Miles, author of the new book Jesus Freak: Feeding, Healing, Raising the Dead (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010), he’s “the Boyfriend”, a tangible and loving presence who empowers her–and potentially all of us–to embody God’s love through fellowship and service to one another.
Formerly a secular political journalist and restaurant worker, Miles underwent an unexpected conversion at the age of 46, when she took communion at St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco and suddenly experienced a mystical awareness that the wafer was really and truly the bread of life, the body of God. She went on to become Director of Ministry at St. Gregory’s and start a food pantry that now serves up to 800 people each week. This story is told in her previous book, Take This Bread. (I would have liked a little more background in Jesus Freak for readers like myself who haven’t read her first book.)
Jesus Freak begins with the radical claim that Jesus empowers us to be Jesus. We have the authority to bring meaning, healing, nourishment and forgiveness to God’s people. The rest of the book shares anecdotes from her ministry: funny, poignant, madcap, heartbreaking stories about what it looks like “to live as if you–and everyone else around you–were Jesus, and filled with his power”.
In Miles’ telling, the Jesus-inspired community looks unconditionally inclusive and egalitarian. People of widely varying beliefs, abilities, and social classes find themselves bound together not merely by mutual tolerance, but by love and cooperation.
In her chapter on “Feeding”, for instance, she questions the divide between churches’ worship space and their community service programs. Why do the soup kitchen and the worship service take place in different locations, at different times, and serve non-overlapping groups of people? I’ve often wondered the same thing. Unlike me, Miles actually did something about it. The weekly food giveaway at St. Gregory’s takes place at the altar and becomes a ritual of sharing that harks back to the communal meals of the first-century church.
When Miles talks about “Healing” and “Raising the Dead”, she isn’t promising medical miracles, though she won’t rule those out, either. We may not always be able to cure physical ills, but we can offer something even more important. We can surround suffering people with an environment that gives their lives dignity, meaning and love.
For instance, toward the end of the book, Miles tells the story of Laura, a middle-aged woman who sought her counsel when dying of lung cancer. Over the last months of her life, Miles helped Laura’s family begin the process of grieving and taking care of one another. In a scene reminiscent of Jesus’ words from the cross in John 19:26-27, Laura arranged for her female companion to become her teenage son’s new mother. Miles was on hand not only to assist with the paperwork but, more crucially, to provide a spiritually meaningful context for the event, so that a sad occasion became in some way a celebration.
Finally, when Laura died, Miles had to help the paramedics hoist her stiffening, obese body onto the gurney from the floor where she’d fallen out of bed. Many another writer might approach this scene with disgust, despair, or pathos. Miles handles Laura’s body, in life and on the page, with tenderness and joy at being able to perform a last service for her. And if there’s a touch of humor, it seems like a joke that the dead woman shares. What is grace, after all, if not the erasing of shame, right here in the flesh from which we’ve been alienated since Adam and Eve first put on their legendary fig leaves?
I found this book to be a balm for the headache that theology often leaves me with nowadays. When doctrinal arguments become political weapons, the social gospel begins to look attractively simple. Visit the prisoners, give a cup of water to the thirsty–surely this is more straightforward, and better for my character, than reviewing yet another book on the “real” meaning of Romans 1:26-27. There’s something about theologizing, one could even say, that is intertwined with class privilege. It can be a diversion of energy away from the more urgent needs of people who don’t have a voice in the conversation.
At the same time, good works become a dry duty, another kind of works-righteousness, without a live connection to God’s love. I’ve bounced back and forth between Episcopal and evangelical churches in search of that encounter with the mysterium tremendum. Philosopher of religion and progressive God-blogger Eric Reitan recently noted that the common liberal dichotomy between Christian belief (bad, fundamentalist, divisive) and Christ-like action (good, crunchy, progressive) doesn’t hold up:
…I suspect that most Christians will agree that “having faith in Jesus” is much more than just believing in a set of propositions. It’s a way of leading one’s life. (Agreement among Christians is likely to break down as soon as we ask what way of life is implied by faith in Jesus.)
But even if faith in Jesus is much more than belief in a set of propositions, the way of life implied by such faith will certainly presuppose a set of beliefs. To have faith is, in part, to live one’s life as if certain things are true. In the broadest terms, having faith in Jesus means living as if Jesus’ life and ministry express the ultimate reality, the divine, in some unique and profound way. And having faith in Jesus as savior means living as if Jesus has secured the redemption of the world; as if the evils that shatter human lives and infect human hearts are never the final word; as if somehow, because of Christ, even the most devastating horrors and malignancies have been stripped of the power to deprive our lives of meaning and value….
