Category Archives: Politics and Culture

New Writing by Conway: “City Elegy III”

While my prison pen pal “Conway” waits for news on his petition for early release, he’s been dreaming of returning to work on those motorcycles and racecars he loves. It’s been almost a year since California repealed its harsh “three-strikes” sentencing law for nonviolent offenders, but my friend’s case is languishing due to the usual bureaucracy and the slow and inconsistent work of his public defenders. The prose-poem below comes from his ongoing series of odes to urban car culture.

Meanwhile, in prison reform news, the FCC finally capped the exorbitant phone rates that were preventing many prisoners from maintaining contact with their families on the outside. Such connections are crucial to keep them from re-offending. Donate to the Campaign for Prison Phone Justice at Nation Inside to thank them for their decade of work on this issue. (Don’t be put off by their unfinished website.)

City Elegy III
by “Conway”

No musical sound true as traffic, has moved these senses so strongly.

Lost songs echo endlessly in this ear’s memory.

Low rumble at idle, or burn-out then roar away.

How can one hand, or foot, hold back the temptation of acceleration, without testing all limits?

I have dared to invoke those hidden horsepowered reins just straining to be released.

*

What does anyone know. Anyone who has not conspired to call upon an unstrained throttle. Especially the song. A mechanical throat that’s been closed for too long sings. (A reborn derelict.)

Oh to behold the hollow night growling. Deep as an empty stomach. As another restored machine announces its hunger.

An ancient frame vibrates in anticipation, twists as it shakes off the crusted rust of ages. Then unleashes the force of factory-born flame harnessed free-wheelin’ thunders voice, as it bellows out loud a groundpounding — Move!

*

Momentum begins, as adrenaline purges each driver to quicken forward movement. Pushing gravity beyond simple attraction. Like: an ancient call into battle.

A charge on horseback towards the final clash of combat, or competition. When Hannibal’s men came tramplin’ in on elephants. To crush all those who dared to oppose.

But, even those beasts proved their flesh, to be almost as weak as man.

So, man made machines, cherished steeds became formed from metal. Each iron horse or motorized chariot was forged of stronger stranger magic.

One machine can release the sound of a thousand horses, hooves pounding at full charge.

Or, cruise by slow with the rhythmic thump of drumbeats parading by, like armored knights in their glory, celebrating a victorious return.

*

This is what I imagine; This is what I hear.

During another power-filled night of hot rods and motorcycles.

The music of oil pans dragging down hard streets and avenues.

*

I salute all those passengers, who have lost their lives, in the ultimate pursuit of velocity. Those who have sacrificed their flesh to a crush of twisted mangled metal.

I do not count your sacrifice in vain. You! Who knew the danger and felt the pure rush of living unstrained.

You, who attained the last great flash of life without regret.

You, whose headlights form a constellation of stars, up above the Earth and everywhere else.

*

I cannot see your vehicle, you’re now too far to recognize.

But your light shines down, like the traffic I still hear.

*

I wonder; Are you still racing up there? Is this the sound the Cosmos creates. Is that just one huge Avenue of cars, trucks and motorcycles?

Are all those demolished vehicles polished and rollin’ again — Rolling into view, down the Avenue. Cruising with the Gods…

 

Talkback to Sinatra: My Poem “I Wish I Were in Love Again”


My poems “I Wish I Were in Love Again” and “third day” have just been published as contest semifinalists in Issue #7 of OSA Enizagam, the magazine (get it?) of Oakland School for the Arts. “I Wish…” is a critical gloss on Frank Sinatra’s ballad of the same name, which romanticized a violent conflict between lovers. This poem originally appeared in Atlanta Review. (That’s right, OSA E will take previously published work. How cool are they?)

“third day” is a collage poem using phrases from a news story about the desecration of a gay man’s corpse in Senegal. The formatting can’t be reproduced in this blog template, so you’ll just have to go buy this great magazine, which features work by Donna Steiner, Anneliese Schultz, Linda Leedy Schneider, and many other accomplished poets and storytellers.

I Wish I Were in Love Again

When Sinatra sings,
I wish I were in love again,
I imagine Love is the name
of a violent town in Texas
where the one stoplight
took a bullet long ago,
dusting the dry street with ruby glass.

Where the sheriff,
big-bellied as Cupid,
didn’t see the evidence
of the split rope, the double-smudged lipstick,
the blacksnake-cold gun under the belt.

