(no subject)
i'm having a hard time switching livejournals.
i feel a bit more comfortable writing on this one.
but we'll see.
The trip to Toronto was great- but totally surreal-
left Thursday evening- scrambled off a report to the board post library shift
and literally ran to the shuttle
It occurred to me that I've made that trip I think three times-
the first time was when I was national rep-
and just like this time I stayed with Angie
which was as hilarious then as it was hilarious now.
Angie lives in a one bedroom apartment near the Dupont subway station
Never has the word bedroom been so appropriate as I think her apartment is 1/2 bed.
I have fantastic memories of that first trip in terms of meeting all day and then going back to Angie's
and laughing my arse off.
At one point going to some Thai restaurant with Michael Burtt and Angie and laughing so hard
that when we got up to leave I was victim to the meanest looks from everyone else who was trying to peacably enjoy their food.
I still remember the soundtrack definitely at one point consisted of a muzaked version of "i've had the time of my life" predictably
w.saxophone.
hilarious.
When I got to toronto- around 10 at night-
getting from the airport via public transport was more complicated than anticipated
but i managed- so around 12 o'clock or so
as the escalator climbed to reach the plexiglass dome of the dupont station i caught a glimpse of Angie
sitting with a woman-on the other side of the glass around the corner
at long last-
ANGIE's GIRLFRIEND!
anyone who's ever met Angie MacNeil knows that powerhouse of ridiculousness brilliance fails as a descriptor.
So when she finally came out to me after all those years of watching her date men and well- loath them
I was more than a little intrigued
so the first thing Moran says to me
"my hands smell like curry- do you want some chips" and thrusts a bag of curried lays in my direction.
I was tired from travel- the chips were tasty
there were hugs and coohing sounds and conversation
about the event they'd been to on the trafficking of women
and the nature and complexity of feminist community and organizing in toronto.
Angie has always been intensely passionately happy- even the intensity of her rage has that quality-
but seeing her with Moran- seeing her in love.
Pretty incredible doesn't quite go there either.
Immediately after Moran left- within ten minutes Angie slips in a subtle joke
referencing the bizarreness of the WRC
to which I roar.
Always the need to do this
Remembering how fucked up it was to be a part of a liberal feminist "community"
The need to always assert by abjection- that we aren't that. that shit was fucked up.
The problem- which is endemic to a lot of the clubs and societies at MUN-
which I think is in part due to the architecture of the student centre-
they are completely removed from campus life-
a person only goes to the sixth floor with the purpose of being in one of these clubs
but mostly the wrc was messed up because of the essentialism- the absolute bullshit of a feminism that was some kind of fusion
of andrea dworkin+ naomi wold + sex in the city- asserting as a universal given for all of us.
on the plane i was reading judith butler's "contingent foundations" i have to give a presentation on it soon
and found this lovely passage-
‘if feminism presupposes that “women” designates an undesignatable field of differences, one that cannot be totalised or summarised by a descriptive identity category, then the very term becomes a site of permanent openness and resignifiability. I would argue that the rifts among women over the content of the term ought to be safeguarded and prized, indeed, that this constant rifting ought to be affirmed as the ungrounded ground of feminist theory. To deconstruct the subject of feminism is not, then, to censure its usage, but, on the contrary, to release the term into a future of multiple significations, to emancipate it from the maternal or racialist ontologies to which it has been restricted, and to give it play as a site where unanticipated meanings might come to bear.
‘Paradoxically, it may be that only through releasing the category of women from a fixed referent that something like “agency” becomes possible.’
There was endless talk at the WRC about sisterhood- I remember conversations about
"who was a sister"
and I remember other conversations when an alleged 'sister' would leave a room- suddenly out came the knives-
jean vanier says that gossip destroys communities. he also says love of communities can destroy them too. it's the clubhouse mentality- the desire to assert safe spaces. again- questions of power- who's in? who get's to say what's safe?
they were hard times. i left the WRC and never went back. instead went to LBGT mun- where the politics were also fucked. so eventually i left there too. but because i was there i ended up in SCM.
but in both cases there were people around the WRC and LBGT mun whose friendships were invaluable- like Angie, Renee, Steve Dymond. People that made me feel profoundly alive- ridiculous- courageous-
it was very necessary.
