Some of the pieces

Some things your brain will not permit you to think about until you are in a place where it is truly permissible, where you have free mental space. I have gained some of that recently.

Forgotten:

• In the spring semester of my freshman year, when I myself am in the beginning of a year-long depressive episode, three alumni commit suicide. At least two of them are gay.

• The trigger for the last major relapse of my eating disorder there: being set up with a friend of a friend.  A cool and respectable Wheaton dude; I didn't know why it made me feel so terrified and despairing, but I promised myself I would get sick again and make it go away.

Waiting to be discovered:

• That professor with the fresh, shiny, postmodern explanation for why gay people don't really exist that all the more liberal students swallowed so eagerly? He based his argument entirely on concepts appropriated directly from queer theory, but failed both to give credit and to mention that the gay scholars who created those concepts had found it possible to follow them to different conclusions.

Read in May 2012

As always, titles link to the pertinent Goodreads page — feel free to add me as a friend on there if you have an account.

1. X-Day, Vols. 1 & 2, by Setona Mizushiro
Manga about a motley group of outsiders that unites around a desire to blow their high school up. Yes, it's dark and it's about nihilistic people; it's also quite poignant. It didn't even matter that I didn't care that much about the plot; I cared enough about the premise and the narrator.

2. Imagine Being More Afraid of Freedom Than Slavery: Poems, by Pamela Sneed
I'm somewhat indifferent to her style, but her thought processes feel like my own, and that's comforting, and illuminating in some ways. Poems of memoir, of varying degrees of politicality.

3. Be the Person You Want to Find: Relationship and Self-Discovery, by Cheri Huber
This is a lot more Zen/mindfulness philosophy than it is normal self-improvement/self-help. It's good. She's compelling and explains well, and the formatting (i.e. the amount of empty page space) suits the content.

4. The Death Notebooks, by Anne Sexton
Image-driven, wandering, morbid. The sequence called "The Furies" is gorgeous.

5. Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology, by Rosemary Radford Ruether
This was such excellent food for my intellect. As it says, it is not a feminist theology; it is a contribution towards a feminist theology, in the form of assessments of and reflections on other Christian theologies and theological positions. She is bold, not always orthodox but eminently reasonable, very consistent, utterly penetrating... I kind of fell in love her writing and her thinking — she has a gift for synthesis and for articulating thorny things in spacious ways.

Read in April 2012

As always, titles link to the pertinent Goodreads page — feel free to add me as a friend on there if you have a Goodreads account.

1. A Prayerbook for Spiritual Friends, by Madeleine L'Engle and Luci Shaw
I liked this more as a portrayal of the friendship of these two women — both writers and poets, in the later part of their life — than as a devotional work. As the latter, it's nice, but pretty light.

2. The Passion, by Jeanette Winterson
Ambivalent. If you've read this, I'd be interested to hear what you thought.

3. Woman Hating, by Andrea Dworkin [free download]
Strong, compelling, clean analysis. The opening section on fairy tales was particularly brilliant. I felt a little skeptical about the claims and declarations she makes in the last twenty or thirty pages, though.

4. The Rosary for Episcopalians/Anglicans, by Thomas Schultz
Good basic primer, with some alternative rosaries to pray, e.g. one inspired by St. Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love.

5. The Book of Folly, by Anne Sexton
I don't remember. But I like her, and I finished it, so it couldn't have been worse than "pretty good."

6. The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green
Also ambivalent to this one, at least to the plot. The characters were realistic, quirky, and rather dear. I thought his portrayal of the subculture that arises among seriously ill children and teens was so interesting: the frequent experience of "cancer perks," doubts about the way cancer victims are made into saints, doubts about the meaning ascribed to their young lives because of their illnesses.

7.  Eight1011, by Sui Solitaire [Pay as you can here]
A polished, atmospheric collection of semi-/quasi-confessional poems. Somewhat dark, with an absorbing flow.

8. The Goose Girl, by Shannon Hale
Reread. Always gorgeous (a retold fairy tale). I was particularly struck this time by how cinematic the imagery was.

9. The Depression Book, by Cheri Huber
This Zen/mindfulness (a.k.a. tangerine-eating) perspective has significantly altered my own perspective on coping with depression, for the better, I think. Her approach to depression and other negative emotional experiences is unconventional but empowering, and pretty darn functional. If you deal with depression or anxiety, I highly recommend this.

