The Late, Great (as in lengthy) Snow White Anaylsis

*trigger warning for mention of rape, white supremacy*

*spoilers...kinda*

A Caveat

So, I promised an analysis of Snow White. Before we go any further, I would like to clarify something. Feminist analysis has always been criticized as nit-picky. Snow White, I realize, is a very old folk tale dating from the sixteenth century. The story came from a place in time when calling little people dwarves wasn't viewed as problematic. It also came from a time when a story of sixteen year old girls being raped and forced into servitude (true story in the originals) constituted important information to convey in story. I'm almost sure it once served as a cautionary tale for young women.

Reading up even perfunctorily on the older versions of Snow White (the non prettified Disney versions), we do have a vast improvement. As far as the bald misogyny goes (one could make a case we need folk tales like that now, sans the victim blaming, to uncover such inequities as the sex trade, or racism, or the ubiquitousness of rape).

Now, even while Snow White (after Disney) is just a fairy tale, it is by no means "just" a fairy tale. Yes, it is a story. But, the question is: why do we produce and consume this kind of story? Why is this story being made, or what enables us to tell this story? Furthermore, what messages do we receive, implicitly, from story and how do they shape our thinking? These are issues we need to examine while watching movies. I think it was Camus who said a story is a philosophy put into images....

In truth, I don't know how to process Snow White yet. As Anna Joy, I loved it for personal reasons. As a feminist, I realize that not everyone (little people, people of color, fat people, people who have experienced sexual assault) could enjoy it in the same way. Or even at all.

Given my own, visceral gut reaction to the film (despite its very problematic elements), I can only agree (as feminists of all colors
have always said) that representation in media (as in all aspects of social, economic, and political life) matters. Everybody (not just white guys) desperately need to see themselves reflected in culture. With agency and human dignity. Snow White does this, to some extent, for white cis women. Or, it did for me definitely. Although, its nascent feminism deserves 2.5 stars out of 5 (despite the way this sounds, this is progress...slow progress, but progress nonetheless).

This is what this review is about.

Representation

Of course, though initially I wanted to write about its racism and tokenism, I don't feel I can (or should, as an ally) speak much to either in this film. All I can really say is that there were like, max, two or three extras (I noticed) who happened to be poc. And, as I previously mentioned, the miasmic concept of "darkness" and "blackness" as evil (black ravens as Ravenna's totem) and the super, super pure whiteness of the heroine as everything good pervades the thing (also, are we to believe that in this entire vast kingdom, there are only a handful of non-white people? Jeez).

Renee, over at Womanist Musings, has taken on the "special snowflake"-ness of the protagonist and has given a much better account of the racial bullshit going on there. There is much.

My concern, or, no, rather, what I can speak to with integrity, is the representation of white women in this film.

As Renee pointed out in her review, the idea that pureness of heart alone makes all the men (no women warriors) in the kingdom ready to fight for her is problematic. Perhaps it is her pedigree as long lost princess, which makes sense, but as Renee pointed out, there was little beside her beauty to inspire loyalty...would the men have followed her if she were black? Or fat? Disabled? Was her beauty really "inner beauty"? I mean, it was Kristen Stewart, who is very, very conventionally attractive. Perhaps on first blush one could read it this way (the way I did that moved me so. It is a very possible reading), though my instinct tells me this "pure was of heart" was only secondary. Sadly, Snow White doesn't really have much of a personality. She's a Mary Sue for most of the movie.

I did appreciate the fact that Snow White gets to fight. I'm always disappointed in films where the kick ass feminine/female lead, who, throughout the rest of the entire film is gun toting, straight up badass marks-woman, or skilled mixed martial artist, but suddenly becomes helpless at the climax when those skills might really, well, actually come in handy. The masculine/male lead ultimately saves her and then the two fall into each others arms. Or (Sucker Punch, I'm looking at you), the protagonist does kick ass, on her own, but in outfits that would only cover a six year old sufficiently...and/or then, we realize it is all in her head (I really hated Sucker Punch. Besides, "ha ha, it was just a dream/hallucination" movies are just, imho, categorically annoying. Ok, maybe with the exception of Fight Club/American Psycho...).

No one came to Snow White's rescue. She gets to face danger and to prevail by herself. She faces her nemesis (her alter ego perhaps?) on her own, something women rarely do on screen.

