They say you can never escape the Catholic church- that even if you “lapse” in terms of turning up every Sunday, you can never really stop being a Catholic. The first reading tells us to bind loyalty and faithfulness around our necks, and I guess we must have done so, to keep coming back and back and back into a church that often-times rejects and harms some of us. But I keep asking loyalty to what? Faithfulness to whom?

Anna Hickey-Moody writes:

               ” Having faith can increase, or alternatively decrease, a body’s capacity to act. Faith can stop a person from connecting with another, can cause judgement, rejection, and create a “sharp edge” (Barad 2003: 803). Faith can also provide the capacity to reach out to others, to be there for others, to keep people going. Many people in my interfaith research tell stories of moving across worlds, living through wars, surviving change and separation from family, and their stories make clear the fact that faith can sustain people through very difficult times. Faith can give bodies the capacity to keep going. Faith can also generate embodied limits. For example, I was told I was going to hell for believing that all religions are equal by an angry Christian minister’s secretary in the conservative outer Western suburbs of Sydney. As such, faith can be thought of as (in)capacity, as enabling and disabling. ” (Hickey-Moody 2020)

Hickey-Moody has found that there is something constitutive of the human person in faith communities, faith cultures; both positive and negative experiences of them. She has found that people tend to keep affects and traces of their faith even after abandoning a formal belief system. She was speaking as a sociologist, not a theologian but it made me wonder if the part of faith that sticks to people is the sacrament not the dogma?

With that beginning, I wish to approach the readings not as a matter of weighing up facts or laws but as stories that give life, a way of living sacramentally, or as Elizabeth Adams St Pierre would say, something to “think with” (St Pierre 2021). I thought I knew Zacchaeus, but after spending far too much of the week angrily pondering that Mrs Zacchaeus probably had all the headache of preparing food and cleaning for the spontaneous Jesus-party, I realised that this view of Zacchaeus was based on a picture book. And that the other main source of “knowing” this story that I had, was a primary school song. So I had to go looking for what the adults were saying about Zacchaeus.

It is a problem that the Mrs Zacchaeuses and the servants don’t get their own story, however it turns out we can’t so blithely take for granted that there was a Mrs Zacchaeus. There is a controversy about Zacchaeus, and I’m going consider both Zacchaeuses side by side to see if we can find something productive in the story even without resolving the debate. This desire to entertain the multiple is probably a part of my queerness.

Zacchaeus the first, has been read as “traitorous, small-minded, and greedy” (Parsons 2001) his non-normative body (disability) a trope, indicating moral badness (Solevåg 2020). The second Zacchaeus differs in that his abject position- a figure of fun, an emasculated man who hangs around in a tree instead of confidently approaching others – is recognised by Jesus in a reversal of the trope at the end of the story. I was initially drawn to this reading, because it seems more complex and because playing with tropes is the sort of literary work I love.

James Panthalanickel (2019), however takes the first Zacchaeus, the one who is dishonest and exploitative in his dealings with others and has “sold out” to an oppressive system, and reads it in the context of corruption, poverty and global injustice in Africa. To read Zacchaeus, the sinner in this way (from our privileged place in a wealthy country) seems to me to have equal subversive potential to the other. So I am not willing at this stage to let go of either reading.

When I assume that a good reading of the gospel is always already subversive, I am making a statement about who I believe Godde is and what I believe the call and the kindom are. I don’t see in the person of Jesus, son of Mary, an empire builder, but rather a thorn in the side of empires. Panthalanickel would seem to agree, and invites us to recognise a “normativity of the future” in how we experience the story of Zacchaeus.

A normativity of the future, assumes that the project of God’s reign is never finished in our world, always imminent. The future is the place where Godde breaks into our ways of being to lead us to better inclusivity and justice. This idea may be problematic. The orientation in this view is to becoming not to being, this seems to me to not encompass everything that we need to thrive. On the other hand, the beauty of this idea is it encourages an activist theology, a theology of teaching and learning, a theology of being intentional and acting to bring God’s reign nearer.