Male dominance is a continuum

I learned that a professor from my alma mater has been charged with possession of child pornography.

Two of my college friends and I were visiting. That same weekend, we were sitting down with homemade drinks to read aloud from some ultra-conservative Christian books on gender and marriage — for a laugh, you know, because we were all raised in conservative evangelical Christianity and came to feminism together.

One of us brought up the child porn scandal again. I forget who. And it reminded me very suddenly that the books we were passing around were not harmless.

By the way...to be more precise: it was aggravated child pornography. I had to look that up — it means the victimized children were under the age of thirteen. According to the news coverage, many of them "appeared" to be younger than five.

So: There are men who take pleasure, in the plainest sense, in materials that document the rape of small children. Many of them, apparently. And most of them aren't psychopaths living in their mothers' basements; some of them are model Christian men who teach child development classes at Christian colleges.

And here we have these books about how women need to suppress their opinions more and obey their husbands more and learn to be happy with what men want. Yeah. Male dominance is a continuum, and all of it is ghastly once you've seen it as such, seen the extremes and made the connections. (And the extremes are so common! So common!) It's a dead serious matter when millions of my fellow Christians wholeheartedly believe that men need more power. All these horrors, crimes of dehumanization and dominance, perpetrated almost exclusively by men, and yet here are all these ordinary people saying, men need more power, women and children aren't submitting enough...

No. No.

I do not believe the rape of children for male entertainment will end until men as a class lose a great deal of their power, because men as a class hold a number of powers that women are not permitted to have, as well as a number of powers that no one should be permitted to have.

Patriarchy is a continuum.

Courage: we must make the connections, now.

Second simplicities

No, upon consideration I see

both doubt and faith are simple:

Between the pages of
the book of Numbers,
I press three plum blossoms.

Read in February 2012

1. At the Root of this Longing: Reconciling a Spiritual Hunger and a Feminist Thirst, by Carol Lee Flinders
Much food for thought about the conflicts between religion and feminism, and the possibilities for complementarity. The author is a member of a meditation community; her focus is, fittingly, more on mystic traditions than on the mainstream of any religion. Though the book is only a few years old, I'd call her a second-wave feminist. Lisa's review is good. I learned a lot and my thinking was VERY stimulated.

2. Life is Funny, by E.R. Frank
The intersecting lives of teenagers in and around New York City. Gritty, but not all sad. The author is a social worker — when I read that in her bio, I went, "Ah..." and nodded. It's a quick read with a heart.

3. The Gate to Women's Country, by Sheri S. Tepper
Post-apocalyptic ecofeminist sci-fi. The world-building reminded me of Tamora Pierce's novels. Some might find the beginning slow, but stick with it. I got very emotionally involved with this book. It passes quite a (deserved, in my opinion) indictment on modern post-/industrial societies, and it's zang good.

Read in January 2012

1. The Thing About Thin: Body Image, Eating Disorders, Resistance, + What Really Matters, by Sui Solitaire
[See this post.]

2. Girl Meets God: A Memoir, by Lauren F. Winner
Her style of writing is so plain that this book didn't captivate me at first, but by the end I loved it. It's about her conversion to orthodox Judaism after a Jewish upbringing, and then her conversion to Christianity during college. She's so smart. Funny at times, and very self-aware.

3. Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation, by Mary Daly
Deeply thought-provoking. She begins from the assumption that theology itself, and the Church itself, are corrupted by misogyny not only in form but also in principle. From there, she makes a full critique and describes her vision of a way forward, out of patriarchal religion.

4. The Lover, by Marguerite Duras
The story is absolutely messed up, and it was hard for me to stop thinking about that. The prose is kind of stream-of-consciousness. It's sad. It's not beautiful, though the atmosphere it builds is rather beautiful.

5. Jacob Have I Loved, by Katherine Paterson
A reread.

6. All My Pretty Ones, by Anne Sexton
Wonderful. Anne Sexton is becoming another favorite poet. I posted the opening poem from this collection several years ago: "The Truth the Dead Know."

Recognizing what I need tonight

(I needed to take the time to think about what I needed, for starters, so thank you, Sui.)

To wait to revise blog posts until tomorrow, because I can't revise well at this time of night.

To face my assignments, because being afraid of them makes me literally ill, so kindness and mindfulness ought to take the form of Biting the Bullet.

