Saturday, May 31, 2008

Berkeley in Summertime

The hushed city lulls into a summer slumber.
It is getting more and more quiet,
the sidewalks lack hustle,
people pause and sniff newly budding colors,
open-faced, following the senses subtle enough
to be ignored when the semester burns bright.
Berkeley in June. Berkeley in July.
The residue of commencement can be seen:
"congrats graduate!" signs remain posted on anonymous walls
and deflated balloons decorate the well-worn walkways
of fertile minds now on vacation.
A friend's gift comes to mind; not the gift--the card announcing the gift.
It reads: "I rejoice in life for its own sake."
In noiseless afternoons where naps are non-negotiables
and memories settle in like sleepy hibernating bears,
the rejoicing for its own sake takes on a maturity,
one that lacks the need to announce ad nauseum,
but continually and gratefully recognizes,
relishes in, and praises the Earth without ceasing
for this grand game with so many precious losses along the way.

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Seminary

The last push. Write about the body and God. 12 pages. Go.

As if to challenge me back into memory,
I got the hardest case of writer's block
one could possibly have.

First, there was fuss.
Then I went nuts as deadlines approached, came and went.
Still: nothing.
Tears came and professors were compassionate.

On friday night, the last night of my "institutional calendarized"
graduate school career, I dropped to my knees.
"Please help me. I need you."
Knowledge failed. Books were no longer speaking from the shelves.
Blank screen. That's right.
"Please help me. I need you."

6 a.m. the next morning, words came like lightning.
I was dreaming Cusa and Levinas, only to find their words posed onto
my proposal upon waking. It came, and flowed, and came and flowed some more.
My favorite companions--Keller, Rivera, Donovan-Turner, Oliver--they were singing
so loud I almost couldn't hear Amos Lee from my speakers.
Pages upon pages have been born this morning, pleading for edits, revisions,
final drafts and emails sending forth.

So what did you learn? they ask.
What will you take away with you? they ask.

I learned (what I think I initially came here knowing and desperately wanting confirmed): At the 11th hour it's faith that saves.
Even a seminary degree pales in comparison to the mustard seed.
G*d is faithful, friends. That is the good news.

Hallelujah.

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Writers Block at the "End"

Do any other creatures in the animal kingdom have practical jokes played on them like this?

We think we have consciousness. Prove it, the philosopher jokingly--but not so jokingly--prods. "What makes you think the brain functions any differently than the liver?" Fuck.

Autonomous bodies. Why then does my skin itch at the thought of his return to cocaine? We are 400 miles apart. Modernity's great phallacy. Yes: phallacy, only the phallic would dream of life un-entered, unaffected, unreal. They are still using the term "hysteria" to describe women who have emotions. Fuck.

The imposed "end" of this institution summons my attention like that surge, that on-coming swell off there in the distance, the one that promises to break right on top of my head if I don't take a huge, deep, lasting breath before diving underneath and swimming down, down, down where it's calm, where there's less breakage, less reality. But there's no breathing at the bottom. Just anticipation of resurfacing again after the chaos subsides.

Every face I see looks like my fathers. And I'm smiling and sobbing in the face of all the others, just to acknowledge his ashes on my degree.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Why Martha Remains one of my Teachers

Because on days like today--when the hours feel too short and the tasks seem never-ending--she happens to have this quote tagged onto her email signature....

We are living in a world gone mad, but not just mad in terms of war and chaos. There is a madness in this world that is the result of living too fast, forcing yourself to function without time to reflect upon the cause and effect of your choices and the quality of your relationships and the consequences of your actions. People live so scheduled, so pressured, so bound up in this nonsensical adoration of doing things faster and faster and faster among other superficial values that this adoration of speed has transferred to what they expect from their spiritual life, if you want to call what they have a spiritual life at all. A yoga class and a vegetarian diet is not a spiritual life, nor is therapy and learning about self-empowerment and how to get what you want in three easy lessons. What on earth does that have to do with the soul?