In this reading of Zacchaeus, Panthalanickel insists that in Luke the rich can only be saved if they give up everything, but acknowledges that Zacchaeus bucks the trend as he is not asked to give up everything, nor does he depart in confusion or grief. Instead, Zacchaeus proclaims a just stewardship. He will not cheat anyone, he will not hoard. Far from business as usual, the new praxis is the oikonomia of Godde. Am I naughty if I speculate that there are no tax breaks for the rich in this oikonomia?  Jesus shows and demands a way of being grounded in inclusivity, a flow of abundance outward to the poor and the defrauded.

In this reading Zacchaeus’ words have a future orientation. Before the influence of Jesus , he is a small-minded, greedy man and after his encounter he becomes generous. This can be a useful way to view the story in a world where the economy of Godde, the ecology of Goode has not yet been ratified in human affairs. Like Zacchaeus in this reading, we live as best as we can, entangled with unjust leaders and systems and corporations in an oppressive economy. When we thrive, someone else is suffering. Like Zacchaeus we yearn for something more than a niche in the market, we are fascinated by Christ’s ambitious vision of kindom, triggering our loyal, faithful, perhaps stubborn insistence on finding better ways to be human, better ways to be kin.

Solevag (2020), sees Zacchaeus slightly differently. She explores how Zacchaeus is presented as dwarfish, disfigured, comical and unmanly. That word “unmanly” yields both feminist and queer possibilities. Climbing a tree is not the action of a “real man”. Zacchaeus in this reading is abject, scorned by his neighbours and seen as tainted by the job he does, collecting taxes. This would fit with last week’s gospel reading where the tax-collector was a symbol of the abject. Jesus drew attention to him only to turn the expectation of the listener on its head:- better the honest reaching for God of one rejected by society, than the sanctimony of holy men. As a queer person, rejected from ordained ministry by default, having a body that is unmanly and therefore seen as lesser by the church this reading also seems valuable.

Whether Zacchaeus needs most of all to repent and be changed, or to be recognised for the good he already is, Jesus stops and looks into the tree. Here Jesus is choosing to minimise the social distance between himself and Zacchaeus. Panthalanickel views Zacchaeus giving away the bulk of his wealth as a similar action, choosing a side- decreasing his social distance from the poor (and perhaps increasing his distance from other rich men). Zacchaeus here is presented as a contrast to the Pharisees in Luke 11 who rob the poor. It’s important to remember here that we shouldn’t other the Pharisees as if the criticism is only for the Jewish religious leaders of Jesus’ time. Jesus struggled with the hegemony of the church, the tendency for rules to be used to serve the self-interest of the clergy and unjust relations. They were for Jesus the “proper church” and his point of departure was not to bring in a new unjust hegemony but to liberate us from unnecessary and unjust laws.

Metzger ( 2007) has shown, that the grammar of Zacchaeus’ declaration emphasises not the giving, or the money but the poor. The agenda here is kinship, kindom.  Writing from a perspective of the poverty in Africa, Panthalanickel finds in this gospel pericope a theology that calls for excessive giving, “rehabilitation of the oppressor and a subversion of those socio-economic and political structures which may be exclusive and exploitative.” (Panthalanickel 2019). Solevåg (2020) shows that the dwarfish, disfigured, comical, unmanly Zacchaeus is presented as a role-model of Kindom attitudes in his generosity and hospitality and Jesus’ table is populated by such outcast and abject folks that the church may dismiss. Both readings seem not only productive, but needed in a world where both economic injustices and social exclusions abound.

Whether we read Zacchaeus as a rich man in need of redemption or a grotesque, abject figure finding in the loving gaze of Jesus a dignity that gives light to others, the call of todays gospel remains constant. If we put generous giving and just recognition of the other at the heart of our life together, then we will prioritise sacrament over systems. Perhaps it is that after all which anchors us, and draws us back again and again, sharing our journeys with each other, seeking healing, offering belonging.

Hickey-Moody, A. (2020). “Faith.” Philosophy Today.

Metzger, J. A. (2007). Consumption and wealth in Luke’s travel narrative, Brill.

Panthalanickel, J. (2019). “Towards an Inclusive and Just Community: A Reading of the Story of Zacchaeus (Lk: 19.1-10) in the Context of Sub-Saharan Africa.” African Christian Studies 32(1): 86-106.

Parsons, M. C. (2001). “‘Short in Stature’: Luke’s Physical Description of Zacchaeus.” New Testament Studies 47(1): 50-57.