Sexual Assault

I've already mentioned, in passing, the unconscious kissing. On one hand, I know. It is an integral part of the (Disneyfied) fairy tale. Though, when Disney made its version in the thirties, and everything was animated so idyllically, it was difficult to find the notion...well, "rapey" instead of romantic. Or, maybe it was the fact that I was, at most, seven when I first watched it (after which, I went through a really, really embarrassing Snow White phase. I had the yellow dress and everything. Once, while tottering along in my walker, I threw myself to the floor after "eating a poison apple". Scared the hell out of my parents. Remind me to burn all those pictures)...

In this version, with such beautiful cinematography, I wondered if both William and the Huntsman were going to mount Snow White's "corpse." No lie. It was just straight out creepy given the fact that both were obviously, madly in love with her. It was made even more creepy to know one out of every six women will be raped or sexually assaulted in her lifetime. And, on college campuses, for young women approximately Kristen Stewart's age, that number rises to one in four. On college campuses, the "poisoned apples" are called alcohol and Rohypnol (or whatever new date rape drug has come out since I was in DARE). I really wonder if this could have been worked out another way. A more creative, less "rapey" way to deal with her resuscitation (like in Tangled! True Love's tear enlivening all that has died, or something).

I really doubt that we, culturally, understand how much women's bodies are commodified, how public they are, even with all this anti-birth control legislation in our collective face lately...or that from womb to tomb women are viewed as physically available. Watching pregnant women and trans* men's stomachs get touched, often without consent much of the time, is just really creepy to observe while at the grocery store or a baby shower or anywhere really. The Snow White kiss, while small, is just another bead of sexism trailing into a vast river...it looks romantic, but it is the same class of romantic as having an obsessed stalker. Not by kind, just degree.

Ravenna and Beauty

Now, let us discuss Ravenna, the villain. There were a many things I actually really appreciated about her character, especially her backstory. We don't get that for many fairy tale villains. Mother Gothel, Mallificent, the Wicked Witch of the West, Ursula (whom I secretly rooted for). Traditionally, these women were just "bad to the bone" and two dimensional as paper dolls.

It created some depth to learn that she, too, was cursed. This humanizes her because, despite Charlize Theron's constant commanding, we find that under that she is just as wounded and victimized as Snow White. She was as trapped by the curse evened foil. Not that this makes her any more endearing, though, it contextualizes a character to whom the words "bitch" and "man-hating harpy" may be easily assigned.

And she does hate men, as evinced by her words to the king before she kills him (not that misandry is exactly endearing either, of course). She knows she will only be powerful if she is beautiful on the outside. This is the genius of Ravenna (as with the other various permutations of the Evil Queen). The curse is, ultimately, the beauty standard!

About fifty times a week, I encounter the meme that heterosexual women hate or envy other heterosexual women because of the others perceived beauty (thus their attractiveness to men). And while I have enough anecdotal evidence (and have seen scientific studies from time to time) that verify this claim, ugh.

It is not necessarily a biological link that connects women, but a shared experience (which is why women of color, queer, and trans* women often need safe spaces from white, straight, or cis women, who have historically been really, really, really obtuse concerning their complicity in oppressive systems).

Why would a person forego the chance to connect with others who have had the same experiences in society? To share and learn and commiserate? In a place where, on average, women still make 71 cents on every man's dollar (and, of course, white woman make more than any other group of women) and where most of those in poverty are women and their children, and most legislative and governing bodies are dominated by men, why would we deny ourselves some kind of solidarity and support?

Oh, that's right. Kyriarchy. Anyone who is femme (or "anything that bleeds for seven days and doesn't die is not to be trusted")

Snow White almost unmasks the beast that is feminine competitiveness!

The pursuit of outward beauty, at all costs, IS one of the most common and easily accessed forms of power women possess.

So, while I don't like Ravenna at all, I have to empathize. Plus, her costumes (that crown!?!) were absolutely gorgeous.

Agency

As I've also said before, i was so happy this story is not about love. It is about fighting for what believes in and against oppression. Since movies that feature feminine/female characters so often cast them as sex objects, the love interest, or the Bridget Jones single pining for love, it is refreshing to see one that allows the heroine to be complete, on her own. Not an appendage or someone else's muse. She has her own tale worth telling. She, in herself, is a whole person.

At the end, on the throne, Snow White catches the Huntsman's eye. For the briefest moment, one thinks she will run and embrace him as so many feminine/female leads have done before in movies---she will run to get her man. And then, they share a look of recognition. They journeyed together, and he assisted her through unfamiliar territory (which is a great . She is grateful. And, she saved the queendom, now ruler by right and resolutely regal. She stays put and the movie maintains its continuity.

