Augustine, the fourth-century bishop, enjoyed sleeping with women. He liked sex. His monogamous relationship with a woman who bore his child was not a marriage. The arrangement between the two of them was sexual. Their one child was probably a mistake; clearly, Augustine and his concubine used birth control. He put aside his concubine, who became a voluntary widow, so that he might marry properly and enter the governing class. The girl chosen for him by his mother, Monica, was Catholic and she, his mother, hoped Augustine might himself become a baptized Catholic as a result of the union.
Taking up with a mistress after his concubine departed, Augustine realized that he had a compulsive need for sex, the obvious basis for any further relationships with women, even a wife. He chose not to marry, becoming instead ordained to the priesthood.
The mystical joy of communion with the spirit had intervened: "limbs asking to receive the body's embrace" were disturbingly similar to the touch of God. Christ's embrace of the soul was superior to even Catholic marriage: the direct encounter with God's Wisdom in "an utterly untroubled gaze, a most clean embrace; to see and to cling to Her naked, with no veil of bodily sensation in between."
The discipline of continence allowed him to embrace Christ more fully: "O, my late joy!"
But Augustine did not take up an ascetic life alone. His male friends joined him in "a holy plan of life, . . . truly chaste because [of the] untarnished joining" of like souls. In Hippo, five years later (391) Augustine founded a little monastic community that became for him serenity at the center of his hectic episcopal life.
What troubled Augustine was the urge to act out sexually (the urge not in itself a sin), and he felt it deeply. Even married couples had to fight against this urge. In the act of marital intercourse, even for the production of children, the body enacts Adam's fall. Augustine taught that we all feel sexual shame. Baptism and incorporation into the church freed men and women from the shame of Adam--and that only at the end of time. This is the power of what has come to be known as "original sin," which, according to Augustine, is transmitted to children at conception.
For Augustine, clearly, the way out of the sexual trap--the body created to embrace the material, the requirement that the body be loved and cherished, as Augustine believed--was not easy. He regretted having engaged in sexual intercourse because, having done so, he knew what he was relinquishing: sadness attends the act, always, because of its coming between the human and God.
How does this brief review of Augustine's struggle with sexuality relate to today's disputes over homosexuality and the church (and, as I argue, women in the church)? Male society, for Augustine, was the only safe society allowed to the Christian who wished to know God outside of the pleasures of the flesh. With Augustine the church learns shame and her children are conceived in shame. Parents are taught the the act of sexual intercourse is in itself a submission to concupiscence, the urge to pleasure. When males in the church engage in sexual acts, they do so only for pleasure and they violate the last refuge of the celibate male: the company of other celibate males. If the purity of the church cannot be upheld in the company of men, then its society as a mirror of God's purity is doomed. Bad enough that women have entered the sacred garden of male continence and discourse, tempting them with conpupiscence; for the male to do the same, to imitate the female, is intolerable.
Augustine was not gay. He loved the flesh of women. He retreated to the company of celibate men to protect himself and to remain open to the embrace of Christ. He subjugated the flesh to his and God's will. And expected others to do the same, insofar as they were able. The modern conservative objection to the full inclusion of gays and lesbians in the church is one with Augustine's rejection of the embrace of flesh: God's will is that the body be held in purity for the embrace of Christ. The male body is the vessel of that purity. Once again, the model is the body of Christ, the male whose penis is forever that of an infant.
Monday, May 21, 2007
Monday, May 14, 2007
The Church of St. Jamestown
I had planned to continue my reflections on the body today, but the Episcopal Church advertisement in the Saturday New York Times, on the OpEd page, derailed that intention. The ad, which commemorates the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, represents in almost every respect the problem with the Episcopal Church today.
The ad is wordy, dense, backward-looking.
The headline, "Marking a Milestone, Moving Forward," is about as dull and institutional as a headline can be.
The content begins with history, buildings, and, finally, in paragraph 7, The Boook of Common Prayer.
It appears that the people in the Episcopal Church have differing points of view but it isn't clear about what.
And then there is a reiteration of our English heritage as a church (the word English outnumbers the word Jesus three to one), as if that is a big selling point.
The ad says we struggle over how to interpret faith for today, how to maintain tradition, how to disagree. Some people leave us, some come back. But: TO WHAT? WHAT DO WE BELIEVE?
We are moving forward in mission all over the world--a world we are committed to transforming to one of justice, peace, wholeness, holy living (as Jesus taught). We get around to that message in paragraph twelve. Is that the core of our belief?
It is apparent in a couple of other references that the church has been in the right place at the right time (for gays and lesbians, for example), but the overwhelming impression created by this unfortunate ad is that the Episcopal Church is the First Church of St. Jamestown: stuck in the past, unaware of its own mission and message for the world of today, inordinately proud of its buildings (especially the big ones), and unable to articulate a vision for the future that might mean something in the twenty-first century. Historically, Jamestown is significant for this country and the church, but it was also a slave-owning settlement and the first step toward the extermination of native culture. It is not the shining icon of the church of today.
The ad also reinforces the old image of the Episcopal Church as the conservative party (the people with money and power) at prayer. Its very placement on the OpEd page of the Times speaks of power, the establishment, and immobility. It is addressed pre-eminently to the demographic that now rules the church, people of my age (over 50--I'm 63). No one under forty will "get" it or even see it.