Solevåg, A. R. (2020). “Zacchaeus in the Gospel of Luke: Comic Figure, Sinner, and Included” Other”.” Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies 14(2): 225-240.

St. Pierre, E. A. (2021). Post qualitative inquiry, the refusal of method, and the risk of the new. Qualitative Inquiry, 27(1), 3-9.

Birth, death, sexuality…human love is WORTHY

13th Sunday in Ordinary time, year a

28 June 2020,

Stef Rozitis

“Loving God in your graciousness you make us worthy to receive you. Only say the word and my soul shall be healed”

It’s no secret that I love doing reflections, that I say “yes” when asked before I even look at the readings. How lucky that I can trust God and the community and risk being honest instead of careful in what I say. I know everyone here will consider my words, draw what insights you can from them but not blindly follow me into thoughts that come from my own standpoint and are only part of the whole.

The concept of “worthiness” has troubled me since high school. I had a really good friend who was raised Catholic but left the church over the idea that a male-only clergy expect us to come in and say that we are “unworthy” every week. This friend provoked my thinking and nurtured my baby feminism and I came to see what I had felt but not known how to process: I felt deeply insulted at times by liturgy and the lectionary as well as the fact that gatekeepers to both were exclusively men. Repressing knowledge that I was being insulted made it impossible for me to come to terms with myself or to be honest in my relationships.

I too could have left the church, especially since my overthinking of everything led me irresistibly into theology in which space, I thought I would gain some answers. Instead, I was encouraged to risk being honest about my feelings, thoughts and experiences. I had first felt that feeling of disconnect and experienced that deep rejection when I was 4 and first told that I could not follow my strong desire to be a priest, could not even explore it. I probably should have considered the religious life but it was explained to me as a complete denial of your own will, desires and needs. I am sure that this is not a fair portrayal of it but I knew myself well enough to know I was not noble enough to empty myself out and exist only for others. I frequently found others difficult, while my own tumultuous and poorly articulated inner life made me not self-sufficient enough.

So, first I fell pregnant and then married despite having been brought up that the opposite order was better. There was no way I could have known back then just how unfit for marriage I was but there I was suddenly with a family. As I looked down on the face of my own tiny baby, I did not feel he was particularly beautiful or special in any way (that came later) yet I felt a fierce love for him that was not based on him needing to be special but that threw everything I had been taught about worthiness and unworthiness into disarray. One does not ever become worthy of love, love is not a reward for an assessment, it ticks no check-boxes, it meets no rubric it just undoes us all from our ego and our human constructions of worth or status or difference.

I don’t want to romanticise it. Human love is not perfect. If it was we would not have wars, we would not have detention camps, we would definitely not have poverty, exploitation or violence.

But as I looked at my child I was forced to pray:

“God I can’t trick you into thinking I love you more than anyone now.

This changes everything.

If I was asked to choose between you and my child…well I just couldn’t not choose my child”

I thought with disgust of the story of Abraham being prepared to sacrifice Isaac. I had to rethink what I had been taught about the theology of the cross too, about God sacrificing His child. I wondered if all mothers were heretics and why more fathers were not but when I spoke about this to Aragorn’s father he happily joined me in heresy. Our child was our first priority.

Surely though, if God is greater than me and perfect in love and loves my child more than I do then there is nothing risked by me loving my child.

And yet, this is not just an academic question, “Who do you love more?” or “what is infinity plus one”. There are to many “good” Christian parents who throw their own child out on the street for getting pregnant, or having an abortion of even just for being lesbian or gay or trans. Happily there are also parents who when faced with their child’s lifestyle or identity, allow love to challenge, change and grow their faith rather than reject their own. Why do we fear that we can shrink God down to our own small and fear-filled capacity for love? And why would we choose worthiness before love? And would God really want us to?

***

When my mother died I was angry. I was angry at her for leaving me. “Mothers don’t do this” I raged which of course was neither accurate nor fair but I was so devastated that I stayed with anger for quite some time. My church tradition was supposed to be a comfort but it really wasn’t. I felt I had to pander to other people’s uncontradictory and patriarchal views of my mother, where she was worthy only because of the services she had provided to others, the ways she had been useful or quiet. My experience of her was certainly not that she was quiet- apart from when she was quietly sarcastic.