Jesus is so real and immediate for Miles that she makes an end-run around theological debates. Perhaps because she wasn’t raised Christian, she doesn’t seem to carry around the baggage of guilt and fear, the need to defend her interpretive authority, or to tear down other interpretations of the Bible. She just goes out and feeds the hungry, and gives the glory to God.
Videos from My Green Street Cafe Poetry Reading, Plus Upcoming Readings News
Saturday, Feb. 20, 7:00-8:30 PM: I’ll be reading with poets Karen Johnston and Ellen LaFleche at Thirsty Mind Coffee and Wine Bar, 23 College Street, South Hadley, MA. For more information, call 413-538-9309.
Karen G. Johnston is a social worker by vocation, a poet by avocation, a socialist by inclination, a UU-Buddhist by faith, and mother by choice. Her writing has been published in Silkworm, Equinox, Concise Delight, WordCatalyst, and Women. Period. An Anthology of Writings on Menstruation.
Ellen LaFleche has a special interest in poems about working class people, and issues of health and healing. She has published in numerous journals, including Many Mountains Moving, Alehouse, Alligator Juniper, the Ledge, New Millennium Writings, and Naugatuck River Review.
And speaking of Naugatuck River Review…
Saturday, Feb. 27, 2:00-4:00 PM: Launch party for the Winter 2010 issue, which includes winners of the 2009 narrative poetry contest, at Forbes Library, 20 West Street, Northampton. I’ll be reading with several of my fellow authors in this issue.
Readers include: Thomas R. Moore (1st place winner), Kathryn Neel (3rd place winner), Pat Hale, Gineen Lee Cooper, Jendi Reiter, Allegra Mira, Lynne Francis, Wendy Green Simpson, Don Lowe, Laura Rodley, David Giannini, Barbara Benoit, Christina Svane, Sharon Charde, Andrea Cousins, Paula Sayword, Jeff Friedman and Tim Mayo. Also reading are our poetry editors Oonagh Doherty, Ellen LaFleche and Sally Bellerose. Leslea Newman, our esteemed contest judge, will also read! Hosted by Publisher Lori Desrosiers.
****
Last month, I had the pleasure of reading with Charlie Bondhus, author of How the Boy Might See It (Pecan Grove Press, 2010) at the Green Street Cafe in Northampton. Thanks to my husband, Adam Cohen, and his ever-present Flip camera, our performances can now be viewed on Blip TV here (me) and here (Charlie). Each segment is about 25 minutes. We introduced each other, which is why Charlie’s segment starts with me and vice versa.
If you prefer to take me in small doses, as many people do, please enjoy these YouTube videos from the reading.
“Wedded” first appeared in The Broome Review. Regular readers of this blog may notice a familiar theme.
Buy Swallow!! I mean it.
And now for something completely inappropriate.
A Talent for Sadness (Turning Point Books, 2003) can also be yours.
Report from Haiti: “The free man will never be broken”
This inspiring story comes from the latest Partners In Health e-newsletter. PIH has had a presence in Haiti for many years and is on the front lines of the post-earthquake relief effort. Visit their Stand With Haiti page to donate money and read more tales from the field.
PIH Medical Director Dr. Joia Mukherjee arrived in Port-au-Prince less than 48 hours after the 7.0 earthquake left hundreds of thousands of people dead, injured, homeless, and afraid. However, the image burnt most powerfully in her memory is one of hope.
After her first day treating patients, Joia asked the Zanmi Lasante driver, “Kote Neg Mawon?” (Where is Neg Mawon?) He brought her to the destroyed National Palace, and there in front of it was the statue of Neg Mawon. The symbol of Haiti, Neg Mawon means at once marooned man, the runaway man and the free man.
In 1804 the Haitian slaves defeated the army of Napoleon making Haiti the first and only nation founded by a slave revolution. This victory resulted in Haiti being feared by the world’s powerful countries and thus politically marginalized or dominated for the next 200 years. Symbolizing this epic struggle, Neg Mawon stands, shackles broken, machete in hand, defiant and unafraid. He blows a conch to call others to freedom.