The ad invites the reader (assuming he/she gets through all of the type to the bottom of the ad) to "come and grow" and offers a website link to both the main church website and a come and grow site. Click on www.comeandgrow.org and tell me you're excited about the mission and message of the church. Tell me what it is. Tell me what Episcopalians believe and why anyone should move a muscle to come into one of our churches.
A pdf of this ad is available on the church's website, presumably for parishes to download and perhaps run in local media. I think it's a very bad idea. Anyway, you can read it at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/documents/newYorkTimes_opAd.pdf
The Episcopal Church, and indeed all of the mainline churches, are terrible at marketing themselves. (Please see http://www.churchmarketingsucks.com --the blog to "frustrate, educate, and motivate the church to communicate, with uncompromising clarity, the truth of Jesus Christ"--for some helpful information on how to do what the Episcopal Church, as this ad definitively establishes, does not know how to do.)
Come and grow? I don't think so. Sit there and stagnate is more like it.
Here's an alternative idea: Go into the world and give people in despair the Good News. Tell them what that Good News is and why they should care. Give them some hope. And maybe show some faces of real people.
They can get the history and the architectural details later.
The ad is wordy, dense, backward-looking.
The headline, "Marking a Milestone, Moving Forward," is about as dull and institutional as a headline can be.
The content begins with history, buildings, and, finally, in paragraph 7, The Boook of Common Prayer.
It appears that the people in the Episcopal Church have differing points of view but it isn't clear about what.
And then there is a reiteration of our English heritage as a church (the word English outnumbers the word Jesus three to one), as if that is a big selling point.
The ad says we struggle over how to interpret faith for today, how to maintain tradition, how to disagree. Some people leave us, some come back. But: TO WHAT? WHAT DO WE BELIEVE?
We are moving forward in mission all over the world--a world we are committed to transforming to one of justice, peace, wholeness, holy living (as Jesus taught). We get around to that message in paragraph twelve. Is that the core of our belief?
It is apparent in a couple of other references that the church has been in the right place at the right time (for gays and lesbians, for example), but the overwhelming impression created by this unfortunate ad is that the Episcopal Church is the First Church of St. Jamestown: stuck in the past, unaware of its own mission and message for the world of today, inordinately proud of its buildings (especially the big ones), and unable to articulate a vision for the future that might mean something in the twenty-first century. Historically, Jamestown is significant for this country and the church, but it was also a slave-owning settlement and the first step toward the extermination of native culture. It is not the shining icon of the church of today.
The ad also reinforces the old image of the Episcopal Church as the conservative party (the people with money and power) at prayer. Its very placement on the OpEd page of the Times speaks of power, the establishment, and immobility. It is addressed pre-eminently to the demographic that now rules the church, people of my age (over 50--I'm 63). No one under forty will "get" it or even see it.
The ad invites the reader (assuming he/she gets through all of the type to the bottom of the ad) to "come and grow" and offers a website link to both the main church website and a come and grow site. Click on www.comeandgrow.org and tell me you're excited about the mission and message of the church. Tell me what it is. Tell me what Episcopalians believe and why anyone should move a muscle to come into one of our churches.
A pdf of this ad is available on the church's website, presumably for parishes to download and perhaps run in local media. I think it's a very bad idea. Anyway, you can read it at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/documents/newYorkTimes_opAd.pdf
The Episcopal Church, and indeed all of the mainline churches, are terrible at marketing themselves. (Please see http://www.churchmarketingsucks.com --the blog to "frustrate, educate, and motivate the church to communicate, with uncompromising clarity, the truth of Jesus Christ"--for some helpful information on how to do what the Episcopal Church, as this ad definitively establishes, does not know how to do.)
Come and grow? I don't think so. Sit there and stagnate is more like it.
Here's an alternative idea: Go into the world and give people in despair the Good News. Tell them what that Good News is and why they should care. Give them some hope. And maybe show some faces of real people.
They can get the history and the architectural details later.
Monday, May 7, 2007
Talking about the Body, 3
Our difficulty with the body of Jesus--how he could have been both human and God--translated to the same issue for our own bodies: how we can have in us an eternal soul and yet live in a material realm. If the body misbehaves, then the soul is soiled. As children of the sexual act, we are inevitably defiled. We are born of women. In part, the problem of Jesus' body is solved by making Mary innocent of sexual defilement: she is perpetually virgin and is not impregnated by a human. Jesus is born free of sin: he has the same human body, which in itself is a source of sin, but he is sinless because of his origin in spirit not in flesh.
Our bodies encase our souls, which through Jesus the Christ may be released into eternal bliss--BUT, wonder of wonders, a bliss enjoyed nonetheless in a body. The resurrected Jesus is in a body too but now one that mirrors for us what we can become if we live in him and follow his way. Jesus was human but not sexual. (The Renaissance paintings that show witnesses pointing to the infant's genitals are not acknowledging his sexuality but his human[male]ness.) He is sinless in part because he does not act sexually. Like mother like son.
The early church endorsed this perspective in suggesting that the body was superfluous; the sooner we get out of it, the better. On his way to a welcome martyrdom, Ignatius writes: "Let me be fodder for wild beasts--that is how I can get to God. . . .I shall be a real disciple of Jesus Christ when the world sees my body no more. . . .It is a fine thing to cut oneself off from the lusts that are in the world, for 'every passion of the flesh wages war against the Spirit,' and 'neither fornicators nor the effeminate nor homosexuals will inherit the Kingdom of God.' . . . Therefore we should guard the flesh as God's temple. For just as you were called in the flesh, you will come in the flesh."