I had often had conflict with her and I felt that to turn her into a placid and patient saint was to lose her again and again each time we pretended that mother-and-wife as an identity was all or was enough. I stayed angry long after I thought I had moved on. Six months after her death I remember leaving church in angry tears in the middle of the gospel reading because was I supposed to believe that God gave Lazarus back to his family and yet would not give me back my much needed and beloved mother?

***

The third time I realised that flawed, human love was stronger than anything I was told to believe, stronger than my commitment to my faith was the day I realised I had fallen in love with a woman- again completely against the rules. In my life, apparently, love is always a subversive force, however there was also irony in that event (non-event) in that just before that I had finally kicked the habit of going to church and realised I could get along fine as an atheist but then I met her (an atheist) and craved the beauty of God again and as a result I am here most Sunday mornings. That’s not how she would have liked to have influenced me.

This may seem self-indulgent, perhaps all I have done so far is confess my unworthiness. I love my child, my mother, even some atheist I met more than I love Godde. Or do I?

Can it be that when we convince ourselves that Jesus is asking us to narrow or dilute our capacity for love then we are mistaken and fllowing a false Jesus? Perhaps we need to question the idea of

“more than” and refused to be defined as “worthy”. I’m looking for clues in the second half of today’s gospel. If we receive someone who God loves we receive Christ and therefore God. Love of one is not so separated out. We love humans as part of the continuum of God’s love which shaped and called us, which is the stuff of our breath and body as well as our souls.

We say in this community not that we are unworthy but that God makes us “worthy”. We are made of the stuff of Godness and our vocation is to love more broadly not less strongly. We have to give a cup of water to the thirsty one or in 2020 perhaps we give the roll of toilet paper to the one who did not get to the shop on time. We have to love the one who needs love not only the one we are hardwired toward.

I will not perform “worthiness” for an idolatrous conception of a God that has been used by the church to unhook parents from their children enough so that certain clergy have been able to abuse them. I will not turn my back on the only thing I can offer the world- which is an ability to love. My child and my parent are both made in the image of the true God, to love the light shining through them is perhaps my only access to the source of that light.

What I WILL do is allow God to challenge and provoke me to love even those I do not immediately feel drawn to, children I did not give birth to and old people who did not carry me when I was small. I will take up God’s challenge to see her image in all creation, in seas gasping to be saved from plastic and parrots pleading for trees to nest in. My love does not need to be less strong, but only less parochial.

In the words of the Beatles:

“All you need is love All you need is love All you need is love, love Love [and a hermeneutic of suspicion] is all you need”

Please take a moment to think of all the ways God has touched your own life through love, and where your own worthy and beautiful love may be needed next.

Flipping is a trick not a way to travel: a biassed critique.

After I wrote my post it occurred to me all the ways it could come across as hypocritical or “clever” which was not the intention. As I was reflecting on that the birds outside started YELLING so I went out to see them. There was a huge and active flock of honey-eaters (who even knew they hang out in such large flocks) and I took a photo but alas all you can see in my photo is leaves and the tree they were centring their activity on. When you look at my photo please try to imagine the loud and shrill birdsong from about 30+ beaks and the flutter of wings just out of sight. When you read my similarly inadequate words (even Foucault fell into using “truth” to deconstruct the possibility of “truth”- Butler, 2005) please imagine that I am trying to get at something “real” that is similarly elusive and hard to pin down.

Recently I actually had an academic article published (my first). I asked my three sons to come with me to the “launch” of our special issue and one of them initially said “no” and then over a couple of gin and tonics asked me about the other people there (mostly academics) before telling me he doesn’t mix with academics. I’ve been a try-hard rather than a “real academic” for a long time so certainly he’s not had the opportunity to mix with academics much, but he might be surprised that some people that he quite liked as a child were actually academics. I tried to give him some sense of this.

“I have a recurring nightmare” he finally told me, “of being stuck at a party with very clever people and they are asking me what I think about Tolstoy. I can’t stand Tolstoy, I have a phobia of him”. After more discussion over what he meant by “Tolstoy” which I think to him was symbolic of intellectual pretentiousness and superiority, we made a bit of a joke about it. My son ended up coming to the party (greater love hath no man) and noone expected him to know about anything other than the fancy beer he was drinking. But when a friend asked me to read and comment on this article by Samuel Wells, I immediately saw the “Tolstoy” and immediately (even though I myself read things only pretentious people read) my hackles rose, detecting someone being “clever”. This was also borne out by the “flipping” of a popular idea.