"Small comments are great indicators of what people really believe as opposed to what they say they believe and the following example, which is among the most common that I hear, positions the matter of faith as the last empowered option that people turn to. When a crisis occurs and everything "humanly possible" has been done to rectify or treat the problem or illness, people will always say, "All we can do now is pray". Prayer is seen as a last option or the tactic one turns to when the really effective things that they were counting on have failed. The statement is really a symbolic admission that says prayer is the caboose on the train of life for people and not the engine. If people truly understood the power of prayer and the power of grace, they would pray as their first step in every thing that they did and not as a last resort because everything else on the human level failed. But that is not how most people truly and authentically relate to the power of prayer it is not a real power for them, at least it is not as real as a power they can touch.


Caroline Myss

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Brethren Priestess & Ejoye Interview

Audrey’s Interview with
Emily Joye McGaughy
LOGOS May 2008

Ad: Thanks for talking with me today. First, I have to ask, what has stood out for you about doing the interviews for LOGOS for three years?

EJ: The way people’s personalities shape how the interview happens. How absolutely different the experience can be depending on who I’m interviewing. How my interviewing style has drastically transformed from when I started. Form, content—everything is different! I learned a lot along the way and tried to integrate those lessons in the way I went about the process each time.

Ad: As editor of LOGOS, I’ve found I have a special access into people, through the writing and art they submit to be edited and printed. Have you found that to be true of your interviews?

EJ: I wouldn’t say that I’ve had greater “access” but I do think that I’ve learned about the power of questions in directing where people go. There are some people who would allow my questions to take them wherever I wanted to go; there were people who had a very clear idea of where they wanted to go, and if my questioning didn’t fit with that they’d make it clear. The word “access” in your question is interesting because I think the level of access that I have to a person’s story can be determined before they even step into the room, in some cases, and in other cases, the level of access we have to each other develops based on the interaction itself. It’s largely dependent on the combination of persons in the room. It’s like dancing. And I think you can measure (maybe not completely) the person’s level of flexibility by watching the way they interact with questions posed to them.

Ad: What has been your most memorable interview?

EJ: With Professor Mayra Rivera Rivera, I asked her about the role of music in her life, she ended up answering the question by giving me the name of a song called “Leonora’s Love Theme” by Astor Piazzolla. I wrote it down and forgot about it. Six months ago I pulled that interview out, read it and bought the song on iTunes, just to see what it was like. Lucky for me, it was a beautiful song! I often reflect on that—the power of associating a person with a piece of art, phrase, historical moment—when I think about the interviewing process because those associations get set up when you sit down and ask people about their lives. The love I have for “Leonora’s Love Theme” gets associated with the great admiration and respect I have for Mayra, and the novelties of both build on each other, so that the song is in the room when I’m with Mayra, and Mayra is in the room when I’m with the song. Who knows if I ever would have heard about Astor Piazzolla without that interview? Now I’m intoxicated by his music on a regular basis! Interviews allow you to probe and make connections in deeply personal and contained ways. I love it.

Can I carry that somewhere?

When I extend that phenomenon of associative relating and the building of novelty into the realm of religion, I’m struck by how deeply such experiences can inform our understanding of resurrection and the way we keep things alive. Just like reading/hearing the prophecy of Jeremiah will always remind me of my undergrad bible professor, the Rev. Dr. Barry Sang, I will always remember Dr. Rivera and feel close to her every time I listen to Leonora’s Love Theme. Likewise, I will always remember Anna Blaedel and PSR when I hear Erik Satie and Yann Tiersen because she played their music in our Arch apartment almost everyday during my first year in seminary. There are tangible ways to connect and make meaning. We can find people by going into the things we have shared with them, no matter how near or far we may be at any given moment.

Ad: You mention that you may no longer be near some people, in part because you are graduating soon. What reflections do you have on your time here at PSR as you start looking at it as a past-tense experience?

EJ: I’ll start with regrets: I regret not taking more classes at CAL and other GTU schools. I regret not participating more fully in the worship life of this campus until my 2nd & 3rd years. I regret the way some of the broader patterns that I brought to seminary affected my time here, patterns that were harmful to other people. I think we all bring dense histories and patterns with us that, though we may give lip service to them in the classroom, we don’t always see because they play themselves out in largely unconscious or subconscious ways. So I have regret about the way misplaced silence and voice, overall lack of cultural competence (to use PSR’s phraseology) on my part—especially in Senior Seminar and the trip to Southeast Asia—played a role in my time at seminary.