I remembered how I felt years ago. The incredible cardboard woman. Rigid- awkward- passionate but unsure of herself at every step.
I've written about this before- but the time in the Anna Templeton Centre program really changed that- mostly it was feeling super comfortable in the presence of straight-identified women and not feeling like in being someone's friend that i was creeping them out- not feeling like an alien- but also- not just those friendships but the act of making something- making something tangible- weaving- knitting- dyeing- i still love dyeing wool a lot- i love putting it in the pot- watching it slowly absorb the dye- leaving it to dry and then noticing how, in the case of natural dyes anyway- they have a kind of lit from within quality to them. The graduating show. Being on that platform wearing something I made myself- arms linked around those girls posing for photos wearing things they made and all looking so fucking fabulous. No part of me was cardboard then. Nor is now.
here's an excerpt from earlier livejournal about that time-to clarify i left national conference in ottawa- was flown home and flown back - just so i could be at that show.
"one day i'm feeding a goat, talking seriously about anti-oppression work and the next i'm on the platform modeling my own clothes and my dad and stepmom are on one side of the room and my mom is standing awkwardly beside me on the other side and its packed and allison book is swigging back the beer everytime i looked at her and a big speaker blared her mixed cd and i sang along to pulp and ladytron and watched some 60 pieces come from my twelve classmates and i. and we all climbed up on the platform, with our flowers in hand and posed for class shots, i cried a bit at some point, when deirde got the award, just b/c i knew she deserved it...at barry's new bar later that night and allison book has forgotten that she doesn't know how to dance but oblivious to the fact that she is the worlds cutest girl so it doesn't really matter and adam wight kept telling me i was so pretty and me and matt dawe talked indie rock records like always and lindsey, kyla, sarah, guzz,sabrina, kathryn, peggy,melissa, deirdre, carolyn, were drinking and laughing and taking pictures of themselves and katie, susan, elizabeth, bev and sarah minty were all there and laughing and drinking beer and i snuck away to go back to school and get my luggage, had a beer by myself and walked around looking at everybody's work while waiting for a cab. i came home to my messy apartment, eventually the cats showed up, and i slept for four hours, hauled my ass back to the airport for conference. the next day i facilitated a full day of consensus decision making.at some point i went to a wine and cheese for an anglican justice camp. holy crap. they must have found all the rowdy anglicans in canada and put them in a room together.there was someone there from a group called Integrity, an LBGT Anglican group who wanted people to march with them at the Nigerian embassy the following day (see http://www.integrity.ca as to why they were there, i m too woolly to be articulate right now). if you'd asked me before i wouldve said rowdy anglican was an oxymoron. not so."
The hilarious irony of this is that I've been making a return to the Anglican church. I am slowly becoming a rowdy Anglican in my own right. The time I spent in the United Church was important- I needed that space to feel completely comfortable in the church- to begin to feel comfortable articulating myself as someone who does identify as being Christian. But I don't actually have a religious experience there- it's an intellectual one- most of the time. The big thing for me is communion. When I went on the retreat with the King's College Chaplaincy (very, very high Anglicans) I could not get over how much I missed communion. Longed for it even. The words of the Book of Common Prayer were like poetry- I experienced them in some kind of immanent/ transcendent way- and the weird part was- these were words I knew and had raged against- but now- specifically this prayer- the prayer of confession;
"Almighty God, our heavenly Father:
We have sinned against you, Through our own fault, in thought, word and deed,
and in what we have done and what we have left undone. For the sake of your Son our Lord Jesus Christ, forgive us our sins..."
the version i'm typing is from the episcopalian Book of Common Prayer- but here's another form;
ALMIGHTY and most merciful Father, We have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep, We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts, We have offended against thy holy laws, We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; And there is no health in us. But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders. Spare thou them, O God, which confess their faults. Restore thou them that are penitent; According to thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesu our Lord. And grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake, That we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life, To the glory of thy holy Name. Amen.
