Category Archives: Politics and Culture

Poetry by Robert McDowell: “The Promise of Hunter’s Moon”

Poet, activist, and spiritual workshop leader Robert McDowell sent out this powerful poem in his e-newsletter to commemorate the International Day to End Violence Against Women (Nov. 25). McDowell’s work focuses on actualizing the sacred feminine to bring about gender equality and reconciliation. He has kindly allowed me to reprint it below.

The Promise of Hunter’s Moon
by Robert McDowell

At some point we’re all coming back as birds.
We’ll begin in the muck, unrecognizable, stinking,
Until creatures with hands or tools for hands
Scoop us up and start squeezing and pulling.
Suddenly there we are, unmistakably beaked,
Straining against thin leather thongs that someone
Had the good sense to tie around rocks and our twiggy legs.
It’s a good thing, this confinement, because free
We’d rip and tear apart anything we could reach.
The things with hands, or tools like hands, feed us
A mixture of water and the blood of the beheaded,
And with this inside of us we develop fast,
Looking more like giant birds you’d recognize
By the minute. Our feathers grow black and glossy,
And the thicker they become the meaner we feel.
When they just can’t grow anymore they fall out.
Our featherless bodies are disgusting to touch,
Hideous to behold. Where once we were murderous,
We grow timid under the mirror-hot sun. Then
More feathers appear, small, white feathers,
Beautiful, snowy plumes that dazzle in moonlight.
When we’re ready she comes. Out of the sea and sky,
Out of the barren ground she comes. Astonishing
Is her loveliness, perfected is her power.
She rises and walks among us as we bow,
Obedient, peaceful, and so in love.

New Poem by Conway: “Smell”

My prison pen pal Conway reports that the hearing on his petition for early release has been delayed until December, crushing his hope of being reunited with his family for Christmas. It’s been over two years since California voters passed Proposition 36, which was supposed to roll back the harsh sentences imposed on nonviolent offenders under the three-strikes law. This Nov. 14 L.A. Times article suggests the state is dragging its feet on releasing prisoners because the Department of Corrections benefits from their underpaid labor:

Federal judges on Friday ordered California to launch a new parole program that could free more prisoners early, ruling the state had failed to fully implement an order last February intended to reduce unconstitutional crowding.

The judges, for a second time, ordered that all nonviolent second-strike offenders be eligible for parole after serving half their sentence. They told corrections officials to submit new plans for that parole process by Dec. 1, and to implement them beginning January.

“The record contains no evidence that defendants cannot implement the required parole process by that date, 11 months after they agreed to do so ‘promptly,'” the judges wrote in Friday’s order.

Corrections department spokeswoman Deborah Hoffman said the agency would comply with the order.

But the federal judicial panel did not take action on other steps it had ordered California to take last February. Those include increasing the sentence reductions minimum-custody inmates can earn for good behavior and participation in rehabilitation and education programs.

Most of those prisoners now work as groundskeepers, janitors and in prison kitchens, with wages that range from 8 cents to 37 cents per hour. Lawyers for Attorney General Kamala Harris had argued in court that if forced to release these inmates early, prisons would lose an important labor pool.

Meanwhile, my friend Conway keeps his soul alive through creative writing. In addition to poetry, he is working on an autobiographical novel about growing up with his brothers and sisters in a gang-ridden neighborhood. I think he could be the next S.E. Hinton! I was struck by this poem’s taut rhythm and rapid-fire rhymes and wordplay.

Smell

This is the smell of a cell…
This is the smell of rust and dust, and sometimes lust.
Plus it’s the smell of double bar-locks, block and blocks, of towers
and useless clocks. If you don’t know what time it is, oh well!

Could it be the smell of a dirty-ass sock, or worn-out useless
fruitless talk? But still, it’s a voice you feel you might trust.
Not that, oh no!
This is the smell of nothing good. No pleasure, no sound,
nobody around to be found, nowhere to go.
Nothing to show, for all the shit you now know.

This is the smell of a place where no one belongs, but still
we’re stuck here. Because the court insists we’ve done something wrong.
This is that place where they’ll put you away, to serve
day after day. And you’ll rust in the smell of the dust and decay.

This is the smell you will always smell, unless
they tell you “your smelling is finally done.”
In this smelly assed life, that’s good for no-one.
This is the smell of no place to be, this is the smell I see.
This is the smell of just one prisoner’s tale.
This is the smell of that living hell.
This is the smell that I smell.
This is the smell of jail…

The Lion Under My Skin

Three weeks ago I made another one of my longtime fashion dreams come true.  I got my first tattoo.

lion_tattoo_2014

This lion who now lives on my left ankle represents Aslan, the Christ-figure in the Narnia books, as well as the courage of my male spiritual side. The original artwork by Nycci Traynor at InkWell Studio in Bristol, CT is based on our first Winning Writers logo. (Now that’s corporate loyalty.)

inkwell_tattoo_parlor

Oct. 30, 2014, 1 PM: I prepare to meet my fate.

I promised myself a tattoo when I finished the latest revision of The Endless Novel, back in August. As the appointment date approached, though, I was getting cold feet. I wasn’t anxious about the pain so much as the commitment. My beliefs, priorities, and personal style have gone through major changes several times already. What if the image I chose no longer represented me in a few years? I asked my oldest friend for advice. He said he was also contemplating a tattoo with a symbol that would remind him that God was always there for him. So that’s how I made my choice.

I’m glad he got me thinking about tattoos as a spiritual practice. Ink can be a beautiful, unique, and (after the first couple of weeks) zero-maintenance form of adornment. But beyond that, for me it’s a way of taking ownership of my body. Creative control, if you will. I can go beyond the limits of what I was given, and turn my body into a visible record of my inner journey.

In some indigenous cultures, tattoos and other forms of body modification play a role in rites of passage. They mark a permanent transition to adulthood and demonstrate the bearer’s physical endurance and bravery. This aspect of tattooing also became important to me when I was under the needle.

So how painful was it? It was pretty much what you’d expect from having needles stuck in your leg for two hours. In other words, equivalent to about five minutes on the phone with my childhood abuser. (This is the universal standard of measurement in our household.) And unlike such conversations, the emotional aftereffects of being inked were nothing but positive.