Sinatra’s voice pours the golden
whiskey of nostalgia to shimmer
over the icy rocks, like the foothills
outside Love where nothing
lives but tumbleweeds and chicken thieves.
He misses the spat of cat and cur,
the flying fur, the sparks
that burned down Love’s one church
when the preacher’s daughter
fell asleep smoking.

Lucky in Love
is the man who didn’t miss the train
in or out of town.

Love is a Many-Splendored Thing,
the mayor says,
hoping to attract
a branch of the Houston bank,
a brassworks factory or even a circus
to settle in Love,
create jobs for the men
and scarcer women who lie
in saloon alleys all night clutching
souvenirs of Love to their hearts:
a postcard, a clump of red dirt.
Who wouldn’t want such a loyal workforce?

Love is just around the corner,
if you’ve got a first-class horse.

City-trippers in the mood
for the blackened eyes
Sinatra sighs for
take the spur line to Love
en route to Laredo or Dallas.
Fanning themselves with transfer tickets,
the ladies breathe,
I’ve never been in Love before,
mistaking the crash of plates
for an emphatic whorehouse piano.

The general store hawks banjos
with one string, plasters for the knees
of old folks who fall in Love too easily,
and of course, bullets.
If you break a hip in Love
you know what happens.

Despite the weather,
Love’s no place to retire.
The all-you-can-eat buffet closes at five.
When the moon climbs the sky again
like a drunk husband going upstairs,
the city ladies take their seats
in the second-class carriage,
each with a purple bloom
aching under her blouse, or against her cheek.
It won’t fade for days.
It’s almost like being in Love.


WTF, Supreme Court? Gay Marriage Victory, Civil Rights Fail


It’s been a madly inconsistent week for civil rights at the U.S. Supreme Court.

First the good news. As you’re no doubt aware, in U.S. v. Windsor, the Supremes struck down the provision of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) that barred the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages legally contracted under state law. This means that couples legally married in Massachusetts and a dozen other states now have equal access to some 1,100 federal rights, including tax benefits, hospital visitation, and the ability to sponsor one’s partner for U.S. citizenship.

Still extant, however, is the provision of DOMA that permits states without gay marriage to refuse to recognize such marriages from their sister states. In light of this week’s ruling, it seems unlikely that the remainder of the law would survive a challenge under the Constitution’s Full Faith and Credit Clause, since the 5-judge majority in Windsor basically said there’s no legitimate reason to single out same-sex couples to take away rights already given them by their home state. Now that these couples have federal rights as well, one could argue that unless these rights are portable from state to state, their constitutional “right to travel” has been impaired. (Since the court in recent years has restricted the scope of the once-broad Interstate Commerce Clause, I would make that only a secondary argument.)

A second court challenge may not be needed, since Congress is considering the Respect for Marriage Act to overturn the rest of DOMA. President Obama said he would support this bill in 2011. For the latest on this strategy and how you can help, visit the Freedom to Marry website.

Now the bad news. This same week, the Court handed down three decisions that seriously weakened suspects’ Miranda right against self-incrimination, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and the Indian Child Welfare Act. More details on each of these cases can be found here, here, and here.

Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act required 9 Southern states with a history of racial discrimination to pre-clear changes to their voting laws with the U.S. Department of Justice or a federal judge. This week, the Court struck down that section of the law, saying it was based on an outdated formula rather than on present-day data about state interference with minorities’ voting rights. How’s this for fresh data: according to ThinkProgress, 6 of those 9 states have already moved ahead with voter ID laws and redistricting plans that had been previously blocked under the VRA. Without neutral federal oversight, redistricting has often been abused to dilute the voting power of people of color, young people, and the poor, by clustering or dispersing them in such a way that they never form a majority voting bloc. Voter ID laws have been shown to have a disparate impact on poor and Hispanic voters, who are less likely to possess the documentation required.

One of my transgender activist friends, who’s been critical of the mainstream LGBT movement’s focus on gay marriage, speculated that the Court made the Windsor decision more palatable to Tea Party social conservatives by giving them what they wanted even more–a rollback of civil rights for racial minorities. I can certainly see how these other three decisions could stave off the extreme attacks on the Court’s legitimacy that became the norm after Roe v. Wade. Sinister stuff.

That’s why we need to emulate the great civil rights leaders, like Harvey Milk and Martin Luther King Jr., who understood that all struggles against oppression are connected. Dr. King is best known for his leadership of the African-American civil rights movement, of course, but he also preached against the Vietnam War, over the objections of some of his African-American followers who feared he would dilute his primary message and lose political capital. Milk built bridges to constituencies not traditionally supportive of gay rights, when he stood up for the Teamsters’ Union in the Coors Beer boycott.