Empowerment?

Finally, I would like to address one more issue this movie raises. Actually, it is more of a question. From the above paragraphs, one might infer that I see this move toward women participating in battle, a stereotypically masculine task, on screen as a good thing. I'm of two minds.

On one hand, it is encouraging to read it on a metaphorical level---as a parable about a woman finding her true worth and the struggles she must face to get there (that's why I can't stop thinking about it). Perhaps this is why war or action movies seem to inspire many men (not all, of course). It isn't, perhaps, just action or the violence but the courage and valor to which, along with the characters, they (sometimes) aspire.

Perhaps, this is also why many (not all) women forego the action genre. I personally never enjoyed battle scenes until there was a person with whom I identified sitting on the horse, and then I was on the edge of my seat. It is difficult to get excited about a movie when your class (of person) is sidelined as a pretty face, but little else. The guys get all the plot, but the ladies...not so much.

On the other hand, is this kind of empowerment really empowering to anyone of any gender in the long run?

Ever notice that to insult a man, we tell him he "does x like a girl" or call him a sissy, or a pussy (or pussy-whipped), or a son of a bitch, or a bastard. All of the insults, beside asshole or dick, have to do with the feminine. A pussy is commonly a woman's body part. A son of a bitch is an insult to a man through his mother, equating her with a female dog, someone subhuman. A bastard is someone whose mother bore a child out of wedlock, in other words, his momma was a slut (a "bad woman"). In all of these insults, a man is equated with women or associated with "the wrong kind of woman." Sometimes, the distinction isn't very clear at all....

For girl's, a daddy's girl (unlike momma's boy) isn't an insult. It's a badge of honor. In the same way, we complement young women when teenage say: "oh, you're not like other girls. You're cool." In other words, being a girl, socially, is a step down and being a boy a step up:

"Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short because it's ok to be a boy; but for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, because you think being a girl is degrading..."

I wonder that if women are cast in stereotypically masculine roles will this just serve to further demean stereotypically feminine ones. If woman can now be a "warrior queen" (ok. Xena. Buffy. I know) can a man now be a caretaker without feeling demeaned? Does it mean being femme or feminine will be further stigmatized for all genders? Or will butch or masculine now be mandatory for all?

You know, and I know, both butch and femme people of all genders are capable of both loving bravery and fierce tenderness, but how often will this point be missed?

All this said...

Snow White is a strange place to be culturally.

Unicorns Exist

Snow White analysis pending...sorry.

So, from our cousins in the LDS church branch of Christianity, we find there is a "mixed-orientation marriage" that is working. Over at The Weed there is a viral post about, well, a member of the LDS who has "come out" to his readership that he is a gay man. Heck, click the link. You can read if you're here, most likely.

Does anyone else think the logo for The Unicorn Club is cute (and a little self-consciously gay?...)

The extent of my knowledge about the Church of Latter Day Saints is Big Love, Latter Days, and SisterWives: Read, I have very little firsthand knowledge of the religion itself (well, beyond the really nice guy on a bike who asked me to pray about the book of Mormon. I don't know why, but door to door evangelical preachers bother me more than...Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormon Missionaries combined. Multiplied by 5). I don't have sisters so the idea of being a Sister wife really appeals to the side of me that screams:

COMMUNES!

Anyhoo. On the blogosphere, there seem to be reactions ranging from "hell yeah!" to "oh goodness no!". Ex-gay proponents, it is feared, will latch onto this story as proof one can choose heterosexuality without massive emotional, psychological, and spiritual fallout. Others just really admire Weeds' bravery and find this MOM encouraging.

Part of me knows this MOM will be used as a political tool (probably for dastardly reasons). But...I believe in unicorns (because they're everywhere)!

Enter feminism. In Women's Sexuality and Desire, Lisa Diamond explains a longititudinal study on bi and lesbian identified women. She reminds that most of the research on homosexuality (forgive this terminology) is on gay men who tend to have more rigid patterns of desire and arousal. There's is very specific and often fit the standard narrative of: "I knew when I was five. I came out at thirteen or fourteen after great struggle..." Diamond found that women's sexuality was much, much, much, more fluid. Basically, genetic factors are involved, but she posits it often takes situational factors to pull the trigger, so to speak, on the genes. Often, for those with the proclivity, after forming a deep pair bond with another woman, sexual desire can actually develop regardless of gender or sex.