Note that homosexuals and the effeminate are equally damned for their fleshly acts along with fornicators of all sorts. They sin by their actions, by their behaviors, by their very embodiment. This perspective is relevant to the present dispute in the church over the role of gays. It is ok for someone to be gay so long as he/she does not engage in sex with others who are gay. The celibate gay is acceptible, just as the man who might want to engage in sex outside of marriage with a woman is acceptible so long as he doesn't act on his desire. A man who acts and looks effeminate is also violating the order of things and causes others to lose control.
The early church urged celibacy on everyone, male and female, married and unmarried, in order to purify the soul. Tertullian described the body as a "unified organism." As Peter Brown writes in his book, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, Tertullian's "insistence on the control of the body was so rigorous precisely because he believed that it was directly through the body and its sensations that the soul was tuned to the high pitch required for it to vibrate to the Spirit of God. The soul was a subtle, invisible, but concrete 'body,' 'set in the mould' of the outer body." Temptation in the form of woman was the biggest problem: baptism did nothing to alter the fact of woman's seductiveness. As with present-day Islam, women were to be veiled to reduce the danger of their inherent seductiveness. (Hence, the problem with male effeminacy.)
Christ, in fact, came to earth, according to Clement, "to deliver us from error and from this use of the generative organs. . . . They say that the Saviour himself said: 'I come to undo the works of women,' meaning by this 'female,' sexual desire, and by 'work,' birth and the corruption of death."
The virginal will have less trouble at the last days than the sexually active; those who have been active and then renounce sexual acts can also be saved. Their souls may be purified and worthy of the new body of the society of God.
In our religion, modern Christianity, we have taken this to mean that we shall have eternal life, meet our friends, look the way we now look, etc. We don't have to renounce sexual acts of pleasure (it was rare for early Christians to have sex for pleasure; sex was for procreation and it was therefore likely that a couple with three children may have had intercourse precisely three times), but we do have to be washed clean in baptism and repent of our sins, the fleshly acts, for the most part, that are deeply feared in the faith. (This is the essential difference between the conservative and the liberal churches, between a barrier to full membership rooted in repentence and purity and the open door of full inclusion--although the desire of a convicted pedophile to be a member of a congregation has troubled the faithful on both sides.)
Gays, of course, are in permanent danger because for them to repent requires complete renunciation (celibacy), as it did for heterosexuals in the early church. The "conservatives" of today--Martin Minns and Peter Akinola, for example--partake of that early mentality that demands renunciation of the flesh as a matter of sexual purity and practice, except in the performance of one's duty as a married man and woman. The acts of the flesh, all of them, endanger the immortal soul. And only a man ordained according to the Catholic faith can protect us. (The necessity that the priest/bishop be pure is, of course, an ancient heresy.)
To return for a moment to Ignatius: "The soul dwells in the body, but does not belong to the body, and Christians dwell in the world, but do not belong to the world. . . . The flesh hates the soul and treats it as an enemy, even though it has suffered no wrong, because it is prevented from enjoying its pleasures; so too the world hates Christians, even though it suffers no wrong as their hands, because they range themselves against its pleasures. . . . The soul, which is immortal, is housed in a mortal dwelling; while Christians are settled among corruptible things, to wait for the incorruptibility that will be theirs in heaven."
Next time, I will talk about Augustine, as one must in thinking about this subject. A look ahead: Augustine writes in Book 6 of the Confessions: "I was bound by this need of the flesh, and dragged with me the chain of its poisonous delight, fearing to be set free."
Our bodies encase our souls, which through Jesus the Christ may be released into eternal bliss--BUT, wonder of wonders, a bliss enjoyed nonetheless in a body. The resurrected Jesus is in a body too but now one that mirrors for us what we can become if we live in him and follow his way. Jesus was human but not sexual. (The Renaissance paintings that show witnesses pointing to the infant's genitals are not acknowledging his sexuality but his human[male]ness.) He is sinless in part because he does not act sexually. Like mother like son.
The early church endorsed this perspective in suggesting that the body was superfluous; the sooner we get out of it, the better. On his way to a welcome martyrdom, Ignatius writes: "Let me be fodder for wild beasts--that is how I can get to God. . . .I shall be a real disciple of Jesus Christ when the world sees my body no more. . . .It is a fine thing to cut oneself off from the lusts that are in the world, for 'every passion of the flesh wages war against the Spirit,' and 'neither fornicators nor the effeminate nor homosexuals will inherit the Kingdom of God.' . . . Therefore we should guard the flesh as God's temple. For just as you were called in the flesh, you will come in the flesh."
Note that homosexuals and the effeminate are equally damned for their fleshly acts along with fornicators of all sorts. They sin by their actions, by their behaviors, by their very embodiment. This perspective is relevant to the present dispute in the church over the role of gays. It is ok for someone to be gay so long as he/she does not engage in sex with others who are gay. The celibate gay is acceptible, just as the man who might want to engage in sex outside of marriage with a woman is acceptible so long as he doesn't act on his desire. A man who acts and looks effeminate is also violating the order of things and causes others to lose control.