Joia found herself weeping in front of the statue when a Haitian woman–a survivor who until that moment was a stranger–approached her. She too was crying and as she put her arms around Joia, she said, “Neg mawon pap jamn kraze.” The free man will never be broken.
…
See the photo and read the rest here.
New Radio Program at Gay Christian Fellowship
The Gay Christian Fellowship is an affirming evangelical website featuring Bible studies, a discussion forum, book and movie reviews, and (coming soon) a searchable gay-friendly church directory. Their latest project is The Voice of GCF, a weekly streaming radio show hosted by Bryan Dillon and Pastor Romell Weekly. Pastor Weekly is the drafter of the Affirmation Declaration, an inclusive response to the Manhattan Declaration. I enjoyed listening to their first show, which covered, among other topics, the importance of reading the Bible for yourself. New half-hour episodes will be released every Monday.
Here’s an excerpt from one of Pastor Weekly’s articles at GCF:
If there’s one thing about God’s people that hurts my heart more than anything, it’s how little we understand our worth in the Lord. Our poor concept of humility has led to a deficiency of confidence, both spiritually, as well as naturally. Somehow, we’ve convinced ourselves that this was a virtue. IT IS NOT!
It is neither haughty nor prideful to be sure of who we are as children of the King of the Universe. Our Father is not some far away, detached demagogue who selfishly demands worship but has no interest in positively impacting our lives. To the contrary, He intensely desires for our lives to be enriched by His presence working in and through us.
Now, if the Personhood of love is at work in our lives (whether we can perceive the evidence of it or not), what justification could we possibly have for looking down upon the gift of God at work in our lives? Sure, He’s not finished with us just yet—some of our rough edges have yet to be smoothed out—but still, Scripture calls His work in us “good” (Ph. 1:6).
Think about that for a moment. The Creator of Heaven and Earth is doing a work in you, and He calls it a “good work”. Now, if His work in you is considered good from the Divine perspective, surely there’s nothing in that worth feeling ashamed of.
Is a master painter ashamed of his work-in-progress? Does he consider horrid the splashes of color on the canvas, just because the image has not yet taken form, or does he value the present mess as though it is the masterpiece he knows it will become?
…
Read the whole article here. This message particularly spoke to me because I often am ashamed of my novel-in-progress for its imperfections, which has less to do with my novel than with unhealed personal shame that needs continual doses of God’s grace. Unless I “value the present mess”, I won’t be able to pick up my notebook each day and try to make it a little bit better.
Sharla Benson: “The Shower”
The online literary journal Gemini Magazine has just released its February issue. Their short fiction contest, with a top prize of $1,000, will be accepting entries through May 1, for the ridiculously cheap fee of $4 per story, any length. So far my favorite piece in this issue is Sharla Benson’s “The Shower”, in which a young African-American woman pays the price of estrangement from her childhood friends when she tries to assimilate into white middle-class society:
“What you mean you ain’t going? You betta go!”
Diane paced back and forth while squeezing the phone so
tight her palm began to sweat. If only she had the ability
to hang up on her mother she would have pushed end that
very second. But she knew better.“Now you known Cora all your life, and you’ll get to see
Madison,” her mother added with a softer tone. “I’m sure
she’ll be there too.”Diane sighed. If that point was supposed to persuade her
to go, then she was still trying to find a valid excuse as to
why she shouldn’t. She loved Cora and Madison. As little
girls and teenagers they’d spent many Saturday hours in
Mrs. Mary’s beauty shop reading old Jet, Ebony and Black
Hair magazines, laughing and gossiping under the harsh
heat of the dryers while waiting to have their kinks
straightened with a steaming hot comb.“Ahh! You burned my ear!” Diane would always yell when it
was her turn.“Dat’s just the heat,” Mrs. Mary would reply sharply. “Keep
still.”The three of them shared their dreams of the perfect man,
the number of children and the type of house they wanted,
believing that they would be best friends forever to see it
all happen for one another. But, people change and one
day playing a good game of hide and seek or house with
your baby dolls isn’t the only thing friends argue about.“Ya’ll grew up on the same street,” Diane heard her mother
continue. “And that poor chile—it’s been Cora’s cross to
bear to have her womb strong enough to hold babies. But
now the good Lord has finally blessed her with one. So,
you will be goin’ to her baby shower. You hear me girl?”She heard her loud and clear. But she also heard the even
louder voice in her head telling her that she did not want
to see Madison. What had transpired between the three of
them the last time they were together had not been pretty.“Danisha! Are you listen’ to me?”
