A beautiful quote + some news

"My advice to the women of America is to raise more hell and fewer dahlias". William Allen White.

I don't really know where to start this post since I haven't been blogging for a month or so, and Geez, it's been a busy month! It's quite frustrating when I've got plenty of new topics in my head but they're all still "beyond words".

• I think I've finally discovered how to get rid of the skewed subject postion of being the "giver" or the "helper". I know it, but words don't come quite yet.
• Also I should really blog about my beautiful friend Will, the cynical South African guy who's seeking so hard that being in his presence is a bit mystical. I'm proud as hell that he likes me so much.
• And of course God had been rocking my boat in some unprecendented ways, leaving no two bricks standing on one another. Welcome to faith 101. I should probably blog about this too, but I may feel a bit too exposed for that.
• I finally got the classes I'm teaching this year: competitive austerity, urban renaissance, slum communities and geographies of health. I know f*ck all about health.

Observing basil

I’ve killed about twenty pots of basil. I kept trying, but they all died until one friend told me: you’ve got to let is struggle. You’ve got to withhold water from your pot of basil until it visibly struggles and starts to falter. Then give it lots of water but never soak its roots.

So I let it struggle. I observed that while it struggled it made plenty of little leaves, but it never really "launched" them. There were lots and lots of tiny leaves. Weird. But it wasn’t faltering quite yet. Then my flatmate noticed how dry the earth was and she soaked it. I was pissed. My basil had not died yet in a month and a half and now she had soaked it. The basil finally launched all its tiny leaves. All of them. Thousands of them. I’ve never seen the pot of basil look quite so healthy!

So there was a book I hated almost as much as I hate stupid plant parables (and I promise this one will be an exception). It was a book about how to be a perfect preacher’s wife. I had gotten it in order to get into the mind frame of my neighbour, a CoE minister whose wholesome lifestyle and perfect kids puzzle me to no end, and whose cats I sometimes get to feed. I only got one piece of idea from it: a new attitude towards good intentions, failed attempts and assorted old sins. I’ve got a cupboard full of these painful memories.

It’s usual in some discipleship circles to really “get” at good intentions. Hell is paved with good intentions. Good intentions cannot keep a man from hell; they just make him more amusing when he gets there. Get to work you lazy bourgeois kid! I felt like a ton of shit. But the author of that book was of the opinion that these were just a cupboard full of bits and pieces that could be used by God at a later point to spun some new things.

It could be that these are plenty of tiny leaves not yet launched and that I could treasure them instead. It could be that all those past shortcomings can turn into a wealth of resources. It could be that the painful memory of my full-on treasons will keep pride at bay and soak my character a bit for the task to come. I hope that’s it. Because last week it scared the shit out of me when I realized that there were things I really wasn’t prepared to sacrifice even for God. Not that I was expected to at that point (although I’m still not 100% sure to be honest). So understandably, right now I need all the stupid plant parables I can get.

What to do when church bores you

Go clubbing with your gay friends and unchurched friends. Dance, let them hug you, buy them drinks and -with them- sing at the following at the top of your voice (add gesture):

Call on me, call me
call on me, call me
call on me, call me
call on me, call me
call on meeeee,
I'm the same boy (girl) I used to be

I'm the same girl I used to be

call on me, call me
call on me, call me
call on me, call me
call on me, call me
call on meeeee,

I'm the same girl I used to be...

Cry some salty tears if you must. But go to the toilet for that. Declare your love to your friends with the excuse of "being drunk". Listen to them declaring love back to you. Drink water before you go to sleep. Trust in the Lord.

On despair

A man sinned greatly against himself, and when death came to him he charged his sons, saying: When I have died, burn me, then crush me and scatter [my ashes] into the sea, for, by Allah, if my Lord takes possession of me, He will punish me in a manner in which He has punished no one [else]. So they did that to him. Then He said to the earth: Produce what you have taken-and there he was! And He said to him: What induced you to do what you did? He said: Being afraid of You, O my Lord (or he said: ‘Being frightened of You’), and because of that He forgave him.
Hadith Qudsi 32

Within a couple of minutes, I ran into two very different stories of sin and forgiveness. In one, the morale of the story is that culprits really should accept forgiveness, it would be foolish not to turn when this is offered. In the other story (above) the culprit despairs and seeks his own annihilation.