To begin again simply, and read Paul's letter to the Hebrews. To taste my old practices again, thoughtfully — the things that "being a Christian" used to imply for me.

To respect the bedtimes that work for me, regardless of how productive or unproductive I have been with my evening.

And a dose of negative capability.

You?

Echoing

Bitterness: As soon as you consciously wish to forget something, it becomes almost impossible.

It's hard for me to remember physical pain once it's passed, but I can remember how it felt to be profoundly depressed, and re-collecting the original pain, holding it whole again in my hands — old, but whole — strikes an echo hurt, a meta-pain.

Melissa wrote [trigger warning for eating disorders] that this grief for the past self and for those unforgettable things is a good sign, even when it hurts deeply. Because it means that sympathy has grown where the hatred used to be.

You should read Lexi's post too, about the mean reds vs. the blues and "it's like depression has its own version of ptsd." I'm grateful for her brain.

In what sense can you leave it behind, the days of leaving scars, of wanting to be dead? And how, without forgetting, without pretending that I don't still have to watch against depression?

I want to say, Too much lost. That's part of the pain.

What lost? Some innocence, I guess. Hatred and violence and hopelessness put an end to a certain type of innocence, and those have had their place in parts of my saga with depression.

And so much to leave behind.

Theodicy. Is it the essence of evil, that suffering is meaningless?

"Humans, including women, construct meaning. That means that when something happens to us, when we have experiences, we try to find in them some reason for them, some significance that they have to us or for us. Humans find meaning in poverty and tyranny and the atrocities of history; those who have suffered most still construct meaning; and those who know nothing take their ignorance as if it were a precious, rare clay and they too construct meaning. In this way, humans assert that we have worth; what has happened to us matters; our time here on earth is not entirely filled with random events and spurious pain. On the contrary, we can understand some things if we try hard to learn empathy; we can seek freedom and honor and dignity; that we care about meaning gives us a human pride that has the fragility of a butterfly and the strength of tempered steel."
– Andrea Dworkin
  Intercourse

The evangelical in me says that that's what grace means here, that this will all mean something, and that it's not just self-illusion to think so.

I have to believe that. In an integrity of experience and purpose that will be clear in the end, with enough distance, or in those rare minutes. That there will be a story to this, to me, and that it will not be senseless.

Untitled

"There is no human love that is not broken somewhere."
- Henri Nouwen

I am full (God empty me)
of the desire to be needed
because what is needed
cannot be replaced so easily,
will not be discarded so easily—
because yes, sometimes
I am full of fears like that

But the truth is
that it is      not necessary
(to be needed) here,
and perhaps the fact
of me being here
says I am
necessary—
in a way that has nothing to do with the mean little
being-needed which my heart cultivates so reflexively
or the being-wanted which it wants, for that matter—

or anyway,
as necessary as
I need      to be

"this is the birth/day of life and love and wings"

Spring is being born and everything is being born. This is how I am feeling lately, from the moment I wake with the sky blowing on my face through the open window—so exultant. I ate lunch in the full sunshine thinking this is the sun's birthday and so I must share this with you, a favorite since freshman year.

i thank You God for most this amazing

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

- e.e. cummings

Among things that are passing away

from this weekend's collect: "and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall endure."

it caught in my mind because I am already noticing the turn towards autumn. as beautiful as fall is and as winter can be (until about February 1st...hah), it always saddens me a little to watch the days shortening, the light lengthening, the trees baring. very poignant, is autumn, in that "tears for passing things.../things mortal touch the mind" kind of way, or: "leaves, like the things of man, you/with your fresh thoughts care for, can you?"

you know what I mean?

so, here is the tail end of the summer pictures.



still working on staying aware of the depth of field thing...heh.



wanted to see what would turn out if I held the Holga wide lens over the normal lens on my Zenit.



Handmade bread and fresh summer fruit and hands and sunlight: this one makes me happy.







note the little handprints in the dust on the seat.