Note: FLUIDITY IS STILL NOT A CHOICE

What does this have to do with The Unicorn Club? My guess is that Josh is not self-deceived, or delusional, or repressed. Sometimes in the discussion of LG vs. straight, the bisexuality on the continuum gets lost. Maybe, Josh fell in love with a woman and...desire followed; his genetic map more "feminine" than most men.

Why do I give Diamond this weight? Because it happened once or twice (or more) to me...

So, while I hope Exodus does not jump all over this (because, well, duh. Reparative therapy is evil...), I'm wondering if (some) men can be this type of fluid too...

Oh yeah: BISEXUALITY ALSO EXISTS!

Stuck on Snow White

*Spoilers*

Unfortunately, this post is not the feminist analysis I promised in my last post---though it is coming, probably tomorrow or later in the week. This post (to anyone who has been reading this will not be shocking), is mostly about Godde and what it means to be made in the imago dei. In this post, just to let those of you who are easily offended by feminine language for the divine, Godde the "Father" will exclusively be referred to as "She."

I would apologize, but, frankly, there is nothing for which to apologize. I am through with pretending liberating naming toward Godde is wrong or "less than ideal." And, for that matter, that I think being queer is sinful. Or, to echo one of Rachel Held Evans posts during last week's of mutuality, that patriarchy, or hell, kyriarchy, is even remotely Godde's dream for the world.

To quote Martin Luther: "I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God. Amen."

As I wrote before, I was affected quite intensely by the movie Snow White and the Huntsman. The word "undone" is really no exaggeration. True, there were those gut-deep sobs during the Florence and the Machine song running during the credits that Danny sat with me through, bless him (though, it inspired a really, really, really great conversation about the power of story afterward).

In the day and a half since, one image in particular has has burrowed under my skin; the very end, when she is coronated, the subjects she liberated from the oppressive queen rasie their voices to cheer.

"Hail the queen! Hail the queen! Hail the queen!"

It slipped between my mind and my eyes: the world looked different. Even Kristen Stewart, whose expression usually vacillates from "coy, lip-biting face" to "angsty horizon-ward gazing face" (Don't let me fool you. One: I really am a hardcore fangirl. Have you SEEN The Runaways??? If you haven't, stop reading immediately, go watch her fabulousness, and come back...Two: in all honesty, those are my two most common expressions too), managed a believably regal bearing.

Her eyes. GAWD, her eyes. For perhaps the first (or second) time in her videography thusfar, there was fire there. First in the battle scenes, and then, at the coronation. Snow White knows she, not Ravenna, is the rightful heir to the throne. It is right that she occupy the seat of power-with and power-for; she cared about and loved the people.

Oh yeah, and again, it did not end with a wedding. That story has its place (it is a beautiful story--for many), but a love story is the most common one available to women (eight out of ten times) in theaters if she is the lead. If she is not, she is on the back of her man's motorcycle or tied up waiting to be rescued by him; Or, she can be a Manic Pixie Dream Girl or a Smurfette (Feminist Frequency is so right on!) but never a Virgin, one who belongs to herself. She is rarely ever a "fleshed out" character.

Along with becoming a mother, the marriage/love story is also the only story available to women in churches (see Shawna Atteberry and The Christian Godde Project for *We can fix that*).

This Snow White was not a love story, thank Godde. It was one of mutuality among genders and, mainly, woman's empowerment. It was a story I have longed for so long, apparently without knowing, that, to borrow a Biblical turn of phrase, it "pierced my heart through" when it finally came.

Then, Monday night/Tuesday morning I bolted awake at four a.m. after a strange, gauzy dream about hugging and singing a love song to another woman. I was cognizant, even in the dream state, the woman with whom I shyly flirted, was a rejected part of myself. The powerful part.

(Note: To be clear, being gay is not about one's over-controlling mother or distant father or any variation thereof. This is not a Freudian or Jungian interpretation of women's sexuality. Lesbians are lesbians because they like women. Period. In this one particular dream, I just knew the symbolism was not about wish fulfillment---or not the apparent kind, anyway).

I woke to a dark hotel room (with strange little beetles creeping around in the bathroom. Ew), insecurity dogging me again as soon as blissful haze faded. And my only recourse was to pray: "Godde, in dreaming I enjoy being a woman, but when I wake up I get the impression that You like boys just a little bit more...Snow White, that bolt of lightening that hit me when I saw a powerful woman on screen, and my experiences with The Powers That Be (implied in that is You) don't mesh. Help?"