The early church urged celibacy on everyone, male and female, married and unmarried, in order to purify the soul. Tertullian described the body as a "unified organism." As Peter Brown writes in his book, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, Tertullian's "insistence on the control of the body was so rigorous precisely because he believed that it was directly through the body and its sensations that the soul was tuned to the high pitch required for it to vibrate to the Spirit of God. The soul was a subtle, invisible, but concrete 'body,' 'set in the mould' of the outer body." Temptation in the form of woman was the biggest problem: baptism did nothing to alter the fact of woman's seductiveness. As with present-day Islam, women were to be veiled to reduce the danger of their inherent seductiveness. (Hence, the problem with male effeminacy.)
Christ, in fact, came to earth, according to Clement, "to deliver us from error and from this use of the generative organs. . . . They say that the Saviour himself said: 'I come to undo the works of women,' meaning by this 'female,' sexual desire, and by 'work,' birth and the corruption of death."
The virginal will have less trouble at the last days than the sexually active; those who have been active and then renounce sexual acts can also be saved. Their souls may be purified and worthy of the new body of the society of God.
In our religion, modern Christianity, we have taken this to mean that we shall have eternal life, meet our friends, look the way we now look, etc. We don't have to renounce sexual acts of pleasure (it was rare for early Christians to have sex for pleasure; sex was for procreation and it was therefore likely that a couple with three children may have had intercourse precisely three times), but we do have to be washed clean in baptism and repent of our sins, the fleshly acts, for the most part, that are deeply feared in the faith. (This is the essential difference between the conservative and the liberal churches, between a barrier to full membership rooted in repentence and purity and the open door of full inclusion--although the desire of a convicted pedophile to be a member of a congregation has troubled the faithful on both sides.)
Gays, of course, are in permanent danger because for them to repent requires complete renunciation (celibacy), as it did for heterosexuals in the early church. The "conservatives" of today--Martin Minns and Peter Akinola, for example--partake of that early mentality that demands renunciation of the flesh as a matter of sexual purity and practice, except in the performance of one's duty as a married man and woman. The acts of the flesh, all of them, endanger the immortal soul. And only a man ordained according to the Catholic faith can protect us. (The necessity that the priest/bishop be pure is, of course, an ancient heresy.)
To return for a moment to Ignatius: "The soul dwells in the body, but does not belong to the body, and Christians dwell in the world, but do not belong to the world. . . . The flesh hates the soul and treats it as an enemy, even though it has suffered no wrong, because it is prevented from enjoying its pleasures; so too the world hates Christians, even though it suffers no wrong as their hands, because they range themselves against its pleasures. . . . The soul, which is immortal, is housed in a mortal dwelling; while Christians are settled among corruptible things, to wait for the incorruptibility that will be theirs in heaven."
Next time, I will talk about Augustine, as one must in thinking about this subject. A look ahead: Augustine writes in Book 6 of the Confessions: "I was bound by this need of the flesh, and dragged with me the chain of its poisonous delight, fearing to be set free."
Monday, April 30, 2007
Moving On
My back hurts this morning, as it did yesterday morning, following a day spent purging books from my library. Connie and I are moving to Portland, Oregon, June 1, and one of the most expensive items you can move is books. We already have more than our shelves will bear. My desk is stacked with books--new ones bought in the last two months that I am still reading, and others I've moved to the desk because I want to refer to them when I'm writing.
The move to Portland is something we have contemplated for a long time but assumed it would be several years before we actually did it. I thought I would continue to work in New York until at least the age of 67 or so and then we would retire to Portland. As those of you who have kept up with this blog know, my work for the church has ended. It is time to be somewhere else, somewhere less intense than New York City. We love New York, to coin a phrase. Connie has lived here over twenty years, I've been here twelve (with two years for both of us in Boston along the way). But Portland offers wonders that New York lacks, particularly access to the natural beauty of the mountains and rivers of the Northwest. The Columbia River Gorge is less than two hours away, as is the Pacific Ocean in the other direction. In twenty minutes from our apartment, we can be in the western hills among cedars in the Japanese Garden (the best, most people think, outside of Japan). From our living room window, we overlook a park in the city that contains stones from Souchow, China.
The cost of living is lower in Portland, which is important to us semi-retired folk. There is great public transportation: it costs nothing to ride buses, streetcar, and rapid transit in downtown Portland. We can walk the length of the city in thirty minutes. Great restaurants, interesting indie movie theaters, the Portland Museum of Art five minutes away, an auditorium that hosts theater and performers right next door, a bistro up the street.....and by the way the rain thing is not as bad as you've heard. This last month has been rainier in NYC than in Portland.
I plan to write for the next year or so, although I am hoping to do some consulting and editorial work for publishers on a project basis. We will see if I can bring in some money writing. Connie will also be writing, finishing her next book and continuing to work on selling her previous manuscripts. We look forward to a creative, stimulating life in our new city.
For me, it feels like a new beginning in so many ways--a chance to return to the creative writing I have always done but seldom been able to focus on. There are two or three projects in the works. Last week I sent some poems to a magazine for the first time in thirty years! My web site, http://webworks.ken-arnold.com will have updates on where publications are expected, as well as work online that I hope will be stimulating and even provocative. I will be posting a new piece there in the next week.
Some of what I'm reading right now--books you might find interesting if you don't know about them:
Messenger: New and Selected Poems, by Ellen Bryant Voight. A writer of clean lines and good sense (and senses--she sees and hears so well).
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, short stories by Haruki Murakami. Murakami is presently my favorite writer. His novels are an adventure, the stories sharp and surprising.
A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine, by John K. Nelson. After my visit to Japan last summer I became more aware of the intricacies of Shinto, which lacks the institutional weight of most religions (never mind the state-sponsored Shinto of the war years--this is different.)