Ad: Any fond memories?

EJ: The good news that is I have about 50 million more good memories than I have regrets – but I’ll try to keep it to a limit. My first year in OTNT while lecturing on Job, Jeffrey Kuan went on a tangent about how important it is for ministers to keep their mouths shut in pastoral care situations where life is crashing down in ways that aren’t explainable. When I was in Viet Nam, I was able to watch him put that theory into praxis with me, and it was a powerful testament to the way a person can live what they teach and teach what they live—and in that integration model for others what’s possible. He is a teacher with a capital T for me.
My experience doing worship with Adriene Thorne, Anna Blaedel, Richard Ward, Laura Engelken, and Gayle Basten during Lent was something I will never forget. I have loved talking The Wire and NBA basketball with Rev. Essex. (Go Lakers!) I would say that the other thing I want to lift up is the story circle Seminarians for Choice organized my second year. I was astounded by the level of honesty and the integrity of the witnessing in that room. I also have met people at/through PSR who incarnate God’s wisdom for me. Though the book learning, theory and research have been crucial to my development, encountering people like Marjorie Wilkes, Glenda Hope, Courtney Gulden, Wade Meyer and Michael Campos (just to name a few!) have played an equal if not bigger role in helping me understand what the love of God is all about.

Ad: What legacy would you hope you leave here? (Besides a considerable endowment to OIA, of course.)


EJ: Legacies are interesting. There’s a part of me that’s rebelling against answering that question because I know the way memory works. No one is ever remembered in the ways they would wish (I think Jesus is a prime example of that). The human memory and its lover, the imagination, are capable of all kinds of distortions. Sometimes people distort a person’s ordinariness to make them seem great; other times people distort ordinariness in order to demonize. It’s all about what you’re trying to remember and where you’re trying to go with that memory. We are constantly remembering things in order to move forward. The most important pericope of the entire biblical text for me is in Song of Solomon 8:6a-b: “Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is as strong as death, passion as fierce as the grave.” We want the strength of the people we love to accompany us along the way. Something I learned early in life, through the death of my father, is that bodies cannot always come along. Our memories are part of the love that is stronger than death—a love that the early church embodied by keeping Jesus alive among them. We can keep things alive, “hang on to the good of what was lived” (to quote Laura Engelken) among us by tangibly remembering it and keeping it current. What I hope for all of us who are graduating is to keep in mind that the memorialization process is as important as the content of the memory itself. Religion has done some beautifully brilliant and horrifically stupid stuff by acknowledging this or not.

Ad: To move away from the PSR world – what is your most important or meaningful distraction from seminary?

EJ: I have two: art and physical disciplines like exercise and Tai Chi.

Ad: Not the tv show, “The Wire?”

EJ: Let me clarify. Having things like “The Wire” (best television show of all time) and “The Sopranos” and Radiohead and the NBA playoffs (and I think sports are an art, let me be specific about that) to immerse myself in was critical to my survival during seminary. Such a huge part of my theology and life-work is making the body and relationality central in conversations about God, Earth and morality. Clearly that translates into me wanting integration of those things in my own life.

Ad: Closing question: Having been interviewed yourself now, what kind of an interviewee are you?

EJ: I feel as interested in the potential directions of the questions as in the possibilities for the answer. I also want to connect any of the personal dimensions to my answer to broader ideas and issues – that’s really important to me: to not stay stuck in Emily’s life but to see how Emily’s life intersects with other people, other relationships, other cultures - or doesn’t connect to those things and why. It’s such a different experience from this side!

I feel happy that you, Audrey, are asking the questions because I trust your intelligence and your ability to make things relevant. I’ve learned that about you over time, which I think greatly impacts the way I answer and my level of openness to the questions themselves (to quote Rilke). I desperately want my loved ones to know, and consider my answering a way to show them, that they were important to me and I am grateful to them for the ways they touched my seminary experience.

Friday, May 9, 2008

Procrastination

Okay. So here it is.

I don't want to do anything.

Perhaps the irritation of 'not getting things done' is easier to face than the pain of leaving a place I have been for 3 years. Perhaps. Unfortunately, dead lines are dead lines.