It was one of those five year old's questions "why could a Joshua be a priest but a Jael could not several thousand years ago? Why can Johnny be a priest or pastor now but not Jane? Why does Christianity have such a masculine feel when its founder was so queer (in the sense of being so transgressive)...

For this evangelical-ish (very ish) feminist, the question is different from Rosemary Radford Reuther's. A "male" (slippery, slippery word. Gender =/= sex) savior can save women. Undoubtedly. It happened, as least according to my tradition. Plus, in the red-letters, Jesus usually welcomed and empowered all the women with whom he came into contact except that one lady (apparently, unlike some people, He learned to reject prejudice through experience). And, He hasn't said much to me about my vulva personally. It just never comes up in our conversations...

Soteriology is not the issue at stake. Ontology is (Haha. Unintentional joke. Get it? Also, consider this my immortality project, a la Ernest Becker).

All those in the Christian tradition of sound mind agree that Godde is Spirit. Shout that out at a prayer meeting, you'll get a dozen amen's. We all know Godde is not some gray haired, bearded, man in the sky. We can even sing songs like God is not a white man. But the pronoun used for our supposedly Transcendent Being is always "He."

In our heart of hearts, I bet probably ninety nine point nine times when most Christian's pray in the U.S. (my guess, regardless of one's race, gender, or ethnicity) we envision the Father as the Sistine Chapel God. White rich guy in the sky. Of course, being white, rich, or a guy is in no way wrong. Duh: this needs no further explanation.

It is when Godde is only envisioned in this way that it becomes problematic. Because if that is the only image we have, our Godde becomes brittle. Let me explain. The Holy Spirit, in John 3, Jesus says is like the wind: She blows where She wills.

When asked for a name, YHWH tells Moses Her name is, "I Am Who I Am" or "I will be there how I will be there."

Sometimes, Godde feels less like a mysterious and ungraspable Being than like a insect fossilized in amber. We diagram Her, try to pin Her down in taxonomy (otherwise known as systematic theology), or put Her on a shelf content with our categorization. We know exactly where She is, and exactly what Jesus is doing and saying at any given moment. We know that when we look at Godde, we behold a masculine face. Not a Rainbow of Light. Not a Hurricane of Love. Fire. A Lion. A Hen. A Midwife. A Woman looking for Her lost coin. A Widow seeking justice (This sermon, if you are interested, is a really good listen). A Mother crying out in labor. The Wind; Though, all these metaphors are Biblical.

And yes, I realize opining about words is hypocritical given the space I have dedicated to writing on Godde (occupational hazard of an amateur theologian).

I am just so tired of the reified Father figure who ceases to surprise us and who serves to legitimate the oppression of women. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mary Daly said...

"If God is male, male is God..."

I cannot get more profound or articulate than this...

While I adored the week of mutuality, it breaks my heart that this conversation is even necessary. At the risk of alienating my complementarian friends, I fail to see the difference between "separate but equal" gender roles (man as leader, woman as nurturer and submissive) as anything but an ontological claim.

Jesus is to Godde as Man is to Woman (nevermind that there are many, many other genders than just women and men). In the great chain of being, Godde is on top, Jesus below Her (where exactly is the Holy Spirit in this formulation?).

And somehow, practically, this becomes the impetus for a wife's submission to her husband, at all costs. Even, sometimes, to her detriment. Regardless of her strengths, feelings, or whatever Godde has "called her to" (it's trite, but conveys the idea I want to get across). Just because of how she was born (or socialized), she never gets to be whole. She lacks what her husband has always had: an ontological claim. It is good he exists, though it is merely permissable that she does.

So what in the world does this have to do with Snow White?

I think what struck so deep is that I knew Godde can and should be imaged as a queen. Not exclusively, not only (lest we reify this image as we have done with Father or King). But, I really think deep called to deep and in this moment. Godde is not a man, She is Spirit.

She is beyond gender.
She is beyond sex.
She is. He is. They are. It is.

Just one pronoun can shake up one's understanding. One's Spirit. Especially one's feminine spirit that feels so shut off from Being...

And, then, I stumbled across Psalm 93 in Laura Grimes's absolutely wonderful Sophia's Psalter:


Sophia is Queen; She has put on splendid apparel;
Sophia has put on her apparel and girded herself with strength


She has made the world so sure that it cannot be moved


Ever since the world began, your throne has been established;
You are from everlasting.


The waters have lifted up, O Sophia, 
the waters have lifted up their voice;
the waters have lifted up their poundings waves


Mightier than the sound of many waters
mightier than the breakers of the sea,
mighter is Sophia who dwells on high


Your testimonies are very sure,
and holiness adorns your house, O Sophia, 
forever and ever more.