In conversation with Matt Rowe post that Anglican retreat - he said- that i distinctly told him when i was fifteen that this prayer gave a person a negative self-concept-because you have to say it every time you go to church no matter what. at that point i was really not into to church- and was totally weirded out by the impending re-anglicanization of my family as my dad was beginning theology school. although i think i was in a church band at that point at St.Thomas's for the evening services. He told me that growing up he felt himself spiritually torn between me and his brother who would go on to become a high Anglican priest. Pretty hilarious to ask him the question- so what happens if I start hanging out with high Anglicans? That's pretty cool, says Matt. Pretty fricken cool. The thing about this prayer is your relationship to it is totally shaped by your personal relationship with your experience of who God and Jesus are- if you think God is all about making a person feel really terrible about themselves and their iniquities all the live long day then of course this prayer is going to piss you off.
Here's where I am with this. God is love. God loves us in a way we can hardly fathom- barely even imagine- but experience momentarily throughout our lives. We don't love. We don't love ourselves and we don't love each other. Not well. Or at least- we manage sometimes. But we are broken. Deeply wounded. We can't manage it all the time. This broken, deeply woundedness is not exclusive to this overtechnologized era- but is a fundamental character of human existence on the planet. We try. We really do. But we hurt ourselves and hurt other people all the time because we either are afraid of our own depth of love- hurt by the absence of it in our own lives- we long for it- and not knowing how we fumble and stumble around like, well, lost sheep. This is where I think Jesus comes in. To teach people how to love- how to abide in that love- to live fully in that love- how to love ourselves and love others. From the gospel of Matthew;
13 You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.
14 You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden.
15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.
16 In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.
and then later
43 You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.'
44 But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
45 that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?
47 And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?
if you love community- be careful - because in the end it's easy to love people that love you-
but to love radically means to be present in this world. to listen well. to dialogue. to attempt always to deconstruct your own arrogance. to live with your brokenness- woundedness and understand it- to live with a vulnerable, fleshy heart.
to have questions that may be unanswerable- to ask them- and not be sure that the answer is accurate.
this passage comes at the end of the beatitudes- wherein everything is turned upside down-
this is call for a radical love- radical in that it necessarily to turns everything upside down-
to live the beatitudes truthfully is to try to live asserting that love radically.
this doesn't mean running around a la mr. burns on the simpsons in the episode where everyone thought he was an alien
saying " i bring you looooooove"
it means being present.
in the midst of it all.
or at least trying.
for the record i don't think a person needs to be Christian to be present and loving.
But a person that is able to do that brings something of God into this world.
This very, very broken and wounded world.
Where it is so very easy to not be present.
I have seen that kind of presence in Mikiki and Renee- and in all kinds of people who would have nothing do with Christianity-
except to criticize it, deservedly so. The church itself is in age of great reckoning.
On the plane on the way back I was reading Leo Furey's The Long Run which is set in a catholic orphanage in St.John's in the sixties- Furey calls Mount Kildare- but every reader from Newfoundland will recognize it as Mount Cashel. The first five pages made me wonder why or how anyone in Newfoundland manages to go to church at all. So much pain. So much trauma. Always a question of who gets to say what things mean and how we should live and why and the power- the travesty of the power of those priests- reflects the maxim-
absolute power corrupts absolutely. those priests were absolutely powerful.absolutely corrupted.
jesus never said "build me a great big instituition to boss people around and wreak violence and terror on the lives of those within and without and without its doorways and raise generations of people so wounded by trying to get close to me that they hurt other people"
he was a feminist.
hung out with the marginalized.
preached love.
he told peter to 'feed his sheep'
he did all kinds of whacky things.
thomas merton offers this prayer
MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
anyway.
i have a lot of big thoughts of late.
i haven't eaten anything yet. but i needed to write.
blessings.
i'm not writing this to get anyone to go to church.
i'm writing pleading with people to be courageous.
to listen, to love and be present.
from SCM Burma-
In the spirit of the SCM Solidarity Song, written and composed
by SCM Burma in the 80's:
The song we sing not for ourselves,
for those who are oppressed and chained.
Build up a new society,
Lets share and feel With them.