Are any of the rest of you experiencing this? What are you doing about it?
I feel like a slug...

Saturday, May 3, 2008

General Know Noise Tidbits

1. The Celtics should win the NBA Playoffs based on talent alone. However, I am and always will be pulling for the Lakers. If either team wins, I will be happy.

2. Cal Tjader's "Soul Sauce." Get it. Listen and dance to it. Thanks to Ms. Marjorie Wilkes for putting me on. Hotness, for real.

3. Everyone, absolutely everyone, should read Stephen Moore's chapter in God's Gym entitled "Resurrection: Horrible Pain, Glorious Gain." Never before has any author explored the interface(s) of hypermasculinity, non-reflexive biblical exegesis, theology, and the religious/cultural production of the (fictitious) impenetrable male with such precision, depth, and self-effacing humor. Scholarship and satire at their finest.

4. I graduate in 22 days!!!
Can I get a virtual reality high 5?
Seriously...does anyone read my blog?? I get no fucking comments (except for the occasional drop from the Brethren Priestess: good look Audrey). What's the deal??

Kashf

The composer abruptly lifts his head from what some might consider chicken scratch
(his most eloquent chord ever crafted during the most chaotic time of his life)
just in time to

Having planted the final row of chrysanthemums in her backyard, gleeful
to spend time with fingers and toes in dirt and on rock instead of twirling keys and wearing heels, the gardener gazes deeply into the black soil
just in time to

Silencing the chatter of left brain projects, projections and pipe dreams, a meditating devotee rocks her tail bone, straightens her spine and boisterously inhales
just in time to

A father, staring into the eyeballs of his newborn, tenderly touching something unbreakably soft (an extension of his own all-too-often denied body), gently traces the infant’s facial lines
just in time to

understand that none of this had to be.

Friday, May 2, 2008

Mythos

I have been wanting to write about the media spectacle surrounding Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama for weeks. My internet went down for a few days and during the time I could not go on-line a new wave of the "controversy" came onto the scene. I heard about the Moyers interview and National Press Club talk through word of mouth. In most of those conversations, people (including members of my family and denomination) said "he (Rev. Wright) went off the deep end" and/or "he just lost it, completely."

Then I made the unfortunate mistake of reading Maureen Dowd's column where she reads and likens Rev. Wright's "preying on Obama" at the NPC to classic hero-myths where a young (underdog) hero beats the odds only to find himself betrayed by his mentor/father figure right before claiming the throne. She concludes the article by suggesting that Obama should "kill monsters...knock off his father and assume the throne." From the first sentence of the article Dowd pulls on the socially-constructed "angry black man" motif to craft her argument wherein she calls Rev. Wright "narcissistic," "explosive," and "The Really Angry Black Man" (as opposed to Obama who she characterizes as the "Sort of Angry Black Man”). This kind of journalism is a prime example of intellectually coded white supremacy where the person holding the pen reiterates (through description) and conditions (through prescription) blatant racism. Red flag: anyone who draws on the (western canon of imperial/colonial literature) "classics" to frame a political discourse without reflecting on how those classics have infiltrated the mind-set and foreign policy--and thereby set up the very dynamics she is (kind of, but not really) critiquing--of America. She writes "The Illinois senator doesn’t pay attention to the mythic nature of campaigns." Clearly she doesn't pay attention to the media's complicity in maintaining the mythos of racial stereotyping, male aggression, and dog-eat-dog nature of politics.

All of this before I had even heard Rev. Wright's comments for myself. My internet came back to life a couple days ago. Since then I have seen the Moyer's interview and the NPC talk.

Before getting into my reflections on Rev. Wright's comments, I'd like to acknowledge that I have three sources of affinity that impact my interpretation of this discourse. First, I am a member of and in-care with the United Church of Christ. I am denominationally tied to Rev. Wright, Trinity United Church of Christ and the broader UCC--all of which have been under serious attack in the past month. Second, I am a liberation theologian. Though I do not limit the scope of my theological projects to liberation theology, it has and continues to be a fertile source for interpreting and thinking about G-d's relationship with humanity and all of creation. Many of Rev. Wright's comments on Moyer's and the NPC platform were geared toward educating the public about liberation theology's history and impact on/in Judeo-Christian religion in particular and the American Black Church in particular. That so many of the liberation trajectories within this theology were misinterpreted and misunderstood in the public square goes to show the divorce of the academic study of religion and the practice of religion in contemporary America. I am interested in closing the gap between the two.