Snow White

So, I saw Snow White and the Huntsman tonight, with Danny for our Dannaversary. I would say I feel bad for Danny, except it was wonderful to have my beloved with me while I broke down, in the best possible way.

By the end, I bawled. *spoiler alert* Snow White kills the evil queen after charging the castle which once belonged to her father, the King. At the end, she is crowned. The movie does not end with a wedding. Snow White never concedes her power to rule to another. As a (cis) woman, I have so long become accustomed to Hollywood's stereotypes of women I did not expect that image, a strong woman as a benevolent queen to strike such a deep, deep chord. but it did. It was just an image, just a story, but stories are important. This one just happened to hit me where it hurt. The beauty of a woman of valor. I don't see Snow White so much as a fairy tale than as a metaphor for "feminine" (cis gender women's) consciousness. She is weak and helpless in the beginning, but she "dies" (here I take it as a death to a subordinate and servile existence) and when she resurrects, she is ready to fight for justice. I admit, I saw Jesus there. And Momma Godde. And everybody who has ever fought back against dehuminazing social, political, economic, or religious systems. I saw a woman who refused to surrender her heart, literally, to the evil Ravenna and, really, the idea that in order for s woman to have value, she must remain beautiful on the outside. At all costs.

I swear it was a spiritual experience. Hollywood hardly ever lets women be anything other than a love interest or a sex object. Or, if they are strong and (for lack of a better phrase) kick ass, she will invariably still have to be rescued by a man. I was so surprised at Snow White's independence (at least by the end), like I said, I cried (unabashedly. Crying is no weakness!). Maybe in the days to come (class is over) I can put together a thorough analysis. Though it struck my little white feminist heart deeply, it is not an unproblematic film. There were several places where I wanted to discuss the racial inequities (the villain is named Ravenna and the heroine Snow White), the tokenism of little people, and the constant woman-on-woman hate. I am not sure this film passed the Bechdel test. Or, if it did, it did little to combat the stereotype that women hate other women...

I think I will structure the next posts like this: the good (a little of which I have written on here)

The bad: Little people as dwarves. I mean, it is understandable since the "seven dwarves thing" but still reslly problematic. Also, the fact that SW is kissed twice while unconscious. Also, the fact that the two (named) women in the film were set as enemies because of beauty standards.

The ugly: race. There are only a handful of people of color in the film. None of which are more than bit players or extras. Also, we have all things good and noble symbolized by "whiteness" and all that is bad as "darkness."

Getting Existential...

wBefore school started again (little over a month ago) I became obsessed (the healthy kind of obsessed. Perhaps fascinated is a better word) with the ideas of the author of Unclean and The Authenticity of Faith, Richard Beck (also, he has a blog at experimentaltheology.blogspot.com). 

There was a blip on Ernest Becker in my 300 psych class, which fascinated me anyway. Along with Terror Management Theory, which has been taken into the lab. This is fascinating. If you remind folks of death, they behave differently. Beck writes about several experiments of this kind in his book. *Go, if you wish, and read it. It is technically an apologetic using Freud and James as a pushing off point, but for psych fans/lovers/enthusiasts, it'd probably be really informative and...fun? As fun as this discussion of mortality can be.* (SHAMELESS ENDORSEMENT) 

 And then, I discovered, Beck who writes in great detail on Becker (strange coincidence of names, no?). Since I read the Authenticity of Faith, it seems existentialism (or at least, talk-of-death) has cropped up everywhere.

I go by Anna Joy which seems more and more ironic. You might not find me the sunniest person of late. But, that's because of stress and school and "Pastor" Worley. This, too, shall pass. 

What is even more ironic is how freeing this concept of denial of death is.

Basically, Becker says that all cultures are edifices of the knowledge that we will die. Religion. Work. School. Love. In "first world" countries, our main task, the buffer we often chose is self-esteem. But, in essence, the mask each culture wears is a specific and particular buffer against knowledge of our finitude. Our ultimate...smallness and briefnessgand relative insignificance. Or, as Psalm 103 says, we are like the grass, "the wind blows over it and it is gone."

In Ecclesiastes "everything is meaningless! Meaningless, says the teacher. A chasing after the wind!"

Why, then, is this so liberating for me? 