I didn’t enjoy the pain per se, but it turned out I enjoyed how tough it made me feel. As it was happening, I compared it to other types of pain I’ve experienced, and reassured myself that I could handle this. I gained a clearer perspective on the boundaries between pain, suffering, and abuse.

Buddhists distinguish between pain, the unpleasant sensation itself, and suffering, the way we compound our pain by proliferating fearful or angry thoughts about it. There was no suffering involved in my tattoo because it was purposeful, consensual, time-limited, applied by someone I trusted, and chosen from a position of self-affirmation. Compare, for example, the facial hair electrolysis I had in my 20s, which was the closest equivalent to the physical sensation, but was much more of a downer because I was doing it to fix something I felt was wrong with me, not to make my awesome self more awesome.

In the Endless Novel and my notes for the sequel, I’ve been struggling with how to interpret, and whether to judge, my characters’ risky sexual practices. I have less than zero erotic interest in pain in the bedroom, but one of my main characters has made it clear that he’s a kinkster and doesn’t want to be “cured” through trauma therapy. Meanwhile, at Winning Writers, I’ve just finished judging the Sports Fiction & Essay Contest, reading about athletes who subject their bodies to extreme hardships and sometimes permanent injuries, in pursuit of–what? Winning an arbitrary game, feeling tough, being admired, defying age and mortality? What does society consider a legitimate reason to override the animal instinct for self-preservation? What is the difference between BDSM and roller derby?

Last month, Sarah Bessey at Jesus Feminist put up a post saying that Christians should not engage in consensual sexual practices involving domination and pain. She argued that such fantasies trivialized the societal problem of abuse, and ran counter to the Christian ethic of nonviolent love.

Without any experience to contradict Bessey, I was inclined to agree with her, but two of the Christian feminists I most respect, Sarah Moon and Samantha Field, offered cogent rebuttals that opened my mind. From Field’s post:

What I love about kink is how it exposes us as a couple. It puts the amount of love we have for each other and how deeply we trust each other fully on display in a way that more vanilla sex just doesn’t. For me, when I’m subbing, there’s an unbelievable amount of anticipation that is almost joyful. I don’t know what he’s about to do, or where this is about to go, but I know that I’m going to love it.

The best part is that I have complete and total control over what happens. As a rape victim, I cannot overstate how much that means to me. When Handsome and I are in a scene, I know that if he attempts something that makes me uncomfortable I can put an instant stop to it–but that hasn’t even happened yet. While we’re playing, we’re attentive to each other in a way that we don’t quite attain when we’re having a missionary quickie. Whoever is on top is watching every single breath and twitch, and we’re communicating with each other more than any other time we have sex. And because I know he is watching me incredibly carefully, I’m free to let go; he’s pushed me in ways I didn’t think was possible, and that’s happened because I trust him and I know he loves me…

…[P]ain is not the same thing as violence, and causing pain is certainly not the same thing as abuse. That’s not even an argument that makes sense–everything in our daily lives belies that. It’s non-consensual pain (emotional or physical) that is an intrinsic violation and is always wrong, full stop.

To me, BDSM is about communication, and respect, and trust, and love, and commitment, and honoring each other. It’s about exploring, finding, and then keeping boundaries.

The anonymous guest writer at Moon’s blog shared similar thoughts about the satisfaction of pushing one’s limits in a consensual, trust-filled environment:

They tell me that my experience is less “true” than the narrative that BDSM critics try to impose. That the way I feel isn’t real, can’t be trusted. (You know this is gaslighting, right?)

Here is what it feels like for me, as a submissive who is otherwise a perfectionist, to be in the hands of a trusted partner: relaxation. Gratitude. Is it okay for me to be this lazy and still feel this good? No need to think, to stress. Just receive.

Here is what it feels like for me, a dominant who was raised in a culture where women aren’t really supposed to want power, let alone claim it: awe. Look at what I can do. Look what he wants from me, what he trusts me with. Look how wonderful he looks…

…Sex is fraught with connotations, with connections hidden in the subconscious. Power dynamics are also fraught. Examine everything. In fact, I will be prescriptive here: the more closely an action mimics oppressive power structures, the more closely you should examine it before acting on it or making it a deliberate part of your fantasy life.

And if an action seems to replicate those power structures too closely for your comfort, that is a good reason for you to refrain from an act. In fact, I think it’s a fantastic reason. Society does program us all in certain ways, and it is our duty and responsibility to be on the lookout for that.

But “too close for comfort” for you does not mean that other people can’t navigate it safely.

And assuming that one can draw a line in the sand where the actions on one side are “good” and the actions on the other side are “bad” is a practice that Christianity has engaged in for too long.

Because of how I felt while getting inked, these arguments resonate with me, in a way that might not have been possible before. Tattoos are more mainstream than they used to be, but a lot of people still judge tattooed women as rebellious, self-destructive, not respectable, etc. That’s why I placed mine on my ankle, where I could easily hide it with clothing when I need to look “professional”. (A demand that’s fortunately rare in the life of a poet.) Intent and effects matter more than some list of approved and un-approved actions tagged with pre-fab psychological explanations.

Is my painful body modification partly a response to my trauma history? Maybe so…but my response is…

ROAR!!

Christian Blog Roundup: Incarnational Boundaries, Rethinking Outreach, and More

I read Christian blogs and Twitter feeds nearly every day, and periodically email myself the standout articles that give me ideas to write about. Time pressures being what they are, a lot of these ideas hang about in my inbox for months, never quite finding the right occasion for a full post. So here is a links roundup, loosely connected around themes of Christian psychology and the balance between self-care and service.

“Maybe We Should Stop ‘Doing Outreach’“: The Rev. Cathie Camaino, an Episcopal priest who blogs as Father Cathie (read her wonderful explanation here), proposes that churches should stop thinking of “service” as organized programs for helping outsiders, and face our fears of sharing our own needs with our fellow members.

“Learning to be vulnerable enough to give and receive is ministry…Engaging with our faith such that it stirs up our compassion, generosity, and courage to be vulnerable is certainly the work of the church. How this happens may not be. It seems that in our congregational life, at least as much energy is put towards the organization and scheduling of ‘outreach’ programs, the recruitment of volunteers, and the promotion of service, than is actually spent doing the work to which we have been called. Maybe the church is not the place to create the programs (which are often duplicated, in much better ways, by other organizations) but the place to ground ourselves in our Christian faith such that we feel the call to serve.”