The Windsor decision is important. It makes life a lot more secure for gay couples and their children–IF they happen to live in states where same-sex marriage is, or plausibly could become, legal. But the imminent disenfranchisement of traditionally Democratic voting blocs in conservative states all but ensures that same-sex marriage won’t be a reality there anytime soon. LGBT activists should work to restore equal access to the polls, not only as allies, but also because these struggles directly intersect.
 

Giving Children the Gift of “No”

It’s been awhile since I shared a picture of His Supreme Cuteness, so I’ll introduce this parenting post with Shane modeling his summer haircut:

Today I want to talk about a strange trend among parents in our crunchy-progressive middle-class demographic (what we used to call Bobos in the 1990s): the belief that “No” is a dirty word.

“I never said no to my kids,” one acquaintance advised me, as her prescription for avoiding the “terrible twos”. Another friend noticed me gently steering the Young Master away from baby-unsafe objects (“Uh-oh, the table lamp is not a toy”), and favorably contrasted that method to her other friends who don’t feel comfortable declaring any property off-limits to a toddler.

This meme is widespread enough that it was satirized last year on my favorite sitcom, “Modern Family“. Cameron and Mitchell are a gay couple raising their adopted daughter, Lily, who has become a spoiled little princess. Claire, Mitchell’s sister, is a well-meaning control freak, i.e. just like me. From ABC’s website: “Claire wants to discipline Lily for repeatedly flicking the light switches on and off in her house. Cameron says they are trying an approach where they don’t say ‘no’ to their child. This leads to an argument about parenting methods. Claire believes her point will be made once Lily flips the garbage disposal switch while Cam has his hand caught down the drain. She has a big laugh once Lily makes her move, as it’s only a light switch that’s flipped.”

I could cite various child-development studies about how kids need structure and limits to learn good behavior, but I think Claire has the disciplinary angle covered. Instead, let’s consider another danger of No-phobia: stunting your child’s ability to protect his own boundaries.

When adults are afraid to say “No”, they are modeling unsafe behavior for their child. They are implicitly teaching him that “No” is a weapon that inflicts permanent damage on the hearer, and that a good person will avoid causing that kind of pain, whatever precious things of their own they have to sacrifice in the process. That’s a recipe for codependence.

Whether they say the word or not, parents have physical veto power over the child and he knows it. Thus, going to great lengths to avoid the appearance of authority only turns an honest conflict into a dishonest one. The child learns it’s not okay to express negative feelings about something that affects him, because the parents aren’t okay with their own feelings. They’re modeling a passive-aggressive way of working around an interpersonal problem.

Children need to be able to signal “No” from an early age in order to feel safe in their bodies, whether it’s by squirming away from an uncomfortable touch or pushing aside food that doesn’t agree with them. Our job as parents is to use our “No” power judiciously, saving it for the most important house rules, and allowing as much flexibility as possible for the child’s safe exploration and mastery of his environment.

What are the “terrible twos” but the child’s experimentation with his own “No”? He’s looking to us to teach him how to set limits skillfully. (“If you don’t want the beef bourguignon, darling, please push it to the side of your tray instead of throwing it on the floor.”)

So bring it on, Bunky. Just let me encase all the furniture in bubble wrap first…

Imitation of Christ, or Substitute Savior?


“Jesus died for your sins” was the best news imaginable when I was taking my first steps out of an abusive family.

As is common for a traumatic enmeshment like ours, my bio mother and I were both under the delusion of being each other’s savior. She thought I was the meaning of her life, her greatest accomplishment, her sole fulfillment. This adulation carried a high price, however. When she was overwhelmed by her own unprocessed sadness and anger, she believed that I, the center of her psychic world, must have caused those feelings. I must not have been loving, respectful, or obedient enough.

It’s natural enough that I would grow up believing her myth about me, as parents are their children’s first gods. But the same dynamic develops between two adults in an abusive-codependent marriage, too. The abusive partner knows how to leaven her dominance with enough displays of helpless neediness that her spouse feels duty-bound to stay.

Abusers attract white knights the way Sleeping Beauty’s briar hedge attracted princes–99% of whom got skewered, don’t forget. What a power trip to be the rescuer, the only one who’s able to heal the broken beloved. I say this not to victim-blame but to illuminate an escape route that many enablers either can’t imagine or don’t feel they deserve: just consider, for a moment, basing your self-worth on something other than this relationship.

