Wednesday, November 28, 2007

An Open-Letter to the Poco Prof par Excellance

Dear Professor Rivera:

I've been haunted by my words in class yesterday: "I wish president bush thought g*d was omnipotent."

The truth is: I think president bush probably plays lots of lip-service to g*d's omnipotence: G*d...the ultimate supreme container for all power on earth and in heaven. And it is the rhetorical nature of this lip-service that I wonder about.

It seems to me that g*d's omnipotence is (usually) used for two reasons: 1) to deny creaturely agency and thereby duck responsibility for creaturely decision-making & the consequences thereof 2) to deny creaturely agency and thereby encourage creatures to remain complacent (and thereby complicit) with life/structures as they are. In my working context, I often hear the latter. Lots of women have been told to hold on, to wait for the glory of god to reveal itself to them, when they could be going to therapy, entering into healing circles and healing wounds. In the political context I hear the former. G*d intended Sept 11; therefore the US is/was intended to occupy/enslave the nations assummed to have perpetrated the 'terrorist acts.' No colonial agenda; just divine justice.

What would it mean for pres bush to believe, I mean really believe, that g*d had ALL power and agency? Would he continue to extract, demand and pollute and conceive of it as divine mission? Or would he put down his agenda of mass destruction and wait for the lord to reveal himself? Either way, a sense of participation (either by receiving revelation, or embodying the missio dei) is implicit. Hasn't omnipotence run its course? if by omnipotence we mean power and by power we mean the full capacity to make things happen???

I was pissed off in class yesterday and I'm afraid, because of the anger I feel/hear/experience in my body, that I disrupted and postured in unhealthy ways. I am sorry for that. No one was even arguing FOR omnipotent theology! The voices that have trumpeted omnipotence theology in my/the past were rapists, consumers of the most cruel content, genuinely abusive/selfish human beings (though of course that's not all they were/are). It's hard to separate the "concept" from the living damage caused in and through the concept. And yet, I am highly aware that reliance upon God's power has pulled more than one body/community through trials and tribulations. Sometimes I think my frustration is just the fear of loss that I know comes when G*d-talk/G*d-thought comes out of the closet in complex clothing: never pure, never clean, just dressed up in all kinds of costumes for different celebrations/pilgrimages/funerals. Sometimes I want G*d to come out looking just like me, but then I remember, I need grace in here that I cannot get without the "there" there.

Thank you for your class. I am stretching and growing because of it/us/you.
Love,
Emily Joye

Thursday, November 22, 2007

Thanksgiving Alphabet

Air to breathe
Beloved: the book and the One
Coffee in the morning
Denial when it saves you
Emptying the garbage
Finding new friends
Glenda Hope
Hermeneutical horizons
Inching closer to graduation
Jessica Petrone
Kissing Lincoln over and over (when he lets me)
Lesbians
Mom
Natural highs and natural byes
Oakland
Peace Particles and PSR
Quality films
Red blood
SafeHouse
Theology talks with theology types
Unlocking the hard places
Virtue ethics
Wonder
Xoxoxox
Yearning by bell hooks
Zap Mama

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Bearing the Cross?

Read this report by the National Labor Committee...

www.nlcnet.org/article.php?id=479

Just another example, not to be exploited but witnessed, of how symbols are contextually constricted. One person's resurrection sign is another person's sign of torture and exploitation. I am working on this in my head (academia) and heart (faith communities), but I must say, it's articles/reports like this that make me put my head down in shame of what christianity can/has become.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Untitled

I wanted to say something to you
but then i realized you weren't you anymore,
not in the way I always framed you being before,
so instead I opted for silence
and learned a whole lot more in the process of registration.
Sounds broke through, still.
The thing I wanted to say remained
except the materiality of it changed.
As a consequence
our bodies moved closer and further away,
the desires and fears we used to classify as "yours" and "mine"
somehow got murky,
and the 'irreducible ambivalence' of this corporeal existence--
with all its dangers and elixirs--
began to fly in our faces.

Saturday, November 10, 2007

4 Proclamations

A couple things I feel like proclaiming to the world right now:

1. Rain began to fall from the sky around 2pm. I was tapping my keyboard, writing a paper for Professor Mary Tolbert, and looked out the window right in time to see the pavement slowly change color as it got drenched. Holy moment.

2. I am obsessed with a song on Bruce Springsteen's new album Magic. The song is actually a hidden track after "Devils' Arcade." This song strangely captures my theology (in a nutshell). Perhaps Christianity's greatest historical gift is this lesson: a person can be remembered. She broke the mold with that brother, in-deed.
***Other artists in season/on my playlist right now: Thelonius Monk, Astor Piazzolla, Alicia Keys, Anonymous 4, Beethoven, Coldplay, Yann Tiersen (as always), Common and Norah Jones.

3. Wade has been gone for 3 months because he is doing a CPE internship in Palo Alto. When he drinks lattes, he text messages (is that a verb now?) me to tell me about it. When I imagine him kneeling before his patients/clients/friends at the VA, in the way he kneeled before me during a foot washing ritual 2 years ago, I thank God. This is how friendship is done.

4. Bodies first. Bodies matter.

Saturday, November 3, 2007

Martha

Blueish grey sweater sits beneath a black scarf
that swirls and twirls around her neck
almost as beautifully as the veins circulate
the top of her hands.
I have missed those hands, the way they
illustrate her point and make fists that illustrate
her fierce force--a living, breathing, sometimes suffering
force that refuses to look away, that refuses to look too long.
She sees me.
She always has.
I see a horizon in her, something way way beyond here,
yet obtainable somehow, just not now. Her spontaneous, self-effacing
laughter and southern accent crystallize in my consciousness, lure me
out of the scared places into the spacious places. The spacious places.
Honesty there, with her, in her.
Such dignity and grace, in that one body, on that one face.
Her gaze is a spacious place.
She sees me.

Thursday, November 1, 2007

War

On the corner of arrow highway and central avenue,
the words of Audre Lorde ring in my ears
as I look upon the latest cosmetic surgery offering
on a billboard, propped for all to see:

vaginal rejuvenation surgery.

Get that pussy tight, at your local docs office,
where the docs tightening that pussy are women too.
The gaze is no longer "male."
The gaze is only interested in what's for sale.

Don't buy it.

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