Over the last few months, if there is one thing that really got me fuming it is stupid pregancy books written by men. I don't care how many pregnant women they've talked to and how many babies they've delivered, I still resent pontifying discourses written by men. Every atom of my body is crying: get the heck out of our field, talk about whatever you want, but growing babies is women's stuff.
And I must admit that this primal womynist anger is spreading quickly to a lot of other fields as well. I find myself longing for a women's bible, that isn't all about "the seed of men" but the "eggs of women" and all that kind of stuff. I'm sure I could find that on Amazon somewhere. I long for entire passages in the bible that would be love letters to women. It annoys me that we know so little about key female characters because men couldn't be bothered to write them in fully.
I'm not alone in this... Every once in a while my female theologian friends end up exclaiming, quite despite themselves "Will there ever be any bounds to the mysogyny of the [catholic] church?" The same is valid for extraordinarily gifted gay theologians such as James Alison who are having, like the rest of us, to reimagine a God that wouldn't treat women and gays as any less interesting than straight men.
So right now, a male-centric bible doesn't talk to me, and a male saviour doesn't talk to me all that much either. I don't know if this is right or wrong, all I know is that I'm feeling it quite intensely and that denying isn't very helpful. It's far more interesting to explore why this is and what insights into the creative genius of the Shekinah this might shed light upon. Making honey from a lot of flowers, you bet!
Friday 20 May 2011
Sunday 1 May 2011
"The body was put in a plastic bag" by Ian M Fraser
Expecting a child was the best thing to ever happen to me, Christian-wise. While stories like the one I'm citing below used to upset me before, I now positively can't bear them.
It might be linked to the low blood sugar in the morning. It makes me wake up every day with a ravenous hunger which I am fortunate to be able to alleviate by walking down to the kitchen. Before, I never even felt hunger except as a mild annoyance which I could ignore for half a day if I wanted. I once did a good job of keeping Ramadan with a friend for a little while and found it quite easy. Now it often feels like I'm going to pass out if I don't eat some carbs quickly. I am so pathetically thankful for a sweetened cup of tea, especially because, as an added bonus, it makes the baby kick!
Also, it's incredible how protective I feel towards the little creature in my belly. I can't imagine what it must be like to be unable to feed your child or to provide them with essential medicines. Just the thought of it evokes a raw, incredibly powerful anger. So I'm fully in line with all the feminist theologians who conceive of the Wrath of God as something akin to the rage of a mother bear whose cubs are being threatened (by reference to Hosea 13:8). It is scary as all f*** and you don't want to be in its path.
So on with the account by Ian Fraser. It dates back to 1982 and in a way I hope to God that this sort of thing isn't going on so much anymore as a result of international scrutiny, but I wouldn't put it past public authorities even now.
"In 1982, Margaret accompanied me to the Philipines. It was her first visit. We saw one of the effects of holding the South East Asian Games in that country at that time. We were in an area which was deemed to be an eyesore by the authorities. It would disgrace the country if competitors from many nations saw it. So although the tenants had a legal right to their property and could not be faulted on payments of dues, bulldozers were sent in and their shacks demolished.
Residents were dumped on the outskirts of Manila, including a husband, wife and five children. They had no resources, no work was to be found. They drifted back. The husband, worn out by malnutrition and worry coughed up his lifeblood. There was no money to bury him. The body was put in a plastic bag and lay around for two weeks. Neighours at last sacrificially raised enough to secure his burial.
The neighbours then built a lean-to against a wall and covered the framework with plastic (from the bag used for the body) to provide minimal accommodation for the widow and children. Its total extent was about 10' by 4'. A low platform kept the family off the mud and had to serve for beds. Five plastic bags acted as wardrobes for the chidren clothes. That had to be home."
Extract out of This Isthe Day. Readings and meditations from the Iona Community. Month 2, day 2.
It might be linked to the low blood sugar in the morning. It makes me wake up every day with a ravenous hunger which I am fortunate to be able to alleviate by walking down to the kitchen. Before, I never even felt hunger except as a mild annoyance which I could ignore for half a day if I wanted. I once did a good job of keeping Ramadan with a friend for a little while and found it quite easy. Now it often feels like I'm going to pass out if I don't eat some carbs quickly. I am so pathetically thankful for a sweetened cup of tea, especially because, as an added bonus, it makes the baby kick!
Also, it's incredible how protective I feel towards the little creature in my belly. I can't imagine what it must be like to be unable to feed your child or to provide them with essential medicines. Just the thought of it evokes a raw, incredibly powerful anger. So I'm fully in line with all the feminist theologians who conceive of the Wrath of God as something akin to the rage of a mother bear whose cubs are being threatened (by reference to Hosea 13:8). It is scary as all f*** and you don't want to be in its path.
So on with the account by Ian Fraser. It dates back to 1982 and in a way I hope to God that this sort of thing isn't going on so much anymore as a result of international scrutiny, but I wouldn't put it past public authorities even now.