At least, for me, growing up in evangelicalism, it was really intimidating to hear of Almighty God (hehe. Or, El-Shaddai. The All Sufficient One; Godde of the mountains, or, the interpretation of the name I relish most, the Godde-with-breasts. See my past hundred posts... :-P ).

When I was teen, I read Max Lucado's "It's Not About Me" and John Piper's "God's Passion for His Glory." And, these left me feeling cold. Not that I necessarily thought it should be all about me (though at a certain level we all think it is, or should be). But, the way this insecure girl perceived the words left me with this image of a distant, gray headed patriarch (much like the God on the Cistine Chapel), barking out orders, who really didn't give a rats ass about humanity. We were just cracked pots or...props in a grand Cosmic Puppet Show. Not people Godde really cared for, intimately, truly without self-interest. If we lived or died, it mattered not, as long as Godde won glory for Goddesself.

(That was before, well, I realized that Godde's glory was Jesus on the cross and later at the resurrection. Talk about one hell of a theology of glory...Poor Jesus, man!)

What does this have to do with death? With impermanance and vastness and incomprehensibility?

Simply, it means that we are not responsible for making meaning of our lives. At least, not on our own. In one sense, it really, really matters how we live. It matters that we love and care and resist the urge to punch someone who says something really mean in the mouth (are my anger issues surfacing again? Oh darn), but in another sense it relativizes our accomplishments. In fifty or sixty years after our deaths, we will be remembered perhaps as "my great great something or other." If we are one of the lucky ones. Somewhere there may be a plaque over a grave...In a completely existential sense, in this vast, vast universe (or multiverse) our short lives have little value. In a very real sense, it is not about us.  There is a great likelihood we will not be remembered for very long...unless we're Pastor Worley (couldn't help it). 

Thank Godde. 

In the way Christians see it, though, Godde values each and every human life.  We do not have to earn our value, buy it, be pretty enough or wise enough or...anything enough. We do not have to have the right theological answers or the right politics. We don't have to write blogs about our meaninglessness to prop up our self-esteem (guilty), or to have a 4.777777777 GPA (I WISH)...

I AM is WHO I AM is. Whatever that means, I suspect it has something to do with our relativity and Godde's immanance. And Godde making us meaningful, our hands off the wheel (sorry for the Carrie Underwood reference) and our utter dependence. On Godde. On others. On the Earth itself. On our interdependence with and all things...

Contingency, from this perspective, is the best thing in the world. 

The paradox I am left with is that because "nothing in the world matters," Everything in the world matters to Godde. 

When I figure out what the heck I mean about all this, I'll let you know...

Still Building

Rebuilding after a wrecking ball crashes, figuratively, into the living room of your faith is not easy. Though, while the damage is not irreparable, I find myself in a cracked house, sitting atop the half of the sofa that hasn't been crushed, surveying the damage. All I can salvage perhaps really is gratitude that the destruction missed my person...

Or, maybe it is not as dramatic as this; the slow erosion of certainty into life's river. Nothing has been lost, just reshaped, repurposed, or reconfigured. Instead of standing atop an impermeable edifice, I just sit next to a creek, pebbles shimmering with the sun and the gentle current. Sometimes, I see a ghostly figure gesturing to me with a coy smile. Sometimes, He appears close enough for me to offer him broiled fish. At other times, it is the breeze telling me "do not fear", and at others, it's a person with breasts and wings offering a hug.

Somehow, I turned from a sweet little girl who never questioned anything into a woman whose questions never cease.
Not to say I lost my faith, or that my Faith lost me. But, it is no longer the naive faith of "a child" in the idealized sense, the shivering orphan child of William Blake, Les miserables. Not the black and white, unnuanced faith of the preoperational five year old: the world divided and neatly organized. Life is too complex for easy sunday school answers.

Why does evil exist?

Why aren't all genders and sexual, racial, and ethnic minories equally valued yet?

How can we stop our rampant consumerism?

What happens when we die?

What, exactly, does an "inerrant" Bible mean?

Adam and Eve? Or, fourteen billion years of evolution? (you can guess how I feel about evolution here)...

No, I'm more like a toddler, actually, climbing up things and learning and relearning everything, making messes, scribbling all over the walls. Learning what works. Testing boundaries. My faith is in its terrible twos. I feel I just learned the word "no," something not in my vocabulary previously. It is probably less than orthodox, but through the process of experimentation, I can distinguish the toxic from non-toxic substances.