The way we work not for ourselves,
in love and solidarity now and always,
gillian
i feel a bit more comfortable writing on this one.
but we'll see.
The trip to Toronto was great- but totally surreal-
left Thursday evening- scrambled off a report to the board post library shift
and literally ran to the shuttle
It occurred to me that I've made that trip I think three times-
the first time was when I was national rep-
and just like this time I stayed with Angie
which was as hilarious then as it was hilarious now.
Angie lives in a one bedroom apartment near the Dupont subway station
Never has the word bedroom been so appropriate as I think her apartment is 1/2 bed.
I have fantastic memories of that first trip in terms of meeting all day and then going back to Angie's
and laughing my arse off.
At one point going to some Thai restaurant with Michael Burtt and Angie and laughing so hard
that when we got up to leave I was victim to the meanest looks from everyone else who was trying to peacably enjoy their food.
I still remember the soundtrack definitely at one point consisted of a muzaked version of "i've had the time of my life" predictably
w.saxophone.
hilarious.
When I got to toronto- around 10 at night-
getting from the airport via public transport was more complicated than anticipated
but i managed- so around 12 o'clock or so
as the escalator climbed to reach the plexiglass dome of the dupont station i caught a glimpse of Angie
sitting with a woman-on the other side of the glass around the corner
at long last-
ANGIE's GIRLFRIEND!
anyone who's ever met Angie MacNeil knows that powerhouse of ridiculousness brilliance fails as a descriptor.
So when she finally came out to me after all those years of watching her date men and well- loath them
I was more than a little intrigued
so the first thing Moran says to me
"my hands smell like curry- do you want some chips" and thrusts a bag of curried lays in my direction.
I was tired from travel- the chips were tasty
there were hugs and coohing sounds and conversation
about the event they'd been to on the trafficking of women
and the nature and complexity of feminist community and organizing in toronto.
Angie has always been intensely passionately happy- even the intensity of her rage has that quality-
but seeing her with Moran- seeing her in love.
Pretty incredible doesn't quite go there either.
Immediately after Moran left- within ten minutes Angie slips in a subtle joke
referencing the bizarreness of the WRC
to which I roar.
Always the need to do this
Remembering how fucked up it was to be a part of a liberal feminist "community"
The need to always assert by abjection- that we aren't that. that shit was fucked up.
The problem- which is endemic to a lot of the clubs and societies at MUN-
which I think is in part due to the architecture of the student centre-
they are completely removed from campus life-
a person only goes to the sixth floor with the purpose of being in one of these clubs
but mostly the wrc was messed up because of the essentialism- the absolute bullshit of a feminism that was some kind of fusion
of andrea dworkin+ naomi wold + sex in the city- asserting as a universal given for all of us.
on the plane i was reading judith butler's "contingent foundations" i have to give a presentation on it soon
and found this lovely passage-
‘if feminism presupposes that “women” designates an undesignatable field of differences, one that cannot be totalised or summarised by a descriptive identity category, then the very term becomes a site of permanent openness and resignifiability. I would argue that the rifts among women over the content of the term ought to be safeguarded and prized, indeed, that this constant rifting ought to be affirmed as the ungrounded ground of feminist theory. To deconstruct the subject of feminism is not, then, to censure its usage, but, on the contrary, to release the term into a future of multiple significations, to emancipate it from the maternal or racialist ontologies to which it has been restricted, and to give it play as a site where unanticipated meanings might come to bear.
‘Paradoxically, it may be that only through releasing the category of women from a fixed referent that something like “agency” becomes possible.’
There was endless talk at the WRC about sisterhood- I remember conversations about
"who was a sister"
and I remember other conversations when an alleged 'sister' would leave a room- suddenly out came the knives-
jean vanier says that gossip destroys communities. he also says love of communities can destroy them too. it's the clubhouse mentality- the desire to assert safe spaces. again- questions of power- who's in? who get's to say what's safe?
they were hard times. i left the WRC and never went back. instead went to LBGT mun- where the politics were also fucked. so eventually i left there too. but because i was there i ended up in SCM.
but in both cases there were people around the WRC and LBGT mun whose friendships were invaluable- like Angie, Renee, Steve Dymond. People that made me feel profoundly alive- ridiculous- courageous-
it was very necessary.