The Art of Setting Stones & Other Writings from the Japanese Garden, by Marc Peter Keane. Lovely prose.
Carried Away: A Selection of Stories, by Alice Munro. The new Everyman's Library collection. As good as anyone can be.
Love in a Fallen City, by Eileen Chang. Novellas and stories by a Chinese writer I'd never heard of. Touching and hard-edged, as was her life.
The Savage Detectives, a novel by Roberto Bolano. An acquired taste. He died young and this novel is a big sprawling legacy, beautiful prose and tough going.
Back on the Fire, essays by Gary Snyder. One of my favorite authors. Essays mostly about nature and the world in peril.
Next week I plan to return to my reflections on Christianity and the body, once my own body is feeling a bit better.
The move to Portland is something we have contemplated for a long time but assumed it would be several years before we actually did it. I thought I would continue to work in New York until at least the age of 67 or so and then we would retire to Portland. As those of you who have kept up with this blog know, my work for the church has ended. It is time to be somewhere else, somewhere less intense than New York City. We love New York, to coin a phrase. Connie has lived here over twenty years, I've been here twelve (with two years for both of us in Boston along the way). But Portland offers wonders that New York lacks, particularly access to the natural beauty of the mountains and rivers of the Northwest. The Columbia River Gorge is less than two hours away, as is the Pacific Ocean in the other direction. In twenty minutes from our apartment, we can be in the western hills among cedars in the Japanese Garden (the best, most people think, outside of Japan). From our living room window, we overlook a park in the city that contains stones from Souchow, China.
The cost of living is lower in Portland, which is important to us semi-retired folk. There is great public transportation: it costs nothing to ride buses, streetcar, and rapid transit in downtown Portland. We can walk the length of the city in thirty minutes. Great restaurants, interesting indie movie theaters, the Portland Museum of Art five minutes away, an auditorium that hosts theater and performers right next door, a bistro up the street.....and by the way the rain thing is not as bad as you've heard. This last month has been rainier in NYC than in Portland.
I plan to write for the next year or so, although I am hoping to do some consulting and editorial work for publishers on a project basis. We will see if I can bring in some money writing. Connie will also be writing, finishing her next book and continuing to work on selling her previous manuscripts. We look forward to a creative, stimulating life in our new city.
For me, it feels like a new beginning in so many ways--a chance to return to the creative writing I have always done but seldom been able to focus on. There are two or three projects in the works. Last week I sent some poems to a magazine for the first time in thirty years! My web site, http://webworks.ken-arnold.com will have updates on where publications are expected, as well as work online that I hope will be stimulating and even provocative. I will be posting a new piece there in the next week.
Some of what I'm reading right now--books you might find interesting if you don't know about them:
Messenger: New and Selected Poems, by Ellen Bryant Voight. A writer of clean lines and good sense (and senses--she sees and hears so well).
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, short stories by Haruki Murakami. Murakami is presently my favorite writer. His novels are an adventure, the stories sharp and surprising.
A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine, by John K. Nelson. After my visit to Japan last summer I became more aware of the intricacies of Shinto, which lacks the institutional weight of most religions (never mind the state-sponsored Shinto of the war years--this is different.)
The Art of Setting Stones & Other Writings from the Japanese Garden, by Marc Peter Keane. Lovely prose.
Carried Away: A Selection of Stories, by Alice Munro. The new Everyman's Library collection. As good as anyone can be.
Love in a Fallen City, by Eileen Chang. Novellas and stories by a Chinese writer I'd never heard of. Touching and hard-edged, as was her life.
The Savage Detectives, a novel by Roberto Bolano. An acquired taste. He died young and this novel is a big sprawling legacy, beautiful prose and tough going.
Back on the Fire, essays by Gary Snyder. One of my favorite authors. Essays mostly about nature and the world in peril.
Next week I plan to return to my reflections on Christianity and the body, once my own body is feeling a bit better.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Talking about the Body, 2
We are all aware, I think, of the deep antagonism toward women from the early days of the church, which continues to be enshrined in our church polities, theologies, and habits of mind. Even though most churches now ordain women, with pominent and significant exceptions, there remains a lingering scent of impurity and impropriety in the presence of women on altars and in clerical garb. Women in the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church were not treated well by male colleagues (prior to the elevation of a woman to lead the church--I don't know how women are treated now). One female bishop told me as recently as last summer of outrageous dismissive behavior by her fellow male bishops. I assume that the basic attitudes of patriarchal males have not changed overnight.
Women are not highly regarded by the worldwide church in non-Western societies, and that is especially true of the worldwide Anglican Communion, which objects, along with a number of Episcopal Churches in the US, to the full inclusion of gays in the church and its leadership. I believe that the attitudes toward gays in the church are rooted in attitudes toward women. They share a common origin: an abhorrence of the body and its irrational, sensual ways.
Like women, gays are seen as impure (as I said in my previous post), not for reasons related to menstruation and pregnancy, obviously, but for reasons having to do with an upsetting of what is seen as the natural order. Order comes with reason, according to the traditional male way of thinking, and women are inherently irrational. They are unpredictable. They feel before they think. They are soft edged. They tempt men to violate their allegiance to reason and to orderly action. They tempt men to lose control (sexually and other ways).