I am so much younger than I used to be. In Jewish tradition, Midrash is not demonized as it is in protestantism. So, when I read scripture now, it is more like this, more like playing the flute than listening to a dirge. It is, more often than not, a mirror we use to find our own reflection instead of Godde. It seems like a Rorscach test. Godde knows, I read it that way sometimes.

Not that this means I do not take it seriously.

I just take my interpretations less seriously. And everyone else's as well. And, since no heavenly voice has yet called down to give us the right interpretation, all we have are, as Rufus the Lost Disciple said in the movie Dogma, a good idea or a series of good ideas (Dogma, by the way, is perhaps my favorite bit of Midrash). Ideas can change with new information; beliefs make us kill each other.

Lest i am misunderstood, I do "believe" (or, as i prefer, trust) in Godde. I'm neither "wishy-washy" nor am i relativist. I just no longer feel the need to defend anything. I am Mary after the resurrection of Christ.

"Do not cling to me," relinquish control over me.

If Godde is real, S/He does not need our defensiveness. There are no need for Bible battles. Or, culture wars. Or literal wars. Or the need for anyone else to die, or be denied life or love in the name of Godde. Truth. The American Way.

Godde does not need protection. People do.

In the Psalms, when David calls on Godde to avenge his enemies, I realized the enemies lay in wait as easily inside of him as without. The enemies of hatred, loathing, fear: dash their children on the rocks!

As they do for me. Voices of hatred, loathing, anger, and pain so internalized that only Godde can dislodge them. Voices that tempt me to hurt others, or my personal Others (everybody has an other, sadly)

When Jesus warns that the wheat and weeds will grow together before the chaff is burnt, I realize that inside myself there are both weeds and wheat. When he talks of the sheep and goats, I recognize myself in both camps. Who has not passed up the opportunity to do a good deed, or who has not gone out of their way to do a good deed? who has never been a goat, or a sheep, or both at once? Who has never felt a weed emerge from the cracks of their heart, especially after it has been wounded.

All I know, for certain, is that if we have not love, we are clanging gongs...

Maranantha!

Blogging Against Disableism Day

***note: I am a middle class, cis, white woman with a lot of privilege. My disability is visible. I can't speak for my fellow differently able folk who do not have the privilege I do. This is just my experience***

Right now, I am sitting in a hotel room in some part of Virginia. My room is "handicap accessible" and though I appreciate having bars near the toilet so I can pee (thank goodness), the bars in the shower are wobbly. And there is no chair for those of us who cannot stand up by themselves in the shower.

Nit-pickey, right? Little things?

It would be one thing if it was only one hotel in one place. But it is not. In another hotel I visit, there is a large ledge that makes it difficult to navigate even in an automatic chair, let alone the manual I am using right now. Let alone my friend Sandy* with chronic pain who finds it difficult to walk even a few paces, much less climb over a ledge to a "handicap accessible room."

It is not just hotels though. It is also stair-filled buildings that do not have elevators. Stores that do not have electric buttons. Buses that only have a few spaces for wheelchair users. Resturaunts that do not have ramps up to the bar; or whose tables are too close together to account for access. It is public restrooms barely large enough to accomodate a wheelchair.

Sometimes, when I use public restrooms I wonder if those designing these stalls have ever seen a wheelchair. You know, they do tend to be big in the back...or, at least some of them are. And wide. How do you expect me to park and lock the door, people?

In a perfect world, all rooms would be accessible. Everything would be accessible. This would be moot. A bar in every (large) bathroom! A chair for every shower! Ramps! Braille!

And yeah. I know, I know; it's complicated. It's about capitalism and money and unrealistic to expect companies to accomodate everyone. I would insert a caveat here about how it is probably is nit-pickey and that I shouldn't come off so bitter. It's sooooooo negative.

But I won't. Because, it does matter. At least to me, and probably to many others who have found daily life more difficult to navigate because of being treated like an afterthought.

It matters because, on a certain level, what is being communicated is that those whose bodies aren't "normal" aren't welcome. It does not even have to be intentional. Actually, if it is unintentional, it's worse. It's saying that the differently able, or the crippled aren't even worthy of consideration. At best, we are an after thought. At worst, companies (and the general public) don't give a shit.

Basically, it is telling us, the differently able, that our presence is not appreciated. And, because most of us have to use buses and have to go into non-accessible places as a matter of daily life, there is not much we can do. Except complain (which I will gladly do!)

So, on this blogging against disableism day, I just ask everyone to put yourself in our shoes, in mine, to see the world sitting down. Or using a cane. Or whatever. Please just try to ponder this for a while. The world looks different from this perspective.