“Incarnational Boundaries“: Progressive evangelical writer Zach J. Hoag contends that our churches would be emotionally healthier if we took Christ’s embodiment more seriously. We become lost in theories and systems, and don’t pay attention to the ways that abusers exploit our simplistic moralism.

“I see Jesus affirming the embodied human experience of that which is emotionally healthy and unhealthy, safe and unsafe. In fact, I see Jesus practicing healthy boundaries in his work with people that reveals the often manipulative, abusive, and harmful ways that people treat each other (which often causes so much emotional and psychological pain and damage). And this Way of Jesus confronts our ideological, neo-gnostic ways as evangelicals.

See, we are very good at creating unsafe environments where harmful and abusive behaviors are explained away using flat theological categories like sin, pride, faith, prayer, love, reconciliation, forgiveness, leadership, headship, submission, etc. Thus,we don’t respond to these behaviors appropriately nor protect those victimized or potentially affected by them. And, these behaviors are often coming from leaders who are protected as those endorsed by God. Further, we often force the value of ‘community’ onto relationships in the church in such a way that puts people in unsafe or even violating situations.

When we interpret Jesus’s words through his Way, however, we see a different picture. Instead of mandated ‘reconciliation’, we see that there can be no grace, and thus no real reconciliation, without the truth. And, though we always pursue and remain passionate about reconciliation, the reality is that the truth just might bring division, not reconnection. (Forgiveness is another matter, as it requires only one party engaging in a process of releasing bitterness toward the offender.) Matthew 18:15-20 describes a process of truth-telling that may result in the offender not hearing – and thereby being deemed unsafe.

If we mandate things simply by looking at the words of Jesus or the Apostles and drawing out ideological categories, then we may very well continue to produce communities of obligation racked with unhealthy dynamics rather than safe, healthy churches. And if the gospel is bringing us to greater wholeness, showing us what it means to be truly human in the Messiah, then an incarnational church will preach and practice the healthy boundaries that Jesus himself embodied.“

“Kenosis as Pouring Out and Vomiting“: When psychology professor and theologian Richard Beck shared the stage with a trauma expert at a Fuller Theological Seminary lecture series, they explored how the Christian ideal of self-emptying (kenosis) must have a different interpretation for the abused and oppressed, i.e. people whose selves have already been crushed or never allowed to form. Beck proposes:

“…what is being emptied is the hero system–the ways we have internalized social and cultural standards of significance versus insignificance, success versus failure, worthiness versus unworthiness, light versus darkness, pure versus defiled, whole versus damaged. The ’emptying’ of kenosis is becoming indifferent to, dying to, this hero system…

The only difference is where we find ourselves within the hero system. For many the hero system places us on top. At the top, self-esteem and social respect are easy pickings. But the call of Jesus is to become indifferent to all this.  That is experienced as a ‘descent’ of sorts.

But for others, the hero system places them at the very bottom. And all too often, this is internalized. You feel that you ‘deserve’ to be at the bottom, deserve the abuse. Because you are insignificant, damaged, unworthy, and full of darkness and pollution.

It’s a toxic situation, this internalized self-loathing, but it’s still the hero system. It’s just the opposite pole, the shadow side. The hero system is still the way the self is being evaluated, even if it is full of self-loathing and self-destruction.

So an emptying has to occur. The hero system–that internalized filth and shit–has to be poured out. Vomited out.

Come to think about it now, this is an emptying that, psychologically speaking, looks very much like an exorcism. Demons–destructive psychological/spiritual darkness–are being cast out, emptied out.

“White Men, Submission, and the Kingdom of God“: And on a related note, Christian author and blogger Dan J. Brennan expands on a comment by Christian feminist writer Julie Clawson about how the language of “dying to self” can reinforce patriarchy:

“Which man or woman, dealing with self-contempt, dealing with chronic self-contempt, wants a steady diet within their church pulpit and church social media, ‘You must die to self, you must submit your voice to others because we’re all guilty of self-exaltation’?  I myself, deeply wrestled with chronic self-contempt for years and sermonic appeals to trust God, etc. did not help. For years I did not wrestle with Niebuhrian pride. I wrestled with self-contempt, wrestling with shame wondering how God could love me.

Because of my history, I cringe when I see white male leaders so tightly knit death to self with submission in their ecclesiology and spirituality without a healthy understanding that in the 21st century Niebuhrian pride is not all there is to self-understanding. Niebuhrian pride is not a universal experience for all people. It’s probably not even at the heart of most postmoderns. It’s certainly not at the heart of many women and minorities. White male leaders like this can keep good Christian (and nonChristian) therapists with an unending list of clients wrestling with self-contempt.

They can also promote systemic sin as Julie noted.

It’s challenging and heartbreaking when you see good white men with good hearts come to grips with their genuine Niebuhrian pride and then they want to universalize it for everyone else in their sermons, tweets, and social media.

Read Brennan’s follow-up post here.

New Poems by Conway: “City Elegy VII & VIII”

My prison pen pal “Conway”, who is serving 25-to-life for a nonviolent offense under California’s now-repealed three-strikes law, continues to work on his “City Elegies” series while awaiting a hearing on his early release petition. Like a man on a desert island, he has been knocked down to the bare minimum of possessions following transfer to another holding facility. His survival library includes the collected works of Shakespeare, Raymond Chandler, Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetry, Peter Elbow’s Writing With Power, and Dag Hammarskjold’s Markings, which has become his personal bible. These poems find him reflecting on the passage of time and lessons learned in captivity.

City Elegy VII

As I stand here, ready to be judged…
All of me has been searched and prodded, so often–
that no place on this body remains a secret.

Dreaming of a fair future…
In the dark vault of the skull; (beyond prying eyes.)
It is difficult to picture a future without locks, or
a true mattress under my spine.
Yet, even an abused child, no matter how bullied or beaten–
in life, still clings to the dream of justice.
The hours sneak past, without favor, or concern.
With an unreserved acceptance for life, my faith
is a state of mind.

Twisted up in barbed wire, obeying the corridors’ mood…
Where guntowers encircle the perimeter, like hands tangled
in thorns, lifted to the sky in prayer.
Cages lined up, like pews before the pulpit.
If I bow, will it still feel as if my head
has been pushed down, forced?