Now, what struck me right off the bat is how quickly the NPC conversation digressed when the format went from lecture to Q&A. Whereas the Moyers interview went in several directions, provided Wright and Moyers space to explore topics in depth, the NPC Q&A session was like a 10th grader accosting the once-popular-now-hated source of rumors. "Did you say this?" "Did you say that? Because if you said this then we think that." Every single sound-bite, pop-fox trope employed in the weeks prior was thrown on the table. Here Rev. Wright had given an hour long talk about the history and survival strategies of the Black Church and all this media representative could do was stay within the confines of month-old accusations. Few, if any, of her questions related to the material he presented--material that was historically accurate, far reaching, biblically sound and brilliantly communicated. Her questions, body language and facial expressions could not have been more juvenile and offensive, which of course provoked a form of social mockery between Rev. Wright, the other media analysts in the room and Rev. Wright's supporters in the audience. Once again it is "proven" to us: people just cannot talk about race with sophistication and civility. What a useful refrain for those who have power investment in those conversations remaining harmfully chaotic. People have been citing the "craziness" of this media spectacle all week, but I find the placement of that craziness on Rev. Wright instead of on the framing of the interactions another instance of white supremacy and deep seated ignorance. Further, the obsessive media coverage of the event and the consequences of that event (primarily the split between Obama and Wright) have distracted the American public from more immediate, and dare I say life-threatening, issues. Bob Herbert, one of the most reliable journalists at the NYTimes (though he too has fallen into the Wright hateration trap) wrote on this systematic distraction quite well.

What I sense is at question, and for me at stake, in this entire circumstance is allegiance. I cannot help but think that Rev. Wright and Barack Obama found themselves at the fault line of two American tectonic plates: religion and politics. Facing each other, and in facing each other facing a mirror, these two had to sense the upcoming earthquake made possible by legal separation of church and state in a land where the people's hearts lack any such separation. Both Rev. Wright and Senator Obama came up close and personal with the implications of "serving God and country"--two things I think they both aspire to do. Rev. Wright said it very clearly: "after the election I will still be a pastor." In the end the pastor chose to keep his allegiance with God, not with the possibility for the first black president. What an excruciating decision. It does not strike me as coincidental that such a decision faces Barack's pastor, not Hillary's or McCain's. And what decision is left for Senator Obama? Giving up his pastor or his political career. What an excruciating decision. Is it any coincidence that the American public demands a black-on-black dismissal before it considers a black man electable?

In the end, they both made a choice based on allegiance. One could write a dissertation on the ethical implications of those allegiances and decisions, but while we wait for such a publication to inform our understanding, I think it’s crucial to notice how particularly narrow the options are for both. Most ironic of all: in a country where religion and politics consistently tango with each other to check and balance practical and ethical decision-making, we expect two public figures who represent the best of both to abandon one for the sake of the other. Perhaps it is our reluctance to admit the religious-political hybrid within—so destabilizing to our first amendment and sense of superior identity—that forces us to project our macrocosm anxiety onto an arbitrary (though strategically chosen) microcosm. But admitting anxiety isn’t a part of the American Mythos. And it certainly wouldn’t get you elected in a time of deep seated economic anxiety because then you’d actually be representing—not transcending—your people.

Underlying most of this discourse is what Alfred North Whitehead would call the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness.” We want strength and answers when we feel weak and anxious. We want stable identity categories so we can understand, classify, interpret and use what’s identified when it suits us. Unfortunately we are reaching for water trying to grasp a rope. If we really wanted “change” (to use Obama’s phrase) or “transformation” (to use Wright’s phrase), we would begin to pick apart the very desire to grasp and cling in moments of uncertainty. We would begin to see the arbitrary nature of classification systems and start to let the Other tell us their own story before we place our story on them. And we might let friends remain friends instead of igniting racial in-fighting to tighten our white supremacist hold on power.