So what does this have to do with the Atonement? Well, to me, “Jesus died for your sins” meant that my fundamental okay-ness as a human being, my right to exist, no longer depended on being perfect in another person’s eyes. Jesus, who outranked even my mother, had already decided that I was lovable as an imperfect person. I was actually more free to repent of particular errors because I no longer had to be ashamed of the general truth that I was fallible.

Moreover, “Jesus died for your sins”, as addressed to my mother and the world at large, meant that I didn’t have to die for their sins anymore. The burden of their okay-ness was something I could now hand off to God.

It’s this second point that I want to explore further in this post, as there’s great confusion about it in Christian literature. I’m concerned that we aren’t taught to distinguish between imitating Christ and substituting for him.

Imitation of Christ seems pretty straightforward when it comes to the Matthew 25 checklist of social justice. Heal the sick, feed the hungry, visit the prisoners, stand with the marginalized. We can reasonably disagree about how best to do this, but not whether to do it. Most of the time, this should be enough to keep us disciples busy.

The tricky part comes when we consider imitating other concepts we associate with Christ. Forgiveness. Redemption. Sacrifice. This is where we need to be much more careful that we are not usurping the Savior’s unique functions and thereby minimizing or enabling abuses of power.

This dilemma is especially acute for Christian fiction writers. Indeed, it’s one of the chief difficulties I need to sort out before I can resume writing the Great American Gay Christian Abuse Survivor Novel, a/k/a Two Natures.

What makes a novel “Christian”? Doesn’t it have to include, at a minimum, some characters modeling Christ-like behavior and enacting Christian values? But then don’t we run a terrible risk of mistaking the sign for the thing signified, and telling a story where one person functions as another’s savior in a co-dependent, idolatrous, and misleading way? On the other hand, when we tell the story through a Calvinist lens of total depravity, all the characters become too helpless and self-loathing to propel the plot to a resolution. (Trust me, I’ve tried this.)

The genre of mainstream realist fiction adds its own constraints. It takes place in a naturalistic universe, a narrative space where supernatural interventions are excluded, like the scientist’s laboratory. Generally, these constraints strengthen the work. It’s lazy writing to have an angel drop in and solve all your characters’ problems. Miraculous revelations are also less useful to the reader seeking guidance, since those are rare gifts in real life. Most of the time we have to look for the divine sparks in regular human behavior, something that the best fiction can teach us to do. However, realist fiction doesn’t have an obvious way to depict that God exists in any dimension except in other people. This heightens the danger that the story will encourage us to mistake Christians for Christ.

Two of my latest fiction reads exemplify the worst and the best approaches to illustrating redemption in the realist genre.

The first and worst is Jason F. Wright’s NY Times bestseller The Wednesday Letters, an inspirational soap-opera novel about family secrets. (Basically the same genre as Jodi Picoult, only written by a conservative Christian guy.) Spoiler alert: the drama revolves around a woman who bore her rapist’s baby, kept this a secret from her children (including the aforesaid baby) and the community, and forgave the perpetrator, who turned his life around in prison and became a family friend and trusted pastor. When the secret comes out after her death, the only thing her adult children can talk about is what a saint she was to forgive the rapist, and how we are all obligated to forgive him because Jesus did. And look how much good he did as a pastor afterward! Oh, the power of forgiveness. Tra la la.

I’m picking on this book because it’s far from exceptional. I hear this same invalidating narrative about abuse and sexual assault from many religious people. It’s basically a perpetrator-centered story, using the victim as a foil for his personal growth. The amount of trauma awareness here is negative zero. We’re supposed to be so moved by his transformation that no one asks questions like: Did keeping the rape secret, in order to give the perpetrator a fresh start, make the mother feel ashamed and impede her healing? How could it not harm her relationship with her children? Was it really a responsible choice to not tell her small-town community that their new pastor is a convicted rapist? How can she be 100% sure that he’s not going to re-offend?

I’m not saying abusers never repent, or that they should never be forgiven when they do. I’m saying that saving their souls is not the victim’s job. The perpetrator’s redemption is a matter between himself and Christ. Whatever happens there, he will never be entitled to his victim’s trust, continued contact, or complicity in his secrets.

The Wednesday Letters is bad theology because it puts a Christian stamp of approval on the co-dependent idolatry that characterizes an abusive relationship. It drafts an unwilling and powerless person into the role of suffering servant that Christ took on voluntarily from a position of supreme power.