I would be all right. That was/the hardest decision I've ever made

I set some fruit flies free today. carried my trash bin out to empty it into the dumpster and it left a wafting trail of them in the stairwell.

in the eight-minute break in the middle of my Tuesday/Thursday anthro class, Riley lay down on his back in the aisle between the desks and closed his eyes. I overheard from behind me:

"I was anesthetized, and I came out of it and I was screaming, I was having a panic attack! in front of the other patients, and the doctor told me I had to stop, because I was scaring them!"

and someone else: a something and "evolving to corporate tragedy" and some things more.

speaking of fruit—speaking of fruit perfect whole and unbothered by them—there are two small pears on my windowsill, pears which have never been stickered. and when I am lonely, I feel less so when I look at them. plainness and loveliness are almost companions. they almost are.

do you know how at times every direction seems to be sending the same message to you? this is happening to me now. they are all saying, it is time to make some more community for yourself; you can't live outside of an us, you need them to see God and you will need them to survive this winter. it this urgency is not very American, but I think it's true. I believe still in solitude very much, but I also believe we overestimate the individual.

in-between theology readings, I fell asleep feeling like a small animal, at the end of my bed, the flat part, a nest of a blanket. out of sight of the mirror, the mirror which can't turn its face. not quite out of sight of the sun. the noise of the packaging tape rips fluttering in the breeze.

actually, I suppose it's relative whether I am a small animal or not.

the part they didn't tell you about riding off into the sunset—how beautiful the light would be falling on your handlebars...

Repost: To a Long Loved Love, by Madeleine L'Engle

Words this true make me respond in physical ways — I close my eyes and press a hand to my chest or my face — I don't know why. Everyone wants to be loved in this way — all lovers must also be seers. See-ers.

To a Long Loved Love: 7

Because you're not what I would have you be
I blind myself to who, in truth, you are.
Seeking mirage where desert blooms, I mar
Your you. Aaah, I would like to see
Past all delusion to reality:
Then would I see God's image in your face,
His hand in yours, and in your eyes his grace.
Because I'm not what I would have me be,
I idolize Two who are not any place,
Not you, not me, and so we never touch.
Reality would burn. I do not like it much.
And yet in you, in me, I find a trace
Of love which struggles to break through
The hidden lovely truth of me, of you.

- Madeleine L'Engle

Notes

Waffles and strawberries and tea;
it's raining and it's September

***

Dear Miss,
There's magic in the things that you have no clue how to say
yours, me

***

And Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

***

I have an idea, I said
Uh oh, she said
How about I stay curled up like this and you go dig me a hole that I can hibernate in?
I'll get on that, she said.

***

"Just the faith of an empty hand..."
The old reminder for myself these days:
Did God give you enough strength for today? Yes? And he will also give you enough for tomorrow. It's good and solid to know this.

***

Like Poem starts out like this:
I like the motion of hands tearing bread, especially yours
I like the way the sun sees your skin through the branches of the tree

This is free

And each of us broken and put back together,
now finally with no thoughts for ourselves except
to be here, together
singing in the sun-sweet wind.

I love this quote.

"If someone comes to you for help, you shall not turn him off with pious words and kneel in prayer to recommend him to God; you shall act as if there were no God, as if there were only one person in all the world who could help him: you yourself."

Quoted from a book of a rabbi's teachings in A View of the Ocean, by Jan de Hartog.

Rain like grace

The summer thunderstorms they get here in the Midwest are one of my favorite things about the region, and although we've had some rain since I got back here at the end of August, the meteorology gods have kept me waiting for a real storm.

Last night it FINALLY came. After three sunless, rainless months at home and the steady, boring rainfall we had two weeks ago (Please rain harder, I kept muttering) - it was just glorious to be caught in a real downpour again, to think again of the heavens as a gracious, outrageously immoderate expression of love.

So that is what happiness consists of for me right now: water falling so heavy from the sky that you can barely see; bare muddy feet; the sound of running in a still-damp wrap skirt; a ribbon in dirty rain-rinsed hair.

"Yet he has not left himself without testimony: He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy."
- Acts 14:17

Day of miracles

The tomb is empty. Wrong has been made right, and innocence has been restored; sin is dead and death is conquered....Thank God for the gift of his Son, whose sacrifice allows us to return to the perfect joy of communion with him! Christos anesti!

"A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind."
-Theodore Roethke
from "In a Dark Time"

"I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full."
-Jesus
John 10:10b

"Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance? He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in steadfast love. He will again have compassion on us; he will tread our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. You will show faithfulness to Jacob and steadfast love to Abraham, as you have sworn to our fathers from the days of old."
- Micah 7:18-20