I liked what one of the intents of the article might have been, to remove the idea of a top-down hierarchical God that we must cower before. I think in the context of people like Pell Pot and the myriad abuses of power in the wealthy and patriarchal church(es) over the centuries this feudalistic model of deity is certainly more than spent. I felt though that this intent (if it was there) was overlaid by a desire to recuperate the church as the centre of people’s spirituality, or to recuperate the church’s power to define reality at any rate and I have become deeply suspicious of such an aim considering who can rise to become “clergy” and who cannot. I also felt that above and beyond any other agenda was the desire to look clever, an agenda which I have deep sympathy for (I also have a narcissistic streak) but also I have to admit that when I am being most “clever” and especially when I am feted for it I am frequently saying the least of actual substance. When I say something meaningful (or at least with the integrity of me trying to make meaning) it is often unpopular and hard to follow.

So no judgement on a flashy preacher trying to look clever. I go to the fringe to watch acrobats performing feats of balance and flips and such and I don’t get sour that walking on your hands is an inefficient and impractical form of transport. I think we go to preachers at least as much for entertainment as for any grains of “truth”, any less diluted “truth” comes to us in the darkness as we tremble with fear and tears, or maybe is as uneventful as the song of lorikeets as we walk down the street ignoring the obvious. I realise that when I critique preachers…well yes I realise that.

But flipping while a neat trick and one that is fun to perform is not actually as wise as it often claims to be. “Flipped classrooms” for example seem to me to be a dishonest way to intensify learning, making a “more but not better” scenario and trying to make the learner responsible for self-cramming while also devaluing teachers (a longer game). Similarly just because Godde does not ask us to cower before her/him/them does not imply that Godde cowers before us. The reverse of the spent non-truth is not the truth either, just as Foucault (my Tolstoy I guess) insists that to call reason into question does not have to mean embracing irrationality. I would have preferred if the preacher/writer here had acknowledged that a flip at most can shake us up and make us question our groundedness, but that the mirror image is as illusory as the original. Also I would have liked the preacher to acknowledge the myriad feminist theologians that have made the same point but less dogmatically, I did not like the tone of “this is a brand new wisdom” for something we have known at least since the 90s (that Godde suffers and is powerless). And I don’t accept that I have to forgive Godde, because the one abusing the earth and allowing the abuse of children is emphatically NOT Godde. I reserve the right NOT to forgive genocide or rape as Jesus said “those whose sins you retain, they are retained”. Godde does not have to take the blame for cardinals who endorse child-abuse but I do demand that Godde distance herself from them to prevent the spread of germs (Ok that was me trying to be clever). I refuse to demand a crucifixion. I refuse to see an execution as “good”. I don’t want consequences for my sins, but I’ll take my consequences in preference to putting them on another. I stand with my sister Mary and see Jesus as someone’s promising and beloved son. WHAT A FUCKING WASTE!!!

Peter also flipped the crucifixion (or so we are told) but I think Peter over his career learned some humility. The way I look at it, violence standing on its head is still violence and if Godde has nothing for us but the gaslighting of “I suffered even more than you” then I have no answer to my atheist friends who critique my faith. And there I must sit. My faith now is as precarious as a long-held friendship. Do we even have anything to say to each other?

“Stop being clever” says the Holy Spirit “and dance”. I don’t know what to believe but it seems relationships are stronger than ideas. Whether I dance or refuse to, there is a bond there…with something. Sorry that’s probably not much use to you.

No easy answers

Content warning: frank discussion of suicidal thoughts

I’m not getting anything from the lectionary today. It seems like just grand narratives of salvation and I am acutely aware that there is so much suffering and threat in the world and people don’t get saved, justice does not get done and in the words of the psalmist “the wicked prosper”. I have worked so hard for so many years to reclaim the patriarchal grand narratives to try to coax them into some semblance of grace, to wash them and pat and flatter them and try to see them in a feminist light. And it occurred to me only this week that this is like a toxic (heterosexual) marriage.