The title story of Catholic fiction writer Arthur Powers’s splendid new collection, A Hero for the People: Stories of the Brazilian Backlands, offers a far more compelling picture of human cooperation with Christ’s redemptive work. These tales spring from Powers’s work with the Peace Corps, helping subsistence farmers and rural workers resist being forced off their land by wealthy speculators in league with a corrupt government. (A scenario similar to the classic Western movie “Shane“.)

In this story, a humble, slightly nebbish-y, but dedicated monk is reassigned to a remote mission outpost which the diocese plans to close as soon as its ancient priest dies. Brother Michel starts listening to the locals’ tales of oppression and takes up their cause despite threats against his life. But all the while, he daydreams and prays for a hero who would ride into town and rout the overwhelming forces arrayed against them, like Shane the gunslinger. Their nonviolent resistance staves off the land seizure for another day, but there’s no Hollywood ending. Brother Michel knows he can only give it his utmost while turning the outcome over to God. Still, he prays for a hero, while the reader sees the sweet irony that the monk is the answer to his own prayer, a title that he would never dare claim for himself.

What makes Brother Michel’s imitation of Christ genuine and beneficial to the reader? Two things. Number one, it leaves room for God’s further action. The monk can’t fix the problem all by himself. He may not be able to fix it at all, but with God’s help, he’s brave enough to do his part. Number two, he isn’t consciously playing the role of savior, an ego trip that tempts a person to make himself the center of someone else’s story. “A Hero for the People” is not a set-up to show what a great person Brother Michel becomes. It’s about how he makes himself available in a Christ-like way to the oppressed, not about how he transforms the oppressors’ hearts, although that possibility is left open as well.

Unlike the rape in The Wednesday Letters, the exploitation of the poor is the central Christian concern of “A Hero for the People”. We are invited, perhaps commanded, to help the Brother Michels of the world combat this evil, rather than congratulate ourselves for forgiving it.

For more on the Christian fiction writer’s dilemmas, see my 2008 post, “Who Cares for the Reader’s Soul?“

Abuse and the Limits of the Welcoming Church


They dress the wound of my people
  as though it were not serious.
“Peace, peace,” they say,
  when there is no peace.
(Jeremiah 6:14)

Projection and denial are two ways we avoid a clear view of evil. In the progressive church, we perceive, perhaps too vividly, how our fundamentalist counterparts project their shadow selves onto out-groups such as women, gays, and nonbelievers. We understand that this purity obsession can shield abusers in the community by offering an easy mechanism to discredit the victim. In a congregation taught to see women as sexual temptresses, for example, a molested young girl can be pressured to repent for “leading” the man to sin.

However, progressives’ overcompensation in the direction of peace and unity can be just as toxic for survivors. Overreacting against fundamentalist divisiveness, our churches minimize genuine distinctions of culpability and power within the community we are creating. If inclusion is our only defining value, where is the conversation about accountability and transformation?

Shortly after a terrorist bombing dominated our national news, I heard a liberal sermon that
encouraged us to turn our fears over to God’s protection, rather than
pushing them outward to demonize all Muslims. Good message, surely. But
then the preacher went on to say something like “All enemies can become friends.”

I’m sorry but NO. As the military saying goes, “The enemy gets a vote.” My good intentions cannot magically dissuade someone from trying to kill me. This sounds exactly like the myth that enmeshes domestic violence victims: “If I love him enough, if I’m good enough, if I’m spiritual and enlightened enough, he’ll change.”

Perhaps the concept of a friend has become degraded in the Facebook age, but perpetuating the same confusion from the pulpit can have dangerous consequences. There are a lot of abuse survivors in the pews who aren’t clear about their right to refuse intimacy with someone they don’t trust.

Similarly, in our zeal to create a big-tent church for people with diverse beliefs, are we making it socially impossible for members to distance themselves from, or skillfully confront, fellow members whose beliefs they find oppressive? I can make civilized small talk with Christians who believe homosexuality is a sin, as long as they stay off the topic. But don’t pressure me to be friends with them, because friendship in my book requires mutual trust and respect, and I don’t trust someone who votes to strip my family of our civil rights. And please stop trying to convince me how “nice” they are. It’s easy to be nice when you hold all the cards.

Progressive churches can fall prey to the same (deliberate?) naivete one encounters among free-speech absolutists. Any time someone dares to suggest that unmoderated rape threats in online political forums, or Facebook fan pages for wife-beating, might be driving women out of the conversation, a horde of liberals will cry “censorship!” But silencing can be covert as well as overt. The sad fact is that not all people can safely coexist, no matter how inclusive you’d like your community to be.