Where amber lights glare at each other across the yard,
searching cold hard dayrooms.
Topaz eyes with no face, or mouth.
Nowhere to scowl but down,
frown at the graffiti of lost souls left behind.
Who dares to mark their name on walls they have passed?

Where concrete halls wrap around us all…
listening for a door to open, a door way beyond
every other door.
It is not louder, or colored differently.
But, it makes a different sound; a spiritual melody–
you’d recognize, like the transparent depth of wide open skies.
If you don’t anticipate any other muted hush,
your future requires you to hear this sound.
This door is quicker than a six second quarter mile,
heavier than a mortician’s smile. It gathers momentum,
echoing down the tiers, then blindly disappears.
Blindly disappears; like a fragrant smell in your ears.

Silent as a shadow leaning against a a wall…
I huddle in a corner, where the door can be
slammed in your face, enough times–
to convince the most stubborn of people.
I was late to understand.
There may never have even been a door, or
to kick your own exit through the wall.
But, if you’ve made it through.
It is best that you swear, you were never
even there.

Still, I ride on;
Day upon day, and night in my mind…

****
City Elegy VIII

Once again, day has passed away as days always do: murdered, by the slowdragging schedule,
which has been sentenced to my own wreckless past…

The sky has become a ghost. Numbered day after day…
Shackled up, and then put back away, for another lesson in patient discretion.
Years came and went, disappeared with slow eyed surprise.
Rumor, whittled away from the nonsense, laid things at my door.
I restrained the urge to check some chins on a few established figureheads,
content yet careful in their mediocre claims.
Myth, and my own creation, built this unknown obligation.

Born sometime along this line, where odd-old places flutter back and forth…
Wasting time tugging on fate’s vast web, and once again shivering in nearly-naked privateness.
Opposed to this familiar stonewall. Monotonous square-footed center, of times
shouted Quack!

Cheered by the sudden slap of dusk: Because it is what most others dread. (The shadow.)
The Shadow plays fair. None is innocent among the convicted. The raw moments of solitude,
are time’s savage instinct. Time stops for neither instinct, nor episode,
as another calendar drifts past.

As this swirling harvest inhales its latest issue, of rusted ventilation dust…
A new dawn, or illusion of such. Struck suddenly kicking the teeth out of another skyless night.
What passes for air, being captured from somewhere, amongst the fumes of circulation,
(inside this whirling frazzle of souls)
wrenched a stench so foul, that I’ve not been able to shake it loose
from my nose hairs to this very day.

In the pursuit to escape this meaningless existence, without the feeling of shame…
I stay prepared for unexpected company. (you might say)
Bringing along a false hope. So they, can take it, all-back-away.
Until this preparation exposes its last heavy locked door on my horizon.
If I pass through, I will have but one debt left on this
primitive soul. A redemption only God can know.

My time, my prayers, spin the rhythm, while a lost forgotten song
with its on and on, hums along in my head…
I must pay attention to the sound, document what’s goin’ down,
as I swiftly walk away from the possession of this prison.
Into an everywhere and anywhere, that can be salvaged from
a future of, whatever might possibly be.

What a righteous purpose I must learn, to earn…

(The song is called Albatross.)

Why Believe in a Need-less God?

Televangelist Victoria Osteen took some flak in the Christian blogosphere last week for a video clip where she says that we should worship God and do good because it makes us happy, and God wants us to be happy. Osteen and her husband Joel are regular targets of critique from other evangelicals who say their message is too upbeat, sin-free, and self-serving. In response, Eric Reitan, a progressive Christian philosopher whose work I admire, wrote this post suggesting that Osteen (in her simplistic way) was putting forth a legitimate Aristotelian theory of true happiness as being in harmony with virtue, as compared to the Kantian view that we’re only virtuous when we act from pure obedience and ignore our own happiness.

I’m Team Aristotle all the way, but that’s another post. What struck me, this time, was that Reitan, Osteen, and probably most of her conservative critics share the common assumption that God does not need anything from humanity. I often hear it said that prayer is for our benefit, not God’s. On this point, evangelicals who emphasize God’s sovereign perfection find common ground with liberal Christians who have trouble believing that prayer could supernaturally alter the course of events. Here’s Reitan’s characteristically clear restatement of this widespread doctrine (boldface emphasis mine):

Here’s what I think Victoria Osteen gets right: When you worship and obey God, you aren’t doing it for God. Doing it for God’s sake makes no sense, because the infinite creator of the universe doesn’t need anything from us in order to be fulfilled. God doesn’t need to be glorified by us, as if God is somehow diminished by failing to be properly fawned over. If there is a need here, it’s our need. We can’t be fully actualized human beings if our priorities are wrong…

…On Christian metaphysics, Victoria Osteen is exactly right when she says we don’t worship and glorify God for God’s sake. We do it for our own. God needs nothing from us, least of all our worship. But if we think God is worthy of worship, then failing to worship God displays a disorder in our value system that will compromise our ability to love others and find joy in life. And if God is the infinite source of value, then connecting with God in worship becomes a way of communing with the good, of letting it enter into us, in a self-actualizing way.

I believe that the boldfaced statements above seriously overstate the case. It’s a leap from “God doesn’t need Hir ego stroked”* to “God doesn’t need anything from us.” This doctrine, which we take for granted as orthodoxy, has hidden negative political and pastoral consequences. Because of what I’ve learned from feminist and disability theology, I am compelled to question the equating of “need” with weakness, imperfection, or immature egotism.

*(I’m trying out the gender-neutral pronouns “zie” and “hir” to refer to God, rather than locutions like “Godself” which I find awkward. Respectful feedback welcomed.)

My analysis is indebted to the philosopher Sara N. Ahmed, who blogs at Feminist Killjoys. Ahmed’s posts often riff on a word that has been negatively applied to a marginalized group, teasing out its complexities with a poetic technique of free association, and turning it on its head to ask whether the shunned trait is properly attributed to the person who “fails” to fit, or the social environment that fails to be welcoming. See, for instance, her thoughts on fragility, imposition, and how a person becomes classified as a stranger.

Though human psychological categories only capture one aspect of the infinite God, we Christians have been invited to relate to God in human terms through the Incarnation. Any concept of a personal God contains value-judgments about the best kind of person to be. These judgments then affect how we treat people who seem different from that ideal. (For instance, the mainstream depiction of God as white and male reinforces some Christians’ sexism and imperialism.) That’s why I think it’s legitimate to ask whether a God without any needs would be a good Person to love, or be loved by.