Don’t get me wrong I have been a critical, nagging witch/fish-wife at the lectionary as you may have seen. I have ranted, I have demanded reformation, I have made ultimatums but ultimately I have sunk back into doing ALL THE WORK and trying to find a place for myself in a church that from where I stand this moment seems irredeemably patriarchal. Nevertheless I don’t want to give up on my church family, I feel they are a good influence on me and keep me safe and sane and I reserve the right to be as irrational as a woman and keep going for the substance even if the form is all nonsense.

Perhaps that means that somehow I still have faith in Wisdom when she speaks in peoples lives of loyalty and kindness and passion for justice and altruistic care. I will read the lectionary of the (mainly women) people who inspire me. I will read the lectionary of my own power in the world. For my Sunday worship I will go down to Basham’s beach and gaze in awe at the white-tipped teal and cerulean waves. I will listen to the holy choir of seagulls, the wind-ruffled willy wagtails and the flight of wedgetailed eagles. I will write poems of whales, penguins and mermaids. For my pentitential rite I will gaze in sorrow at the now brown and stinking waters of the Coorong. For communion I will have chips with too much fat and salt but no regret. If I am able I will give the sign of peace, a greeting to an old person or a smile to a baby or a pat to a dog. I thought this was going to be a very negative reflection but I am finding something green in the ashes after all (but much has been lost and I don’t make light of it).

My readings will be listening to Lady Blue by Emily Wurramara. Next finishing the memoir of Simone de Beauvoir that I have been reading so slowly. My gospel will be trying to turn my notes on my literature review, agonisingly in words we (my co-authors and I) can use. I can’t really be an atheist though I am a crying, shaking mess of faith-loss and grief at the moment. The church is so inadequate in responding to increased knowledge of abuse and inequality and environmental vandalism. The church prays too quietly and lets the rich “prey” and call themselves Christian. From de Beauvoir’s book I am getting a sense that the rise of Hitler and conquest of France was enabled, and brought with it similarly aggressive Christianity to the sort we are seeing today in our leaders and in many church lobby groups. Never mind that most church-goers are well meaning and gentle folk (some clergy may be too). There is nothing of creative and everloving Wisdom in an aggressive Christianity. It is a golden calf only, there is no substance in attacking drag queens or welfare survivors. There is no Eucharist in enabling mining and leaving people to burn. There is no baptism in buying warjets and not protective equipment for firefighters.

Eleison, eleison, eleison, enough of these generations of nonsense, these excuses to divide and despoil and exploit. My jaws hurt from clenching and my right hand is numb on the steering wheel and my body is full of pain and out of touch with its needs. I need things I cannot put into words.

I have considered suicide again, it seems such an easy option now that I am older and more capable than I once was.

Driving along twisty country roads with playlists from my past. Robbie Williams “I know life won’t break me” what nonsense life breaks everyone in the end, it’s why we have cemeteries. The point is not to avoid “breaking” it is to find and make meaning in the time in between (but how do people do it without faith?). “She offers me protection” he is singing about a female-gendered being who sounds divine, I have thought of Godde when I have listened before but now I bite at the inside of my mouth in anger. Noone is offering me protection, we are all going to suffer, we have no tangible hopes left for our beautiful children. I need to be with Aboriginal people, I need to learn their gritty resilience and humour. I’ve heard this before from people- people who drink too much and people who manage not to. People who are always poor and needy and people who manage to get the good jobs. So much survival without tangible hope. I need the grit, I need to be what I have seen.

Oh I have been naive in my privilege. I start telling myself off for giving myself a hard time and wondering if I am adding another layer to my insanity by trying to police even that about myself. Trying and failing because to hear me talk you would think I am some sort of overachiever (far from it). And I think of Kierkegaard who is reputed to have said that for the genuinely ethical person there is never peace of mind.

“I am ethical as fuck then” I yell internally, staying firmly on the left so a truck can overtake me.

Am I ethical? Or is this another escapist mindgame. I need to stop thinking about myself. I spend the next few kilometres calling to mind everyone I know who has been patient or generous with me, who has inspired me and especially people who say they like to read me (that is the best antidote to suicidal thoughts). I dwell on their brilliance and virtue and then I smile to acknowledge flaws in them too. They have flaws. I have flaws. Are we human? Wheatus is singing “Teenage dirtbag” and I tell myself off for needing to turn other people into dirtbags like me instead of myself being better.