“Huh? Yes ma’am.” The call of the name she had laid to
rest a long time ago brought her back to the present. Very
few people still called her by her given name and that was
the way she preferred it.
…
Read the rest here. I also recommend xTx’s flash fiction “(Not) My Fairy Self“.
Racelle Rosett: “Levi”
This unique and memorable short story by Racelle Rosett won the 2008 Moment-Karma Short Fiction Contest. Now open for entries, this contest
offers a top prize of $1,000 for unpublished short fiction with Jewish
content. The 2010 deadline is December 31.
Rosett’s brilliantly offbeat young narrator, who sounds like he has an autism spectrum disorder (though it’s never spelled out), finds unexpected connections between Jewish tradition, yoga practice, and popular culture, as he tries to orient himself in a violent and overstimulating world.
There are 72 disturbing images on the way to my school. Saw I, Saw II, Two and Half Men. There is a billboard for jeans in which no one is wearing clothes. I don’t know why there isn’t a law about this. In another billboard there was a picture of a woman with a plastic tube up her nose. Her eyes were red and bruised underneath. My mother gasped and called the billboard company, CBS Outdoor, right from her car. My friend Gabriel’s mother called, too, and I guess about a hundred or so other mothers, because the next day in the LA Times there was an article saying the billboards were coming down. On Highland, they had the tube-in-the-nose billboard three times, so that even if I were very fast and looked down at my shoes, when I looked up again it was there three more times and another hundred or so times in my mind the rest of the day. Good morning tube-in-her-nose take out your pencils tube-in-her-nose today we’re going to learn tube-in-her-nose, tube-in-her-nose, tube-in-her-nose. Underneath the picture was the word torture, like what they did at Abu Ghraib, the prison in Iraq, because George Bush told them to. I hate George Bush most of all. My doctor, who is a cognitive therapist, who is six feet six inches tall and looks like Jon Heder, but more handsome (my mother says), told me to use thought-stopping techniques when this happens. He told me to imagine a stop sign crashing down into my brain, which is a disturbing image all by itself. I am identified highly gifted. My mother says that being gifted doesn’t mean that the gift is yours, it means that the gift is for the world and it is given through you, that you are chosen to carry the gift. Sometimes I feel like I have a giant chicken on my back.
…
Read the rest here.
New Poem by Conway: “Comfort-ward”
My prison pen pal “Conway”, who is serving 25-to-life for receiving stolen goods under California’s three-strikes law, has been reading Dag Hammarskjold’s Markings. He sent me these quotes to help me as I struggle to sort out true faith from legalistic obedience:
“A task becomes a duty from the moment you suspect it to be an essential part of that integrity which alone entitles a person to assume responsibility. While performing the part which is truly ours, how exhausting it is to be obliged to play a role which is not ours. The person you must be, or appear to others not to be, in order to be allowed by them to fulfill it. How exhausting but unavoidable, since mankind has laid down once and for all the organized rules for social behavior….
“How am I to find the strength to live as a free man, detached from all that was unjust in my past and all that is petty in my present, and so, daily, to forgive myself? Life will judge me by the measure of the love I myself am capable of, and with patience according to the measure of my honesty in attempting to meet its demands, and with an equity before which the feeble explanations and excuses of self-importance carry no weight whatsoever.”
Conway
also enclosed the poem below, “Comfort-ward”. It was written on the back of a document titled “Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation INFORMATIONAL BULLETIN”. Conway re-titled it “Fractured Form o’ Bull” and extracted a found-poem from it by underlining selected words and fragments of words. For instance, part of the original text (with Conway’s emphasis added) read:
…An inmate who is deemed a program failure by a classification committee is subject to having his/her personal property/appliances disposed of in accordance with Departmental procedure.
3315(f)(5)(P) Violation of subsection 3323(f)(6) shall result in:
1. Loss of visits for 90 days, to be followed by non-contact visits for 90 days for the first offense.
2. Loss of visits for 90 days, to be followed by non-contact visits for 180 days for the second offense.
3. Loss of visits for 180 days, to be followed by non-contact visits permanently for the third offense.No text was deleted or changed, only misplaced by the publisher…
Thus, this section of the found-poem would read something like this:
…who is deemed a failure
subject his/her person
disposed in a dance with mental Violation
Loss followed first Loss
followed by offense
followed by non-contact
permanently misplaced…
I sent Conway some writing prompts and resources about Oulipo. Experiments with found texts may seem like a parlor game for academics, but when texts are generated by the oppressor and used to shore up a dehumanizing system, these literary methods reveal their politically subversive potential. I look forward to seeing what he does with these exercises. Meanwhile, enjoy his latest poem:
Comfort-ward
Timelines encircle this prisoner’s eyes
mirroring shelves of eroded bone
while arrest was left unexpressed.