Where does it come from, this idea of strength as not-needing? What kind of relationship can one have with a Being whose superiority is defined thus?

The need-less God doctrine is partly a product of classical Greek philosophy, in which an entity that is changeless is considered more perfect than one that changes, and an un-caused entity is more perfect than one that is contingent or dependent. However, the Christian’s “personal relationship with God” was not part of this philosophy. These ancient thinkers were looking for a nobler and more mature alternative to the anthropomorphized Greek gods, who were petty, ego-driven, and lustful.

Centuries later, Enlightenment philosophers levelled the same charge against the Old Testament God. To modern people in a pluralistic society, Yahweh’s smiting of Baal-worshippers doesn’t make sense. We are, or should be, burdened by the memory of genocides that claimed Biblical justification. So we read these stories and only see an insecure tyrant. This is the argument that Reitan references when he says God doesn’t need to be fawned over. Reitan wants to salvage the Biblical God by placing Hir above human foibles.

But narcissistic needs are not the only needs. Not-needing, in fact, can be just as egotistical. Imagine God as a parent–something the Bible encourages us to do. “Here, Daddy, I painted you a picture.” “Thanks, but I didn’t need that.” What a cold response to our heartfelt offerings. God is already perfectly fulfilled without any gift from us. Some of you may know what it’s like to have a parent like that. It doesn’t lead to a life of freedom and grace. It breeds perfectionism and self-doubt. Another variation is the caretaker personality who always has to be the giver, not the receiver, because pleasing others is a way to stay in control.

Equality is not necessary for a healthy relationship (e.g. parent-child, God-human), but mutuality is. If our acts of worship are not fulfilling to God as well as to us, the relational aspect fades and the very presence of God becomes needless, a mental placeholder, a merely theoretical component of our religious practices.

As an activist for trauma-informed care in the church environment, I come up against need-shaming all the time. Like any minority group seeking inclusion, our concerns get dismissed as “special needs”. This formulation assumes there is a normal way to navigate the world and I am demanding an exception. In fact, “the world” is just one possible arrangement that works acceptably for the current majority who have a voice in the system. To not have needs, or not be perceived as having needs, or not have to meet your needs in a way that involves other people–is this really a virtue of self-sufficiency or unselfishness, or is it mainly good luck that you have the kind of needs that are met by your environment?

The church will never truly resist domination by the “special needs” paradigm until we stop need-shaming God. We stigmatize each other’s dependence and vulnerability when we recoil in horror at the idea that God could ever experience these states with respect to us.

And yet, the crucified Christ hangs on our wall.

Jesus was needy and vulnerable from his birth as a human baby to his death on a cross. We often talk about this episode in the life of God as though it was temporary, like a journalist slumming among the homeless to show solidarity and gather information. The wounds of the risen Christ tell a different story. What if everything we fear about “neediness” was really an eternal part of God’s essence?

I think mainstream theology is wrong both about what God would need (if Zie needed anything), and what happens when God’s needs aren’t met.

As for the “what”, the prophet Micah said it succinctly: Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with God. We’re just not used to thinking of these as needs, as well as commands. But a loving God would feel pained, would be diminished, when we don’t act lovingly ourselves. In Matthew 25, Jesus puts himself in the position of the beggar: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” He has to spell it out for the disciples because they can’t imagine seeing the Messiah sick or hungry or in prison.

And what actually happens when God’s needs aren’t met? Does Zie have a narcissistic tantrum and kill lots of innocent bystanders? Well, the Book of Judges might give that impression, but there the real problem is the primitive feudal concept of what God needs, as well as the unskillful means. Or does Zie collapse into a big pile of weepy tissues, leaving no one in charge of the universe? (God is a girl, she’s only a girl…)

These are the two hurtful stereotypes that come up when survivors advocate for our own needs. We are made to appear simultaneously tyrannical and weak. In reality, people who face their own pain and take care of it are the most self-sufficient and safe people to have in your community.

Instead of need-shaming, let’s imagine that God feels pain and lack because of human sin, and still carries on with love, strength, equanimity, and nonviolence–just like a trauma survivor who’s doing her healing work.

An Un-Chosen Person: My Jewish Way of Being Christian

A few weeks ago, I forwarded an article on the New Atheism to a longtime friend with the message, “This seemed like something you would appreciate, as a historian and ex-Christian!” My friend is a scholar of the history of science and its intersection with religion and politics. He grew up in the evangelical heartland but is highly critical of its beliefs and emotional dynamics. He replied:

“How could I claim to be an ex-Christian after I was indoctrinated to be a Protestant fundamentalist and have spent most of my life in Christian circles and societies? Only by defining a Christian abstractly and intellectually as an adherent of certain doctrines would it be possible to say I’m not a Christian, i.e. that I do not or no longer subscribe to a certain creed or screed of metaphysics. Sociologically, ethically and even to some extent intellectually, how could I be other than a Christian? The same can be asked of you, Adam [my now-Buddhist husband] and all my atheist Jewish friends in relation to a different religious heritage—how could y’all not be Jews (whatever else you may also be)?”

This brilliant, unexpected twist on self-definition set me wrestling once again with my complex feelings about my heritage. Even calling Judaism a “heritage” is difficult for me for two reasons. For one, I was not raised Jewishly enough to fit in and follow along when I tried to take up Jewish observance in my early 20s. I didn’t have the shared memories of youth camps, ethnic recipes, rites of passage, or the general sense of unquestioned membership in an extended family. I was like an adoptee who goes back to her birth country, only to find that she’s too Americanized to blend in with the people who look like her.

The second reason for my unease relates to the blending of religion and ancestry. I chafe against the implication that I’m not allowed to discover my own religious worldview, the one that solves the problems of my life. “Heritage” suggests that my parents’ and grandparents’ beliefs are the filter I must see through, or the weight that I’m obligated to carry on my journey. It gives other people the right to intrude on my most private and sacred relationship (with God), simply because I share their genetic material.

And yet, ironically, this objection is so powerful for me because of my psychological heritage as the child of a narcissist. A freethinking narcissist, to boot, who didn’t expose me to synagogue and Hebrew school because she’d found those institutions oppressive and lifeless during her own youth. My bio mother was “spiritual but not religious” before it was cool.