I remembered how I felt years ago. The incredible cardboard woman. Rigid- awkward- passionate but unsure of herself at every step.
I've written about this before- but the time in the Anna Templeton Centre program really changed that- mostly it was feeling super comfortable in the presence of straight-identified women and not feeling like in being someone's friend that i was creeping them out- not feeling like an alien- but also- not just those friendships but the act of making something- making something tangible- weaving- knitting- dyeing- i still love dyeing wool a lot- i love putting it in the pot- watching it slowly absorb the dye- leaving it to dry and then noticing how, in the case of natural dyes anyway- they have a kind of lit from within quality to them. The graduating show. Being on that platform wearing something I made myself- arms linked around those girls posing for photos wearing things they made and all looking so fucking fabulous. No part of me was cardboard then. Nor is now.
here's an excerpt from earlier livejournal about that time-to clarify i left national conference in ottawa- was flown home and flown back - just so i could be at that show.
"one day i'm feeding a goat, talking seriously about anti-oppression work and the next i'm on the platform modeling my own clothes and my dad and stepmom are on one side of the room and my mom is standing awkwardly beside me on the other side and its packed and allison book is swigging back the beer everytime i looked at her and a big speaker blared her mixed cd and i sang along to pulp and ladytron and watched some 60 pieces come from my twelve classmates and i. and we all climbed up on the platform, with our flowers in hand and posed for class shots, i cried a bit at some point, when deirde got the award, just b/c i knew she deserved it...at barry's new bar later that night and allison book has forgotten that she doesn't know how to dance but oblivious to the fact that she is the worlds cutest girl so it doesn't really matter and adam wight kept telling me i was so pretty and me and matt dawe talked indie rock records like always and lindsey, kyla, sarah, guzz,sabrina, kathryn, peggy,melissa, deirdre, carolyn, were drinking and laughing and taking pictures of themselves and katie, susan, elizabeth, bev and sarah minty were all there and laughing and drinking beer and i snuck away to go back to school and get my luggage, had a beer by myself and walked around looking at everybody's work while waiting for a cab. i came home to my messy apartment, eventually the cats showed up, and i slept for four hours, hauled my ass back to the airport for conference. the next day i facilitated a full day of consensus decision making.at some point i went to a wine and cheese for an anglican justice camp. holy crap. they must have found all the rowdy anglicans in canada and put them in a room together.there was someone there from a group called Integrity, an LBGT Anglican group who wanted people to march with them at the Nigerian embassy the following day (see http://www.integrity.ca as to why they were there, i m too woolly to be articulate right now). if you'd asked me before i wouldve said rowdy anglican was an oxymoron. not so."
The hilarious irony of this is that I've been making a return to the Anglican church. I am slowly becoming a rowdy Anglican in my own right. The time I spent in the United Church was important- I needed that space to feel completely comfortable in the church- to begin to feel comfortable articulating myself as someone who does identify as being Christian. But I don't actually have a religious experience there- it's an intellectual one- most of the time. The big thing for me is communion. When I went on the retreat with the King's College Chaplaincy (very, very high Anglicans) I could not get over how much I missed communion. Longed for it even. The words of the Book of Common Prayer were like poetry- I experienced them in some kind of immanent/ transcendent way- and the weird part was- these were words I knew and had raged against- but now- specifically this prayer- the prayer of confession;
"Almighty God, our heavenly Father:
We have sinned against you, Through our own fault, in thought, word and deed,
and in what we have done and what we have left undone. For the sake of your Son our Lord Jesus Christ, forgive us our sins..."
the version i'm typing is from the episcopalian Book of Common Prayer- but here's another form;
ALMIGHTY and most merciful Father, We have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep, We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts, We have offended against thy holy laws, We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; And there is no health in us. But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders. Spare thou them, O God, which confess their faults. Restore thou them that are penitent; According to thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesu our Lord. And grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake, That we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life, To the glory of thy holy Name. Amen.