“You are sanctimonious today” I tell myself, almost at the market where (I don’t know this yet) this week I will find the salsa verde I particularly like. Dido comes on, “I will go down with this ship. I won’t put my flag up and surrender, there will be no white flag above my door”. That’s the spirit. No suicide today. No surrender. Besides, my children need me. More capable yes but then also more indispensable. Imagine how I would have felt if I lost my…oh never mind.

Keep your eye on the road and remember to get some cherry tomatoes at the market. Writing will happen. There is no rush. I did the right thing to get away by myself and not be crazy in other people’s space. All the casual academics are crazy in January and most of them are dirt poor too. Oh I am the lucky one. Finish the shopping because in the words of Emily Wurramara, “Lady Blue she is calling me”.

Merry

I was not looking forward to Christmas. I am exhausted from a year of politics, work, grief and loss, anxiety, activism, editing, marking, failing at housework and estrangement from some. My year has also had meaningful work, writing, beautiful food, roses (I mean literally), music and most of all love so I am not looking for pity but I am tired and anxious and I am always unmotivated about cleaning and it takes a lot of self-coaching now to even cook.

Added to this my children are now adult or almost-adult men and I don’t want to be the woman in their lives who “makes the Christmas magic happen”. I hate the memes about that on Facebook equating self-exploitation with love meanwhile the same women posting that about their mother are in tears and in some cases closet drinking because of the pressures of Christmas. We circulate to each other the “greater love hath no woman” myth of the perfect Christmas and the patriarchy wins once again by what we label “love”.

So I said “nope” to that and we did minimal cleaning (I insisted the sons help but I did not give up my whole freedom either to do it for them or to police them). We divided up the cooking tasks (after initially looking unhappy with it they all pitched in quite happily). We kept presents to a minimum (with some people asking for a donation to their favourite charity instead of more stuff to try to find a space for),

Christmas eve I was meant to go to church. I love my church community and I was all set to do my duty but I felt heavy-hearted at the way for feasts to official church takes us over. In fairness, it is people WITHIN the community that want and value (and ask for) this but some privately and very quietly have said to me “we shouldn’t need a priest coming in, we are quite capable and should have someone from the community ordained. But ordained we (mostly women and some married men) are not. So to avoid Christmas and Easter being the usual “leftover” the crumbs from the table of grace we ask a priest to come in and help us

The one we ask is quite a nice person too. He does it very well and very respectfully and I have no problem with him personally (neither does anyone else). He still runs with out liturgy and our “reflection”. He is what I think a priest should be and was one of the first people I was able to talk honestly about my vocation. He reproved someone for interrupting and trying to silence me and he has been very respectful ever since. So I have no problem with him at all as a person and kind of as a priest too- except we should not have to bring someone in.

Now that my dad is a priest I have all the complicated feelings of betrayal and abandonment around that. I tried to bury them deep but this year they have started coming out more and more…but this is not a good place to unpack that. But it’s a factor in how I relate to the other priest who lives in the same house as him.

All of this means that I was going to go to Christmas Eve church with duty not joy. It’s a happy sort of duty to be with the community because they are spiritually my family but I generally don’t see them anywhere else except church. Over the years the community has accepted my children’s misbehaviour as well as my transgressive and evolving theology and terrible attempts to decorate the altar when it is my turn. They’ve accepted me at times in bare feet, talking too much, crying or poor (also I think sometimes poised, intelligent and almost-neat…at least that’s what I attempt now). But when my eldest son started making cashew and lime-based sauces in the kitchen and offering me Irish whisky and my youngest came in from working in the garden and decided to order take-away food I decided to join them. I am good at feeling guilty so I felt guilty but there is was again.

I looked at the clock it was time to get ready for church and I said “nope” to that,

The third one I still feel guilty for so I won’t discuss it, but there was one other thing I said “nope” to this Christmas. I was preserving my mental health and the healthy boundaries around some off-duty/rest time that my last psych told me to. I was doing what I was role-modelled as a child. See how defensive I am? I still feel guilty but to have done anything else would have made the day an ordeal. I will have that ordeal but for Christmas I was off duty (mostly).