Gays are regarded by dominant male leaders in the church in the same way. Gays are too much like women. They care more about the sensual body. They violate natural order and therefore encourage chaos. They are unpredictable because they don't think like "normal" men. They can be soft edged. They may be passive receivers of the male organ, just as women are. (Some bisexual men who engage in homosexual acts deny the are gay if they are the "active" partner. It is the receiver who is gay, ie, not male.)
What I have rehearsed, of course, is a list of stereotypes--I want to be sure you understand that I don't hold these stereotypes myself. But the church is a rational institution in its governance if not in its worship or prayer. It is ok for the masses to sing or dance or wear colorful clothes, ok for women to weep and hold one another, ok for worshipers to be "out of control"--so long as their passions are contained by organized liturgy and constrained by the rules of a rational polity. Gays are allowed in the church as part of the worshiping masses so long as they behave themselves (do not sleep with others of the same gender) and do not "act out" in ways that disrupt the natural order.
Women have been allowed more freedom in many of the denominations and are far more visible now. But they are still regarded by most male leaders as annoyances. They are always making demands, pushing against the barriers. If they team up with gays, then the male hierarchy, perhaps even the very concept of hierarchy, will be threatened. What male leaders fear most is an alliance between gays and women in the church.
It will be harder for the male elite to accept gays as they have, grudgingly, accepted women. For one thing, they are threatened by the proximity of gay males, who tempt them as women do to betray the male body, which the conservatives identify wholly with the Body of Christ.
And that's where theology meets the body in this dispute. Woman doesn't look like Christ, and that has been a sticking point for opponents of the ordination of women. But no one is even willing for a moment to make the argument that there cannot be a gay Christ--even to raise the possibility by denying it is anathema. His is the essential male body that has nothing sexually to do with women or men. His body is pure, as all bodies should be. The early church thought that women would be changed into men at the last day. Straight men.
The body we cannot get rid of is the Body of Christ, which is normative for the church.
Women are not highly regarded by the worldwide church in non-Western societies, and that is especially true of the worldwide Anglican Communion, which objects, along with a number of Episcopal Churches in the US, to the full inclusion of gays in the church and its leadership. I believe that the attitudes toward gays in the church are rooted in attitudes toward women. They share a common origin: an abhorrence of the body and its irrational, sensual ways.
Like women, gays are seen as impure (as I said in my previous post), not for reasons related to menstruation and pregnancy, obviously, but for reasons having to do with an upsetting of what is seen as the natural order. Order comes with reason, according to the traditional male way of thinking, and women are inherently irrational. They are unpredictable. They feel before they think. They are soft edged. They tempt men to violate their allegiance to reason and to orderly action. They tempt men to lose control (sexually and other ways).
Gays are regarded by dominant male leaders in the church in the same way. Gays are too much like women. They care more about the sensual body. They violate natural order and therefore encourage chaos. They are unpredictable because they don't think like "normal" men. They can be soft edged. They may be passive receivers of the male organ, just as women are. (Some bisexual men who engage in homosexual acts deny the are gay if they are the "active" partner. It is the receiver who is gay, ie, not male.)
What I have rehearsed, of course, is a list of stereotypes--I want to be sure you understand that I don't hold these stereotypes myself. But the church is a rational institution in its governance if not in its worship or prayer. It is ok for the masses to sing or dance or wear colorful clothes, ok for women to weep and hold one another, ok for worshipers to be "out of control"--so long as their passions are contained by organized liturgy and constrained by the rules of a rational polity. Gays are allowed in the church as part of the worshiping masses so long as they behave themselves (do not sleep with others of the same gender) and do not "act out" in ways that disrupt the natural order.
Women have been allowed more freedom in many of the denominations and are far more visible now. But they are still regarded by most male leaders as annoyances. They are always making demands, pushing against the barriers. If they team up with gays, then the male hierarchy, perhaps even the very concept of hierarchy, will be threatened. What male leaders fear most is an alliance between gays and women in the church.
It will be harder for the male elite to accept gays as they have, grudgingly, accepted women. For one thing, they are threatened by the proximity of gay males, who tempt them as women do to betray the male body, which the conservatives identify wholly with the Body of Christ.
And that's where theology meets the body in this dispute. Woman doesn't look like Christ, and that has been a sticking point for opponents of the ordination of women. But no one is even willing for a moment to make the argument that there cannot be a gay Christ--even to raise the possibility by denying it is anathema. His is the essential male body that has nothing sexually to do with women or men. His body is pure, as all bodies should be. The early church thought that women would be changed into men at the last day. Straight men.
The body we cannot get rid of is the Body of Christ, which is normative for the church.
Monday, April 16, 2007
Talking about the Body, 1
Well, here we are a week after the resurrection. The cold continues in the northeast. Yesterday afternoon Eighth Avenue was a flowing river because rain had been falling for twenty-four hours. It was still falling this morning. I have been thinking about the body, not only because this kind of weather makes the body feel miserable--wet clothes, chill in the bone--but because my left wrist is healing from the bicycle fall and I am feeling like a pudding for lack of excercise. I'm not allowed to ride my bike until the hand surgeon says I can.
The hand surgeon told me, as he examined my wrist, that a colleague of his, a doctor and a cyclist, had been killed a couple of months ago along the West Side Bicycle path in Manhattan--which I ride regularly, when I can ride. He was a young man who had been cycling with his wife that morning. I could tell that the doctor treating me was responding emotionally to my own accident, thinking about the unnecessary and wasteful death of his colleague. A day or two before I saw the hand surgeon, we had taken a taxi down the west side and had seen a ghostly white bicycle marking the spot where the young doctor had been killed. Beside the bicycle was an artifical wooden flower, colorful. The kind of thing that makes one think of Easter and resurrection.