This stone tongues talk has become useless.
I would shave my head, if that
could convey, all the words left unsaid.
This struggle has deposited scars
but awakened me cleared by stars-n-gripes
though my world may appear to be fallen stripes;
These verse’ feel somehow protective…
Thursday Non-Random Song: Steve Taylor, “This Disco (Used to Be a Cute Cathedral)”
According to the liner notes for this satirical 1980s Christian rock song, Steve Taylor was inspired by a visit to New York City’s legendary Limelight nightclub, which was housed in a deconsecrated church:
“…I started to imagine it was Sunday night, and that the church elders had devised all this as a way to attract new members.
Most of us, myself included, are guilty of wishing Christianity was more fashionable. But the Apostle Paul’s example of becoming ‘all things to all men’ in order to reach across cultural barriers can sometimes be used as an excuse to dilute the Gospel message, and hopefully draw a trendier, more affluent flock.”
Sunday needs a pick-me-up?
Here’s your chance
Do you get tired of the same old square dance?
Allemande right now
All join hands
Do-si-do to the promised boogieland
Got no need for altar calls
Sold the altar for the mirror balls
Do you shuffle? Do you twist?
‘Cause with a hot hits playlist, now we say
This disco used to be a cute cathedral
Where the chosen cha-cha every day of the year
This disco used to be a cute cathedral
Where we only play the stuff you’re wanting to hear
Mickey does the two-step
One, Two, Swing
All the little church mice doing their thing
Boppin’ in the belltower
Rumba to the right
Knock knock, who’s there? Get me out of this limelight
So, you want to defect?
Officer, what did you expect?
Got no rhythm, got no dough
He said, “Listen, Bozo, don’t you know”
This disco used to be a cute cathedral
Where the chosen cha-cha every day of the week
This disco used to be a cute cathedral
But we got no room if you ain’t gonna be chic
Sell your holy habitats
This ship’s been deserted by sinking rats
The exclusive place to go
It’s where the pious pogo, don’t you know
This disco used to be a cute cathedral
Where the chosen cha-cha every day of the year
This disco used to be a cute cathedral
Where we only play the stuff you’re wanting to hear
This disco used to be a cute cathedral
Where the chosen cha-cha every day of the week
This disco used to be a cute cathedral
But we got no room if you ain’t gonna be chic
(Lyrics and liner notes courtesy of YouTube.)
****
Taylor’s line “Where we only play the stuff you’re wanting to hear” sticks in my mind. We’re all familiar with the pressure on pastors to please their congregations with easy, flattering messages. Liberals pride themselves on being inclusive, conservatives on walking the straight and narrow. Both attitudes are uncomfortably similar to the exclusivity that’s the chief pleasure of club-going. Are you hot enough to get into the Kingdom?
Some serious Christians, therefore, are instinctively skeptical of any religious message that doesn’t increase our pain and self-sacrifice. When Rev. Peter Gomes, the openly gay Harvard University chaplain, gave a Bible lecture here at Smith College last year, he described the core of Jesus’ message as change that leads to liberation. Afterward an evangelical acquaintance of mine disparaged the lecture by quoting 2 Tim 4:3-4: “For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.” Christianity Today cited the same verse to dismiss the legitimacy of the Human Rights Campaign’s Out In Scripture series of GLBT-inclusive reflections on the weekly lectionary.
But if the Word we’re hearing is not something we can “receive with joy” (Mt 4:16), is it really the gospel? Yes, we are eager to hear that the love we feel for one another in our bodies and souls is not a sin. We are also, all of us, too happy to be told that we’re better than someone else, especially if we don’t have to do anything to gain this privileged status. Whose ears are really itching for flattery here?
I’m tired of Grape-Nuts theology. Sacrifice for the sake of proving your toughness is merely pride. Wherever people feel joy, connection, integration of body and spirit, freedom and fellowship, Jesus is present. Maybe the cathedral can learn something from the disco.