She also got me a passport when I was born, to escape to Israel if America ever turned against the Jews. She told the story of FDR refusing to accept boats of refugees from the Holocaust. She said Jews were outstanding in society because we valued education, debate, and questioning.

I have strong emotions about the endless conflict in Israel but no useful insights, so let’s leave that topic aside. If I have anything like a Jewish identity that I’ve taken into my Christian life, it consists of this outsider consciousness and the spirit of free inquiry that was formative in my upbringing. Because Jesus was Jewish, too, it seems like a legitimate perspective from which to critique the authoritarian and unworldly features of Gentile Christianity that cause me so much distress.

For instance, when I feel the dead hand of the past suffocating me in debates about Biblical inerrancy, I recall the Talmudic story (Baba Metzia 59b) where two factions of rabbis are debating a point of kosher law. One group successfully calls on God to do miracles as a sign that their position is correct. But the other group wins the day by countering that the Torah is on earth, not in heaven. Having given the law to humankind, God has to step aside and let us figure it out! Delightfully, the story ends with God laughing that his children have bested him.

Going back to my scholarly friend’s distinction between identity and beliefs, I also think often of the Jewish emphasis on spiritual practices when I become angry or frightened at the Bible passages in my daily prayer liturgy. Not to put my situation on a par with his, but I take comfort in Elie Wiesel’s anecdote from Auschwitz, where the prisoners put God on trial and found him guilty…then said the regular evening prayer.

The phrases, images, and rituals of the Book of Common Prayer are part of me at a level deeper than agreement or disagreement. Sometimes that makes me feel helpless. I chose to become a Christian, it’s true, but I was also responding to the fact that Christianity was already a part of me, through immersion in Western sacred art and music. Who can explain why my family’s trove of Jewish-American literature and Isaac Singer folktales didn’t speak to me so personally? Was my conversion a response to God’s call, an assimilationist desire to break my family’s isolation, a rebellion against an overbearing parent? Perhaps it only matters because the abused child in me is still desperate for freedom, triggered by the idea that an all-powerful being would initiate a relationship with me. Was I ever free to refuse consent?

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door…” (Rev. 3:20)

At the end of all this reasoning, I don’t genuinely doubt that Christianity was where God wanted me to be when I converted. Do I still belong there? I’m going to pray my way into the next step. My (Jewish) Jesus likes people who keep asking questions.

Religious Rights and the Common Good

I grew up in a high-rise on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The dominant group in our micro-neighborhood were Orthodox Jews, though there were also numerous Hispanic families and some Irish, Asian, and liberal Jewish folks (like my family). Our building had 20 floors with seven or eight apartments each. Many modern Orthodox Jews interpret the prohibition on lighting a fire on Shabbat to forbid activating electrical devices. You may have heard of the tradition of the “Sabbath goy”, the non-Jewish person who helps his Jewish neighbor by turning on her light switch or oven on Friday night. In our building, from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, one of our two elevators was set to run continuously, stopping at every floor on the way up and the way down, so that observant Jews wouldn’t have to push the buttons.

This arrangement irritated me, perhaps unreasonably. It’s hard to separate my judgment from my general feeling that the Orthodox in our neighborhood acted superior and unfriendly to those outside their tribe. (See, for instance, the recent New York Times exposé on how Rep. Sheldon Silver and his Orthodox supporters blocked low-income housing for Hispanic families for 40 years.)

The Sabbath goy routine, legal fiction though it be, potentially builds interfaith friendships. It might foster gratitude for the kindness of strangers, and awareness of one’s dependence on the goodwill of others. The Sabbath elevator imposed that role on all of us without asking. The impact on the environment could be considered selfish as well, though maybe they offset their carbon footprint by not driving cars on Shabbat. A longer wait for the elevator on Friday night is a relatively minor imposition, but symbolically, it felt like a statement that some people thought they were more important than their neighbors.

On the other hand, every accommodation of someone’s rights may come at a cost to someone else. My church is undertaking a major capital campaign to make the building handicapped-accessible. We also hire a sign language interpreter for every 10 AM service. A skeptic could say that’s money being taken from “the rest of us” to benefit “a few”. However, we recognize that the space and priorities that we may have considered normal are designed to benefit the majority and ignore others, and that’s not acceptable for a community whose motto is “Given to Hospitality”. The Orthodox in my old building may have felt marginalized and handicapped in the wider society, where they had to work hard every day to maintain their purity boundaries. They wanted one place where they would have the privilege of not thinking about how to get from point A to point B.

The complex power dynamics of the Sabbath elevator are on my mind because of the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby ruling on religious exemptions for employers, which I blogged about in my last post. We’ve reached a peculiar juncture in Free Exercise Clause law, where the right to do something religious has morphed into the right to make someone else do something, for religious reasons. That is to say, at what point are you offloading so much of the burden of your religiously motivated behavior that it is no longer “your” free exercise?

The many Sabbath observance rules, adapted for modern times, stem from the central directive to let yourself, your servants, and your animals rest and honor God. But if you’re causing another human being to work on Shabbat, isn’t that worse than making a machine work? Or does he matter less than a machine because he’s a goy?

Classic case law on the free exercise of religion involved personal choices that were at odds with bureaucratic uniformity. No third parties were being burdened by the observance. Even then, religion didn’t always win. In Goldman v. Weinberger (1986), the Court said the Air Force could forbid an Orthodox Jewish officer from wearing his yarmulke while in uniform. In Employment Division v. Smith (1990), the Court said the government could ban sacramental peyote use under the generally applicable drug laws, notwithstanding the Free Exercise Clause. While these specific outcomes seem too harsh and rigid to me, they stand for a principle that today’s Court has all but forgotten: Sometimes you have to play by the rules of the wider society and eat the cost of your difference, because civil society would become ungovernable if every law were vulnerable to a thousand individual carve-outs.

In 1993, Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) to restore a more generous standard of review for Free Exercise claims than the court had applied in Smith. RFRA affirms that Free Exercise challenges apply not only to laws deliberately targeting religious practices, but also to neutral laws that incidentally burden a person’s exercise of religion. Hobby Lobby brought its objection to Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate as a RFRA claim.