The doctor's body is gone, as all bodies will go. Jesus' body goes too. In Christian theology we talk about the resurrection of the body. We read in scripture that we will all be changed, and we think of a new body. Thomas touches the wound. The body matters to all of us; it matters particularly in Christian story and ritual. There is a wonderfully weird painting by Caravaggio of Thomas with his finger stuck in the slit in Jesus' side: it is patently sexual, the slit vaginal. Not so long ago, a group of us were looking at it during a meeting, discussing the painting as if it had nothing to do with sexuality, as if the finger were just a finger, ignoring altogether the other message of the work: we are sexual beings, even in our relationship to God. It is a blatently homoerotic work. Take another look at some of the Medieval and Renassiance paintings that emphasize the private parts of the naked Jesus, the suckling babe, images that today might close down a museum.
The church's vexed relationship with the human body, and particularly the female body, is not news. In a recent communication to someone who had read one of my earlier posts here, I said that I thought we need a theology of the body that is up to date, that takes account of how our thinking about what the body signifies has changed. The church is stuck with a very old paradigm in which we celebrate resurrection but deplore the body.
The lack of a coherent theology of the body is part of the problem the church has with homosexuality (or almost any sexuality)--and part of the problem it has with women. Even though the Episcopal Church ordains women, and has for thirty years, the female body is still a problem for the church. So is the male body (hence the problem with homosexuality). At the ordination/consecration of Gene Robinson in New Hampshire, a priest spoke against the action and began to detail the (as he was clearly suggesting, "disgusting") things males did with each other, particularly the parts they touched, as if simply saying the parts--anus, penis, testicles--were themselves sufficient evidence of the horror of the acts involving them.
Part of the problem is the somewhat hidden but very strong sense that Christianity remains a purity religion (as all religions are or have been). The purity of the altar is the primary way in which we encounter this ancient strain of Christian sensibility in the liturgical churches. Only the ordained handle the sacred elements or control how the rest will handle them. But in general Christians sense that the doings of the body are and should remain beyond the concern of the church. Nonetheless, what we do with each other sexuality should be governed by the church in order to preserve the purity of the community. You don't know what that hand has touched! Only what is blessed or sanctified (through marriage) may be touched. All else is impure and may not approach the altar. Ditto for the thrice-married priest or bishop.
The split in the Anglican Communion is to a great extent about purity. One must repent and stop touching impure things to be part of the community. In the United States, the majority of the members of the Episcopal Church are willing to accept gays without imposing purity requirements on them, but at the same time, I suspect that most of those who accept gays and divorce and the routine habits of cohabitation by the unmarried continue in some part of their hearts to suspect that the church is less pure than it used to be. There may even be a lingering suspicion that the impure shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. Shifted from the realm of sexuality, this suspicion gets channeled into other aspects of church life. For example, the pure don't move around much or sing songs with rhythm or dance in church. The pure, the clergy, wear clothing that hides their bodies. And so perhaps should the rest of us. Dirty homeless people being are an offense because we can smell them, even after they've gone.
During this Eastern season, when we read of or experience Jesus walking around in his body (or in some body, even ours), it would be helpful to clarify what we mean when we speak of the body we are in, the Body of Christ we ingest, the body we really hate to think of losing to death.
The hand surgeon told me, as he examined my wrist, that a colleague of his, a doctor and a cyclist, had been killed a couple of months ago along the West Side Bicycle path in Manhattan--which I ride regularly, when I can ride. He was a young man who had been cycling with his wife that morning. I could tell that the doctor treating me was responding emotionally to my own accident, thinking about the unnecessary and wasteful death of his colleague. A day or two before I saw the hand surgeon, we had taken a taxi down the west side and had seen a ghostly white bicycle marking the spot where the young doctor had been killed. Beside the bicycle was an artifical wooden flower, colorful. The kind of thing that makes one think of Easter and resurrection.
The doctor's body is gone, as all bodies will go. Jesus' body goes too. In Christian theology we talk about the resurrection of the body. We read in scripture that we will all be changed, and we think of a new body. Thomas touches the wound. The body matters to all of us; it matters particularly in Christian story and ritual. There is a wonderfully weird painting by Caravaggio of Thomas with his finger stuck in the slit in Jesus' side: it is patently sexual, the slit vaginal. Not so long ago, a group of us were looking at it during a meeting, discussing the painting as if it had nothing to do with sexuality, as if the finger were just a finger, ignoring altogether the other message of the work: we are sexual beings, even in our relationship to God. It is a blatently homoerotic work. Take another look at some of the Medieval and Renassiance paintings that emphasize the private parts of the naked Jesus, the suckling babe, images that today might close down a museum.
The church's vexed relationship with the human body, and particularly the female body, is not news. In a recent communication to someone who had read one of my earlier posts here, I said that I thought we need a theology of the body that is up to date, that takes account of how our thinking about what the body signifies has changed. The church is stuck with a very old paradigm in which we celebrate resurrection but deplore the body.
The lack of a coherent theology of the body is part of the problem the church has with homosexuality (or almost any sexuality)--and part of the problem it has with women. Even though the Episcopal Church ordains women, and has for thirty years, the female body is still a problem for the church. So is the male body (hence the problem with homosexuality). At the ordination/consecration of Gene Robinson in New Hampshire, a priest spoke against the action and began to detail the (as he was clearly suggesting, "disgusting") things males did with each other, particularly the parts they touched, as if simply saying the parts--anus, penis, testicles--were themselves sufficient evidence of the horror of the acts involving them.