"In 1982, Margaret accompanied me to the Philipines. It was her first visit. We saw one of the effects of holding the South East Asian Games in that country at that time. We were in an area which was deemed to be an eyesore by the authorities. It would disgrace the country if competitors from many nations saw it. So although the tenants had a legal right to their property and could not be faulted on payments of dues, bulldozers were sent in and their shacks demolished.
Residents were dumped on the outskirts of Manila, including a husband, wife and five children. They had no resources, no work was to be found. They drifted back. The husband, worn out by malnutrition and worry coughed up his lifeblood. There was no money to bury him. The body was put in a plastic bag and lay around for two weeks. Neighours at last sacrificially raised enough to secure his burial.
The neighbours then built a lean-to against a wall and covered the framework with plastic (from the bag used for the body) to provide minimal accommodation for the widow and children. Its total extent was about 10' by 4'. A low platform kept the family off the mud and had to serve for beds. Five plastic bags acted as wardrobes for the chidren clothes. That had to be home."
Extract out of This Isthe Day. Readings and meditations from the Iona Community. Month 2, day 2.
Voices from the past
From as far as I can remember, I was out trying to invent new devices and new solutions to the problems I saw around me. I'd spend a weekend thinking my stuff through and then I'd expound it to my parents. I only ever got one answer: "if it was that easy, everybody would be doing it". I must have heard that sentence more than a thousand times.
On another occasion, I was happily butchering a Tracy Chapman song on a cheap guitar I'd bought at a car boot sale. I actually quite liked the sound I was making and was quite proud of myself. Until my father told to stop because it didn't sound good and I was just annoying everybody.
I resisted that one after a while, and a few years later I would lock myslelf somewhere really remote and sing Mozart's Arie der Koenigin der Nacht and Haendel's I know that my redeemer liveth to my heart's content, thinking that the important thing was that I enjoyed it, and it didn't matter if it sounded bad. Once somebody walked by, stopped and told me that it sounded really good.
To this day, I abort most of my ideas, thinking that there must be a catch somewhere and that "if it was that easy, everybody would be doing it". I also very rarely take pleasure in singing or making music any more. Indeed my singing has gotten a lot worse over the past ten years. The Germans are on to something with their concept of Erfolgerlebnis (meaning: a structuring experience of success). I wonder how cool it would be, just to create whatever I feel like creating and to sing whatever I feel like singing without these voices from the past?
Around me, people go on creating things that I'm convinced I could have created. One of our acquaintances decided that the water in village he visited in Tanzania wasn't safe to drink. He raised funds among his friends and contracted a company to build a deep well that goes right into the phreatic table.
Along these lines, I think I'd really like to create links of solidarity between a church where I live and a church in the developing world because the later have got a hell of a lot of work trying to alleviate the plight of those people whom capitalism forgets.
I keep thinking: in this day and age how hard can this be? We need two bank accounts, a reliable supply of funds on our side and a reliable team of people to administer them on the other side. It really isn't rocket science and it sure doesn't take a Geography Ph.D. to set it up.
I can't belive I still feel disempowered and this is begginning to really anger me. A good kind of anger. A good bellowing of the Arie der Koenigin der Nacht is fully in order.
On another occasion, I was happily butchering a Tracy Chapman song on a cheap guitar I'd bought at a car boot sale. I actually quite liked the sound I was making and was quite proud of myself. Until my father told to stop because it didn't sound good and I was just annoying everybody.
I resisted that one after a while, and a few years later I would lock myslelf somewhere really remote and sing Mozart's Arie der Koenigin der Nacht and Haendel's I know that my redeemer liveth to my heart's content, thinking that the important thing was that I enjoyed it, and it didn't matter if it sounded bad. Once somebody walked by, stopped and told me that it sounded really good.
To this day, I abort most of my ideas, thinking that there must be a catch somewhere and that "if it was that easy, everybody would be doing it". I also very rarely take pleasure in singing or making music any more. Indeed my singing has gotten a lot worse over the past ten years. The Germans are on to something with their concept of Erfolgerlebnis (meaning: a structuring experience of success). I wonder how cool it would be, just to create whatever I feel like creating and to sing whatever I feel like singing without these voices from the past?
Around me, people go on creating things that I'm convinced I could have created. One of our acquaintances decided that the water in village he visited in Tanzania wasn't safe to drink. He raised funds among his friends and contracted a company to build a deep well that goes right into the phreatic table.
Along these lines, I think I'd really like to create links of solidarity between a church where I live and a church in the developing world because the later have got a hell of a lot of work trying to alleviate the plight of those people whom capitalism forgets.
I keep thinking: in this day and age how hard can this be? We need two bank accounts, a reliable supply of funds on our side and a reliable team of people to administer them on the other side. It really isn't rocket science and it sure doesn't take a Geography Ph.D. to set it up.
I can't belive I still feel disempowered and this is begginning to really anger me. A good kind of anger. A good bellowing of the Arie der Koenigin der Nacht is fully in order.
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