Too often, the victim who refuses to sit down at the peace table with the unrepentant oppressor is blamed for putting up obstacles to unity. In fact, the blame lies with the other person who demands to belong to the community while subverting its norms and preying on its members. In a powerful recent post about why she no longer attends church, feminist Christian writer and rape survivor Sarah Moon says:

How radical and Jesus-like does that sound? Abusers and survivors, sitting at the same table. Sharing the same bread and wine. The lion lying down next to the lamb.

Sure. That sounds great. Excuse me while I go have a panic attack or two.

I don’t know how to respond to this trend anymore. When I express discomfort about calling a rapist my “brother in Christ,” people accuse me of being a bitter, grace-hating person. When I say that I can’t get over the hurt my abuser caused me, people tell me to get over my “perpetual victimhood.” When I ask for a safe space, people tell me I’m acting just like the exclusionary fundamentalists, and that I need to learn that Christianity isn’t about being uncomfortable.

There’s no grace for me, as I try to work through all the festering hate toward my rapist that I don’t know what the hell to do with. There’s no grace as I try to figure out whether I ever want to forgive a man who hurts me more each day even though we haven’t spoken in six years. Maybe they’re right and I am the bitter, hateful person they think I am, but what about all this talk of grace?

Is progressive Christianity spending so much grace on abusers, in order to show the world how “radical” and “subversive” they are, that they have only scraps left for survivors?

I share Sarah’s reservations about the fetishization of “discomfort” and “being radical”. Underneath the veneer of martyrdom, it’s a self-aggrandizing focus that makes religion about how much pain you can take, not how much justice you can create.

Toranse, an ex-evangelical incest survivor who blogs at Speaking While the World Sleeps, has some choice words about this brand of radicalism. She points out that there’s nothing more mainstream than a no-strings-attached welcome for predators:

How fucking easy. There is nothing particularly “radical” about “extending grace.” “The world” does it all the time. If there ever were a time when Christians (from fundie to progressive to emergent) were dressing in “the world’s” street clothes, it’d definitely be when they’re falling over themselves to welcome an abuser or rapist back to church. How fucking easy to pretend it away. As a survivor, I know how much nicer it seems to just say you forgive. No conflict. Less hardship, it feels. Fewer “radical love” Christians poking their fingers in your wounds. If there ever was a fucking wide, wide, wide road, if ever there was something so fucking opposite of a “narrow way,” it’s this.

Let me say, I love my local church. I don’t know of anything unsafe going on in our community. I just feel very alone sometimes in liberal Christianity, because niceness trumps clear thinking and speaking about sin.

The Underside of the Tapestry: Reading Christian Books for What’s Missing


Nowadays, more often than not, when I listen to a sermon or read a Christian spiritual guide with friends, a moment will arise when my inner reaction to the text seems contrary to what everyone else is getting out of it. They’re seeing an inspiring picture on the right side of the tapestry, while I’m underneath looking at the loose threads and snarled knots. Like the optical illusion that’s either a vase or two kissing faces, one can at best switch back and forth between these two views, not hold them side by side. Or so I tell myself, those times when I keep my critique under wraps, not wanting to be the death’s-head at the feast who spoils the faith that others need for comfort.

I don’t know that I have less faith that my neighbors in the pews, just faith in different things, and perhaps too little patience with beliefs and attitudes that (in my opinion) distract from our most urgent afflictions and their best cures. Astute readers of this blog will remember that I’ve always been this way, but also notice that my priorities list has been more changeable than my fervor. This awkward mutability gives me another reason to think twice before challenging the group’s consensus.

As far as is consistent with kindness and timeliness, of course, I nonetheless believe every serious engagement with a spiritual text should eventually include the deconstructionist questions, “What is the power position of the author and his/her assumed audience?” and “What perspectives are being left out?”

Advocates of traditional, conservative education (and such a one was I!) have confused deconstructionism with moral relativism. Quite the contrary. The questions above are attempts to bring a consciousness of justice into how we read a text, to take responsibility for our standpoint and our blind spots.

True, in the prideful and competitive culture of academia, these questions have been deployed in bad faith, to dismiss intellectual rivals by labeling them “oppressors”, exactly as their conservative Christian counterparts would exploit the label “heretics”. But the inquiry into power dynamics and incompleteness need not be a bug hunt. It should simply be a nonjudgmental acknowledgment that no text is completely satisfying because the ideal community is always more diverse than one perspective can encompass. This acknowledgment would clarify that members who enter the discussion from an unrepresented standpoint are welcome contributors, not spoilers.