RFRA expanded the class of laws to which Free Exercise objections could be made. Meanwhile, this Court has been stretching the definition of religious practices to encompass virtually any behavior that is religiously motivated. Together, these trends exacerbate social inequality and fragmentation.

How is it “your” freedom of religion to fire disabled workers, or prevent your employees from unionizing, or impede women’s access to healthcare? Why should the state help you shift the cost of your religious preferences onto nonbelievers? This takes Free Exercise too far beyond the personal acts of worship or ritual observance that the Founders likely envisioned. The logic of the Hobby Lobby exemption is the logic of theocracy, where there is no legitimately secular realm of human action. Maybe that’s your sincere religious worldview, but it’s not the worldview behind our system of government. The Constitution is meant to preserve a separation between church and state. It’s bad faith, in every sense of the word, to exploit the Bill of Rights to reach a result hostile to its values.

Hobby Lobby’s Questionable Theology

Last month, in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, the US Supreme Court issued the controversial ruling that Christian owners of closely held for-profit corporations had a religious liberty right to deny contraceptive coverage in their employee health insurance plans. Hobby Lobby and two other companies had sought exemptions from the section of the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) that required birth control coverage at no extra charge to the employee. The company owners claimed that they believed life begins at conception, and therefore it would violate their beliefs to facilitate the use of birth control methods that sometimes prevent implantation of an embryo. The Court ruled in favor of the employers, holding that corporations are “persons” for purposes of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (a statute that prohibits government from indirectly burdening the free exercise of religion).

I am 42 years old, apparently infertile, happy with my current number of children (one), politically pro-choice but morally troubled by abortion. I depend on birth control to manage a reproductive health condition that would otherwise be severely disabling. This court case reminds me how privileged I am to work for a nondiscriminatory employer (myself) and to have enough money to pay for birth control out of pocket. I don’t have to be afraid of having more kids than I can support, or of losing my job because of disability-related absences. That’s precisely why Hobby Lobby angers and frightens me, as a woman and a Christian. The gospels tell us that basic security shouldn’t be the privilege of the few.

Let’s assume, for purposes of argument, that abortion and contraception are sinful. Is it theologically appropriate for Christian business owners to leverage the power of the state, and the economic power of employer over employee, to avoid being tainted by participation in these sins? I don’t believe so.

Note that the plaintiffs were not arguing that their exemption would actually result in fewer women using birth control (although this is clearly what they want). The Court assumed that the Obamacare mandate was valid and a compelling government interest. They were just dickering over whether there was a way to implement it while allowing Hobby Lobby’s owners to keep their hands clean.

Jesus denounced the Pharisees for obsessing over personal religious purity at the expense of socioeconomic equality. After Hobby Lobby, who is going to have the most difficulty accessing the medications they need? Women who are too poor to pay out of pocket, who have fewer job skills and opportunities to find a different employer. The Hobby Lobby exemption is a private-sector version of the Hyde Amendment prohibiting Medicaid funding for abortions; both create one law for the rich and another for the poor.

I don’t believe Christians should take advantage of economic inequality to enforce what we believe to be God’s will. Coercive shortcuts reveal our lack of faith. We’re not willing to make personal sacrifices to bring about the outcome we desire, like the Pharisees who laid heavy burdens on others that they didn’t bear themselves. Instead of cutting off their employees’ family-planning options, Christian-owned corporations should go out of their way to ensure that their employees have adequate childcare and wages to support a family.

Jesus portrayed the kingdom of heaven (on earth) as a place where everyone has food, shelter, health, and safety, not because some more powerful person thinks they deserve it, but because everyone is a child of God. That kingdom is far from our current reality. Workers depend on employers for basic survival needs. That power gap is evidence of our fallen world, not something to be exploited and widened in the name of “Christian values”.

Trigger Warnings in Education: Some Reminiscences and Suggestions from a Survivor

The NY Times, the New Republic, and a slew of feminist blogs have recently been debating whether it’s appropriate for educators to put trigger warnings about potentially traumatic material on their syllabus. Not surprisingly, the mainstream media has taken the tack that students should expect to be challenged and disquieted by new ideas in the classroom, not shielded from the upsetting facts of life. It’s hard not to see a gendered value system behind this attitude, in which students’ dispassionate intellect (male) reins in their emotional reactions (female) so they can “properly” analyze horrific topics.

Jacqui Shine’s xoJane piece “What We Talk About When We Talk About Trigger Warnings” should be everybody’s starting point for required reading. Shine myth-busts the nasty stereotypes about survivors that recirculate like a bad penny whenever the topic comes up. I’ll post a short excerpt below, then share some personal memories and suggestions based on my time in academia.

Shine writes:

…Among the assumptions that come up and go unchecked are that trauma survivors are the ones asking for trigger warnings to be broadly applied in the first place and that, whether or not they are, asking for consideration means that there’s an imminent threat of a culture war-style takeover by a cabal of survivors who want to curtail our civil liberties or the exchange of ideas or the free expression of artists. (Honestly, it escaped my notice that we’re living in a world that slavishly caters to the needs of trauma survivors. If someone had told me, I would have made a point of enjoying it more!)

I’m also baffled by this assumption that trigger warnings are meant to prevent us from having to see or feel anything difficult–that the only way one responds to a trigger is by falling apart. Being triggered doesn’t mean you fall apart or are overcome by stereotypically feminized hysterics. Trauma responses can include a huge range of reactions, including physical symptoms like headaches, stomachaches, and heart palpitations and emotional ones, like anxiety or numbness. Sometimes being triggered looks like getting really quiet and sitting through something until you can get somewhere safe to take care of yourself. Sometimes it looks like someone going on as though nothing has happened at all and then having a really terrible nightmare that night.

Likewise, I’m not sure why a trigger warning has to imply censoring someone or stopping something. A “warning” is just that, and if you know what to expect–that you’re about to see something upsetting–you can plan in advance how you’ll handle it and how you’ll get through it. And we often warn people when they are about to see things that might be disturbing, whether we know them to be trauma survivors or not…

The following is just my personal perspective. I don’t make any claim for its universality. I completely support professors and students who have found that TWs make their classroom environment healthier. But I would hate to see the conversation start and end there, because the real issue is survivors’ right to an accessible education, not the merits of one particular access ramp. We need to experiment with a wide range of strategies for different situations.