In conversation with Matt Rowe post that Anglican retreat - he said- that i distinctly told him when i was fifteen that this prayer gave a person a negative self-concept-because you have to say it every time you go to church no matter what. at that point i was really not into to church- and was totally weirded out by the impending re-anglicanization of my family as my dad was beginning theology school. although i think i was in a church band at that point at St.Thomas's for the evening services. He told me that growing up he felt himself spiritually torn between me and his brother who would go on to become a high Anglican priest. Pretty hilarious to ask him the question- so what happens if I start hanging out with high Anglicans? That's pretty cool, says Matt. Pretty fricken cool. The thing about this prayer is your relationship to it is totally shaped by your personal relationship with your experience of who God and Jesus are- if you think God is all about making a person feel really terrible about themselves and their iniquities all the live long day then of course this prayer is going to piss you off.
Here's where I am with this. God is love. God loves us in a way we can hardly fathom- barely even imagine- but experience momentarily throughout our lives. We don't love. We don't love ourselves and we don't love each other. Not well. Or at least- we manage sometimes. But we are broken. Deeply wounded. We can't manage it all the time. This broken, deeply woundedness is not exclusive to this overtechnologized era- but is a fundamental character of human existence on the planet. We try. We really do. But we hurt ourselves and hurt other people all the time because we either are afraid of our own depth of love- hurt by the absence of it in our own lives- we long for it- and not knowing how we fumble and stumble around like, well, lost sheep. This is where I think Jesus comes in. To teach people how to love- how to abide in that love- to live fully in that love- how to love ourselves and love others. From the gospel of Matthew;
13 You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.
14 You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden.
15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.
16 In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.
and then later
43 You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.'
44 But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
45 that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?
47 And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?
if you love community- be careful - because in the end it's easy to love people that love you-
but to love radically means to be present in this world. to listen well. to dialogue. to attempt always to deconstruct your own arrogance. to live with your brokenness- woundedness and understand it- to live with a vulnerable, fleshy heart.
to have questions that may be unanswerable- to ask them- and not be sure that the answer is accurate.
this passage comes at the end of the beatitudes- wherein everything is turned upside down-
this is call for a radical love- radical in that it necessarily to turns everything upside down-
to live the beatitudes truthfully is to try to live asserting that love radically.
this doesn't mean running around a la mr. burns on the simpsons in the episode where everyone thought he was an alien
saying " i bring you looooooove"
it means being present.
in the midst of it all.
or at least trying.
for the record i don't think a person needs to be Christian to be present and loving.
But a person that is able to do that brings something of God into this world.
This very, very broken and wounded world.
Where it is so very easy to not be present.
I have seen that kind of presence in Mikiki and Renee- and in all kinds of people who would have nothing do with Christianity-
except to criticize it, deservedly so. The church itself is in age of great reckoning.
On the plane on the way back I was reading Leo Furey's The Long Run which is set in a catholic orphanage in St.John's in the sixties- Furey calls Mount Kildare- but every reader from Newfoundland will recognize it as Mount Cashel. The first five pages made me wonder why or how anyone in Newfoundland manages to go to church at all. So much pain. So much trauma. Always a question of who gets to say what things mean and how we should live and why and the power- the travesty of the power of those priests- reflects the maxim-
absolute power corrupts absolutely. those priests were absolutely powerful.absolutely corrupted.
jesus never said "build me a great big instituition to boss people around and wreak violence and terror on the lives of those within and without and without its doorways and raise generations of people so wounded by trying to get close to me that they hurt other people"
he was a feminist.
hung out with the marginalized.
preached love.
he told peter to 'feed his sheep'
he did all kinds of whacky things.
thomas merton offers this prayer
MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
anyway.
i have a lot of big thoughts of late.
i haven't eaten anything yet. but i needed to write.
blessings.
i'm not writing this to get anyone to go to church.
i'm writing pleading with people to be courageous.
to listen, to love and be present.
from SCM Burma-
In the spirit of the SCM Solidarity Song, written and composed
by SCM Burma in the 80's:
The song we sing not for ourselves,
for those who are oppressed and chained.
Build up a new society,
Lets share and feel With them.
The way we work not for ourselves,
in love and solidarity now and always,
gillian