For instance, I belong to a weekly discussion group that’s currently studying the Examen, a daily prayer practice developed by St. Ignatius of Loyola. One of our members, a retired priest, observed that this practice was developed by monastics who had the privilege of contemplation because their daily subsistence needs were met by the community. We have a similar luxury of prayer time as middle-class Americans, if we choose to use it that way, of course. He wondered whether the Examen would be possible or relevant for a desperately poor person such as those he had served in his past congregation–someone whose entire attention was taken up with keeping her kids fed and her house from collapsing.

I found this question uncomfortable in a good way. It added another layer to the repentance and gratitude themes of the Examen by reminding me that my experience was not the center of the universe. It opened the door to other fruitful questions: Is contemplative prayer at the top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, worth considering only after basic physical security is established? Or is it necessary at every level of survival, so that (as the Buddha would say) we don’t add to our suffering by becoming entangled in fear, anger, and greed? If the latter, how would the Examen best be adapted to be useful and validating to someone living on the margins? To take that question seriously, we would have to work harder to include such people in our discussion group, instead of making guesses about their spiritual needs from our standpoint.

For further reading on these themes, I recommend:
James K.A. Smith, Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church (Baker Academic, 2006)
John D. Caputo, What Would Jesus Deconstruct? (Baker Academic, 2007)
Crystal L. Downing, How Postmodernism Serves (My) Faith: Questioning Truth in Language, Philosophy, and Art (IVP Academic, 2006)

Poetry from Inside: “Of Father, From Prison”

My prison pen pal “Jon“, who is serving a life sentence in California for a burglary-related homicide, continues his efforts to grow in self-awareness and spiritual maturity through writing. I thought this recent poem was one of his finest, expressing compassion for his child-self alongside remorse for the flawed path he took as an adult. It’s a simple but deep story that I imagine many troubled young men will recognize as their own.

Of Father, From Prison

I used to smile in wonder
at the barb of the fish hook
and however you managed to get worms
so delicately placed and pierced.
Then even when you showed me how
I still couldn’t do it on my own
and sometimes couldn’t bear to look.

I used to sit and wander
as the landscapes became cities
with people beneath the lights of day.
Drifting by in gusts of winds
of mountaintops and Mayberrys
and cow filled fields and stars.
Watching from the passenger seat
while you drove your precious truck
and I waited for my turn
that had finally never come.

I used to be amazed
at all the grand and well told stories
of the life you really never led.
I realized I never even knew you
when I noticed they were lies.
You were gentle, very quiet
always private and reclusive.
You could fix anything inanimate
yet never repair the troubled minds
of yourself or those around you.
And I can think of all the places
you would take me as I grew.
Leaving us with memories
of decaying and joyless days,
of worms, fish hooks and barbs.
And I would be amazed
if you ever came to know
how very much alike
we’ve finally become.

I do not wander in wonders anymore
but sometimes think of who you are.
You living in your solitude
and me stuck within my own.
Where computers are your company,
while books become my best of friends.
Your prison is in a house
and mine within a cell.
Inside the worlds of our own making,
trapped within our mortal shells.

Poetry by William J. Reiter: “Jimi & a hundred & one blue airborne rangers”


I recently got an email from Bill Reiter of Iowa, a poet, Vietnam veteran, and National Endowment for the Arts grant recipient for playwriting. We haven’t been able to confirm whether we’re related, but all Reiters are welcome at the Block. He kindly shares this poem with our readers.

jimi & a hundred & one blue airborne rangers
(the summer of love 1967)

it was a hall
an old movie house really
in the city of saint francis
near the ocean called peace

a grace slick-like chick
was jumpin’ in blue white strobe lights
amorphous light shows pulsating walls
all just a prologue to hendrix

he came out at last
a ‘fro imitation of a black ragdoll
escaped from some absurd beckett cast
surely a tragedy or farce was about to unfold
in the silver screen-less seat-less theater
above a stoned blue clowning crowd

he struck left-handed
upside down strings
a bell-bottomed blue heron
with piercing dark eyes
heavy with one guitar wing

he looked down at us
as if into san francisco’s blue bay
from coit’s tower
as if to jump from another hughes burly bird

i pushed to the front to hear
his voice soft wings
on the wind cries mary
gliding around us
around the statue of saint francis
in the city of saint francis
near the ocean called peace
like a cable car hushing up telegraph hill

i wanted to know about over there
and he played alarums purple haze
murderous intent in hey joe
pain of rejection star spangled banner
with its true blue taps near the end

jimi left the stage that night
prophesying his own end
which came eventually street easy
a barbiturate permanent sleep

he was right-on however about over there
and as he knew coming back was worse

Mother’s Day: Honoring Our Complicated Families

Who is like the Lord our God, the one who sits enthroned on high?…He settles the childless woman in her home as a happy mother of children. (Psalm 113:5, 9)

Mother’s Day has always been a difficult holiday for me. Unlike Christmas or Thanksgiving, there’s no larger goal to take the focus off one’s personal life and the ways it conforms or fails to conform to a Hallmark card.