I find the hadith extremely beautiful and I think that God relates to that. I think that Jesus could relate to that. He was very prompt to proclaim to whoever he wanted that his/her sins were forgiven, sometimes out of the blue. Most of the time, the people could not even dare to hope that they could be forgiven (and the religious authorities of the time had made that abundantly clear).

People still live with this kind of despair while some of us are basking in cheap grace. We emphasize the turning point, we celebrate people being reborn, being saved, now walking the narrow path and so on...

What of the folks who have never experienced this and who reach for another drink in despair? Do we keep conveying to them that their sins are forgiven when they don’t even dare to hope? Or does our behaviour convey that we think they’re depraved and worthless failures? I used to know this despair and I used to sense it in others. To my surprise I also used to find the words. It’s just that I don’t see a lot of despair in my neck of the world. And I’m loosing touch with mine.

Sculpture by Antonio Canova

Various Things

It’s that time of year again. The master’s students have handed in their dissertations and the PhD students (who have no clear deadlines) haven’t handed in theirs. People I’ve grown to love are leaving one by one. There’s always Facebook I guess. Liquid Love. I don’t know whether to state boldly that I’ve gotten very good at this and that I’m looking forward to the next couple of months in Durham or whether to say that I'll never get good at goodbye. I feel like Kristin Scott Thomas in the final scene of the Horse Whisperer.

I may not be able to write here very often in the next couple of weeks: I’ve got to get broadband set up in the new place. Anyway, I was running out of steam. I’m feeling really challenged churchwise and I’ll spare you all the further coffee dates in which I get told not to worry about discipleship, that my smile might be “lifting someone’s cross off their back” or some other stupid nonsense. Geez, I should compile a book about the crap sentimentality people pass off for Christianity: that would help humanity I’m sure! Let’s get that out in print, for everyone to reflect upon.

I just can’t believe how comfortable and chummy we’ve become with God. I feel like crying out with Ibsen: “Your God is an old man whom you cheat!”, but mostly, it’s not just God that’s getting cheated, it’s us, and that’s why Dostoyevsky’s The Grand Inquisitor is such a stunning piece of literature. I could learn it by heart, I could speak it out on the streets: Of course we love our Pop Jesus, but we’re being placated by this stupid religious practice, our spirits are maimed, vanishing into irrelevance and we never got a drop of the freedom Jesus was talking about, we haven’t got a spine, we are not new creations. We’ll just discuss Simon of Cyrene over a cup of freaking coffee. Good thing I usually manage not to throw my cup against the wall.

John, a Benedictine monk, once asked about my weird relationship to Church. The best analogy I found was that of domestic cats and wild cats. I’m a wild cat, overly cautious and wary, who usually stays out in the woods but who might come out to eat once in a while when it’s been starving for too long on its own. That’s before it gets all crazed up again.

It’s been the same pattern for years. I’m not a Church-going Christian because I hate church and I’m incapable of attending this respectable social club for very long. I also don’t want show up at the Lord’s table unless He’s got my undivided goodwill. I think that anything else is unworthy of God. I can't help it. So I’ll stay in the wild, trying to work out what reconciliation looks like.

“Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift”. Makes sense. But that means I’m staying clear of the church building more often than not. How do other people work this tension out?

Drawing by Rembrandt, click for larger picture.

Mourning normalcy

Lunch with a friend. She tells me about her recent holiday in Antigua. How her girlfriend went to L.A. and bought plenty of clothes, because it’s so cheap and they’re so cool. There’s a dark blue pencil in my book. It still smelled of thick paint when I bought it. I liked the smell -like one would like the smell of petrol-. Somewhere in China there’s a factory that smells like this. I miss my normalcy.

Marie Antoinette again

It’s probably very bad blogging etiquette to write on the same topic twice, but I have watched Marie Antoinette again this afternoon, and I’m somehow convinced that it is the most critical (and political) movie to grace our cinema screens in recent years. In this movie, Marie Antoinette is most definitely not an immoral character. She is caring and lovely. She is us.