Part of the problem is the somewhat hidden but very strong sense that Christianity remains a purity religion (as all religions are or have been). The purity of the altar is the primary way in which we encounter this ancient strain of Christian sensibility in the liturgical churches. Only the ordained handle the sacred elements or control how the rest will handle them. But in general Christians sense that the doings of the body are and should remain beyond the concern of the church. Nonetheless, what we do with each other sexuality should be governed by the church in order to preserve the purity of the community. You don't know what that hand has touched! Only what is blessed or sanctified (through marriage) may be touched. All else is impure and may not approach the altar. Ditto for the thrice-married priest or bishop.
The split in the Anglican Communion is to a great extent about purity. One must repent and stop touching impure things to be part of the community. In the United States, the majority of the members of the Episcopal Church are willing to accept gays without imposing purity requirements on them, but at the same time, I suspect that most of those who accept gays and divorce and the routine habits of cohabitation by the unmarried continue in some part of their hearts to suspect that the church is less pure than it used to be. There may even be a lingering suspicion that the impure shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. Shifted from the realm of sexuality, this suspicion gets channeled into other aspects of church life. For example, the pure don't move around much or sing songs with rhythm or dance in church. The pure, the clergy, wear clothing that hides their bodies. And so perhaps should the rest of us. Dirty homeless people being are an offense because we can smell them, even after they've gone.
During this Eastern season, when we read of or experience Jesus walking around in his body (or in some body, even ours), it would be helpful to clarify what we mean when we speak of the body we are in, the Body of Christ we ingest, the body we really hate to think of losing to death.
Sunday, April 1, 2007
Falling, Not Jumping
I don't remember falling. I remember the moment before, when my bicycle tire caught in the streetcar track on Portland, Oregon's Northrup Street. I was heading up to the hills north of the city along the Willamette River. A fine mist was falling and I was looking forward to the hazy views. When the front tire slid into the track I knew I was going to fall. When I woke up, there were four people hovering over me, one of them holding a cloth to my bleeding forehead. Another assured me I was ok. These were passersby who had removed me from the steetcar tracks and called the fire department, which soon arrived (Engine Company 9, I later learned) with an EMS truck and crew. I could not remember the name of my hotel, nor its address. I think I remembered my name. Fortunately, I had ID, my health insurance card, my wife's cell phone number. The rental bike was not damaged, and the firemen said they'd return it for me. Really? They could hear the New York skepticism in my voice. But I was in no position to argue, strapped tight to a gurney. They were concerned about my neck and a likely concussion.
I did have--do have--a concussion, also a broken bone in my wrist and over my eye. Seven stitches removed yesterday back here in NY. My left arm is in a cast, and my head still hurts. We loved Portland anyway.
Hard to type with a cast. I'll be brief.
This morning, Palm Sunday, I heard sirens, not unusual in NYC, but they were close. I looked out and saw a man standing on the New York Inn sign five floors above 8th Avenue. Two dozen police officers in the street, one on a fire escape trying to talk him down. The man had his hands in his pockets, leaning against the hotel's brick wall, too far from the officer to be touched, but he kept looking over at the policeman talking to him, trying to talk him down. He was listening. Other officers arrived on the roof. One on the next-door building straddled a ledge, held by a safety rope. The avenue full of flashing lights, everyone just watching. Tense. The man stepped out on the sign, balanced above the sidewalk. I thought, he's going and prayed he wouldn't. But he stepped and leaned back, slumped in his clothes as if defeated. Soon, he sat and the officer on the next-door building helped him down.
When the policeman who had been talking to him from the fire escape for an hour came out onto the avenue, the other officers cheered and congratulated him. One of those New York moments.
As I made coffee, I was thinking about how much energy we are willing to dedicate to rescuing, caring for, strangers, myself in Portland, this unknown man who wanted to end his life. What do we do, now that we have been rescued?
I did have--do have--a concussion, also a broken bone in my wrist and over my eye. Seven stitches removed yesterday back here in NY. My left arm is in a cast, and my head still hurts. We loved Portland anyway.
Hard to type with a cast. I'll be brief.
This morning, Palm Sunday, I heard sirens, not unusual in NYC, but they were close. I looked out and saw a man standing on the New York Inn sign five floors above 8th Avenue. Two dozen police officers in the street, one on a fire escape trying to talk him down. The man had his hands in his pockets, leaning against the hotel's brick wall, too far from the officer to be touched, but he kept looking over at the policeman talking to him, trying to talk him down. He was listening. Other officers arrived on the roof. One on the next-door building straddled a ledge, held by a safety rope. The avenue full of flashing lights, everyone just watching. Tense. The man stepped out on the sign, balanced above the sidewalk. I thought, he's going and prayed he wouldn't. But he stepped and leaned back, slumped in his clothes as if defeated. Soon, he sat and the officer on the next-door building helped him down.
When the policeman who had been talking to him from the fire escape for an hour came out onto the avenue, the other officers cheered and congratulated him. One of those New York moments.
As I made coffee, I was thinking about how much energy we are willing to dedicate to rescuing, caring for, strangers, myself in Portland, this unknown man who wanted to end his life. What do we do, now that we have been rescued?
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