Because of her trauma issues, my biological mother never felt sufficiently loved or special. On Mother’s Day, she was especially disappointed and confused by the contrast between how she was supposed to feel and how she actually felt. No matter what we did, it wasn’t enough. Now that she and my other mom are apart, her ex-partner has had space to grow into the mother I need, no longer forced into the shadows. But it’s been a long time coming.

Many infertile and waiting adoptive moms can relate to the loneliness of those years when Mother’s Day came around again and we still didn’t have our child. We belonged to an unseen minority who couldn’t help but recognize the complexity of this thing we call “motherhood”, so oversimplified by the sentimental mainstream. Birthmothers, too, may wonder what this day should mean to them. There are no words for loss in the language of this holiday, just pink flowers and brunch and cards that say “you’re the bestest”.

Last year, on my first Mother’s Day as a mom, I was depressed, and ashamed of it. I loved my one-month-old son. I was so proud to sit in the “parents with small children” pew in church for the first time ever. But the pain of our adoption journey hadn’t healed. I felt pressured by the rhetoric of motherhood to pretend that everything was hearts-and-flowers, that this moment made all the past betrayals worthwhile.

It didn’t help that it coincided with the date when our birthmother’s consent became irrevocable. Now it’s REAL. Help me, mommy! I called her up to give her good wishes and support. Her confidence in me, her comfort with her decision, made me believe I really deserved to celebrate, at last.

Just as I push back against aggressive projections of masculinity onto my 13-month-old (I swear, he comes by that cowboy swagger naturally), I continue to deconstruct the false choices inherent in popular ideas of motherhood. Adulthood and sacrifice versus immaturity and freedom. Being ridiculed for hypervigilance yet blamed for anything that goes wrong with one’s child. Mothering, as opposed to generic “parenting”, is by definition a female activity. And we all know what fun it is to be female in our society. Maybe that’s one reason I was so afraid of it.

Therefore, mothering, for me, is also an invitation to lean into the political responsibility that goes along with adulthood. This passage from the “Motherhood and Daughterhood” chapter of Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born spoke to me during those early days of transformation into Shane’s Mom:

The “unchilded” woman, if such a term makes any sense, is still affected by centuries-long attitudes–on the part of both women and men–towards the birthing, child-rearing function of women. Any woman who believes that the institution of motherhood has nothing to do with her is closing her eyes to crucial aspects of her situation.

Many of the great mothers have not been biological. The novel Jane Eyre…can be read as a woman-pilgrim’s progres along a path of classic female temptation, in which the motherless Jane time after time finds women who protect, solace, teach, challenge, and nurture her in self-respect. For centuries, daughters have beem strengthened and energized by nonbiological mothers, who have combined a care for the practical values of survival with an incitement toward further horizons, a compassion for vulnerability with an insistence on our buried strengths. It is precisely this that has allowed us to survive…

We are, none of us, “either” mothers or daughters; to our amazement, confusion, and greater complexity, we are both. Women, mothers or not, who feel committed to other women, are increasingly giving each other a quality of caring filled with the diffuse kinds of identification that exist between actual mothers and daughters. Into the mere notion of “mothering” we may carry, as daughters, negative echoes of our own mothers’ martyrdom, the burden of their valiant, necessarily limited efforts on our behalf, the confusion of their double messages. But it is a timidity of the imagination which urges that we can be “daughters”–therefore free spirits–rather than “mothers”–defined as eternal givers. Mothering and nonmothering have been such charged concepts for us, precisely because whichever we did has been turned against us.

To accept and integrate and strengthen both the mother and the daughter in ourselves is no easy matter, because patriarchal attitudes have encouraged us to split, to polarize, these images, and to project all unwanted guilt, anger, shame, power, freedom, onto the “other” woman. But any radical vision of sisterhood demands that we reintegrate them. (pgs. 252-53)

 

My little pea pod and me in April 2012.