Would TWs have improved my experience in academia? On what kind of material? I can’t imagine it, because I’m so different now, and my triggers in those days were more global than content-specific. I mean, as far as I’m concerned, every university should have “TW for bullshit and abuse of power” emblazoned above their entrance gates.

From early childhood to two years after I graduated law school, I was living in an abusive home. Currently, my life is fantastically psycho-free. Yet I find myself much more triggered by specific media content than I was then. I don’t know why.

I have a huge collection of horror fiction that I no longer read. More than half of the literary fiction that I pick up makes me feel gross inside because the author doesn’t seem to recognize how unhealthy his characters are, or that their deluded condition isn’t inevitable. I’m more quickly overstimulated by rapid-paced violent action in movies (though special effects have also become much more overpowering in the past two decades). With my feminist 3-D glasses on, I become dizzy watching romantic comedies because I see that the protagonists are nothing but stalkers and wounded childen. As for theology, once my favorite genre, a lot of it gives me a headache because I encounter chilly abstractions where empathy and personal narrative would be more relevant.

All of this is to say that it’s hard to imagine how TWs would have helped me in high school, college, or law school. I was too numbed-out to be triggered!

Seriously, though, I think I managed all right despite my raw mental state in those days because of two factors: I could predict (from the course topic or the book’s reputation) what kind of upsetting material a book might address, and I was smart enough to get decent grades despite not reading all of it. (Heck, I boycotted entire novels in senior year of high school because I didn’t approve of stream-of-consciousness–bite me, Andrey Bely!–and Mr. Everdell still passed me. Talk about being coddled.)

An example of successful trigger-management from my law school career: I chose to take an elective seminar called “Law and Politics of Pornography”. One of the required books consisted of scene-by-scene descriptions of numerous adult films, grouped thematically by chapter. I think this book, which was actually somewhat boring, was an excellent choice on the part of the professor, because it gave us a working knowledge of what these films depicted, in a format that wouldn’t overwhelm us sensorily. I’ve always feared mental contamination by images merging sex with violence. The author considerately grouped such films in the S&M chapter, which I pretty much skipped over. The chapter title was a sufficient TW for me.

Sensitive topics become show-stopping triggers because of surprise and sensory intensity. TWs developed to help people manage the unpredictable flood of data on the Internet. When I pick up a textbook on 20th-century history, I expect to come across pictures of Hiroshima victims and dead soldiers, and I’m mentally prepared. When I scroll down my Facebook wall, and those same images pop up between LOLcats and baby pictures, I’m triggered. I could be forced to see something horrible at any moment, from any quarter; there’s no refuge. This panicked conclusion shuts down the mind, making the viewer afraid to explore any media that isn’t completely predictable. Hmm, might the explosion of random, agitating images in every TV commercial break (sex! guns! speeding cars! insults! drunken frogs!) have some connection to America’s closed-minded and polarized politics?

Similarly, TWs on blogs perform the same function as book cover blurbs and reviews, a quick heads-up about content for readers who are unfamiliar with the author’s preoccupations. The sheer volume of writing by unknown authors on the Internet, far more than in your average bookstore, means that readers are taking a risk every time they navigate to a new page. And isn’t that what education is all about–guiding people to risk discovering new ideas, by giving them the tools to orient themselves in an unfamiliar place? So don’t waste my time with your free-speech arguments against TWs.

In the debate over
TWs, we need to distinguish between challenging ideas and overpowering experiences. The former are integral to education, the latter are not.

The very fact that we’re discussing triggers in academia is a radical, positive step. As I’ve said in my “Survivors in Church” posts, trauma awareness is an often-overlooked component of accessibility and diversity training. Finally, we’re acknowledging that students are not floating heads but affective human beings who feel personally implicated in the narratives they read in class.

However, a trauma-management tool borrowed from the Internet may not be as helpful in the classroom. Rather than telling students what they probably already know (“Romeo & Juliet: TW for suicide”), educators should watch out for unnecessarily traumatizing material in their curriculum choices. It’s the difference between posting a sign “Warning: Hazardous Waste” versus not dumping the damn thing in the first place. Which do you think is more effective?

Does this mean avoiding all painful topics? Certainly not. Teachers already balance such factors when important texts contain racist ideas or slurs. For example, schools assign Huckleberry Finn despite its controversial use of the N-word, because the value of learning about American racism outweighs the pain of hearing the slur. However, it would be irresponsible and unnecessary to re-enact scenes from Huck where one student would have to call another student “N-word”. Verbal abuse is not a legitimate teaching tool. That’s what I mean about challenging ideas versus overpowering experiences.

How might this work for other common triggers? Well, if you’re an English teacher choosing between two novels that both fit the course requirements, consider assigning the one without the graphic rape scene. Or assign the one where rape is presented in a context that facilitates critical discussion of rape culture, rather than one that gratuitously eroticizes the assault or minimizes its moral significance.

If you’re a history teacher, have a presumption in favor of low-stimulation media when studying violent events (e.g. written descriptions as opposed to videos). Show violent images sparingly to make a point that couldn’t be made otherwise. Don’t fall into “Operation Rescue” tactics of using bloody photos to shock students into paying attention. Pro-actively acknowledge the students’ need for self-care and normalize their feelings of distress instead of projecting an ideal of emotional detachment. Students who are allowed to empathize and grieve about atrocities will learn the moral lessons of history better than ones who dissociate in the name of objectivity.

Whatever your subject area, don’t radiate contempt for your students’ foundational beliefs and intellectual defenses. Why was I an aesthetic reactionary in high school, turning up my nose at Mallarmé and Ezra Pound? Because I was unconsciously triggered by chaos, be it moral relativism, absurdist art, or an undisciplined classroom. I couldn’t get perspective on this in an academic culture that assumed that all students were safe and complacent, and that the teachers’ job was to epater le bourgeois. My first-year Intro to Legal Thought professor spent our last day of class haranguing us for our cowardice. He’d been giving us bombs to smash the system, he raved, but we’d let them all fizzle out. But some of us come to education seeking a bomb shelter from our shell-shocked lives. We were already born in the ruins; we crave a vision of order and harmony, and the tools to build it.

TWs alone won’t make academia survivor-friendly, any more than campus speech codes ended racism. A deeper values-shift is needed. But anything that breaks the silence around trauma is a good start.