So we had a small low-key lunch (with far too much food) that was all vegan. Decorations was one bunch of flowers I bought myself for submitting an article (it’s what I always do) and another vase with a sprig of pine that the cockatoos threw at me and a sprig of holly that crawled over the fence from the neighbour’s yard. I put on a playlist of choral songs interspersed by children’s songs, retro music, modern tracks and even joke songs. My son ended the evening playing his new computer game (second-hand from his brother) in his room with three empty tubs of vegan icecream stacked next to him and a spoon (oh to be 17 again!). I read my new book “Feminist theology from the third world“, which my kids had burst out laughing when they saw and they said “That’s so mum isn’t it? Typical”. I felt cosy about that though, they know who I am. We went for a walk in the evening and there was a woman and a little girl, both in hijabs delivering junk-mail (a job my sister used to do and sometimes I would walk with her and help her). “Happy holidays” I said to them while my youngest son glared at me for randomly talking to strangers and embarrassing him. The woman grinned at me as if she had no idea what I said but decided I was harmless, she might not have understood English judging by the expression on her face. I started the usual guilt about “It’s not a holiday for them they are clearly working” in my own head but then I heard a clear voice speak back to the guilt and say “it’s not an observation, it’s a wish for them to HAVE a happy holiday, if not today then on their own choice of day”.

My son chatted to me of worker’s rights and of redistributing wealth and I suddenly thought about what this Christmas had been. My three children all wanted to see me, even though I was not providing lavish presents or taking responsibility for all the food (they had to help). All three of them took an opportunity to sit or walk with me and talk about things I care about and ask about things I care about. I did the same for them too of course but that’s in the “mother” job description (besides which when I look at those handsome young men I still see the baby that used to need me so much). All three showed a connection with me over ethics, humour and a confidence in my work in the world (and therefore hopefully their own). We talked about the earth, human diversity, politics, death and generousity (also a lot of puns and teasing). I had avoided church for the reasons discussed above and because living with a “Christian” prime minister and other members of parliament makes me a little less devout myself. But “church” my own family as a community of faith and practice was with me and therefore so was the sneaky and hope-inspiring Wisdom of Godde.

I reflected last night on the people I love and the people who love me but more significantly the people with a big enough love to love the world. I thought about Freedom Hill Sanctuary, where the humans were forced to suddenly evacuate without their four-legged friends and they were distraught with guilt, fear and grief. They came back to a charred mess of buildings but the animals had been wise enough to take shelter in the dam. I thought of all the awful stories, but the small spots of happiness and hope. I thought of firefighters all around the country and again felt guilt because it’s been a tough year for me but much tougher for some others. I thought of little girls imprisoned over Christmas by a “Christian” government and how such cruelty hurts the whole community.

I found myself not praying for the big things but for little insignificant things that matter only to me. I felt Godde like a wall against the guilt that such self-reflection sometimes engenders. I thought of my nutroast with a stuffing inside made of breadcrumbs and I thought of the Syro-Phoenecian woman gathering her crumbs of grace with dignity. “Dogs”. As a vegan I see dignity in a four-legged child of Godde too. And I thought how the world needs loaves and loaves of the Bread of Heaven for refugees and fire-fighters and thirsty rivers and farms. But that did not mean that there was not an abundance of crumbs for people’s small hopes and relationships also. And that survival is in the loaves but joy is sometimes in the crumbs that make stuffing for the festival-food. God wants our small happiness as much as the larger picture of social justice and a thriving ecosystem. The new mother Mary, thought less of Herod or Caesar on Christmas night than of her baby’s perfect little toes and perfect little eyelashes and dove-like little newborn cries and her own exhaustion and how good it was to give the baby to Joseph for a few hours and sleep.

I woke up this morning to see what a friend had posted on Facebook. “I’m not Christian, but the story of a baby born in a shed who grows to an adult who leads the downtrodden against oppression is a story of triumph over adversity, of love over hate, of compassion over cruelty. ” Typical of Wisdom coming out in a self proclaimed “non-Christian’s” post. This person went on to say that the worst is not inevitable and our efforts are never futile and that we should radically orient ourselves toward hope and community-action in the coming year. I am reading that, unable to see the difference between that and “Christian” in the real sense, just as I cannot detect Christ in any sort of law that allows bigotry and hatred or that keeps selling out our earth and communities for fossil fuels.

Whether in the crumbs or in too many tubs of icecream Merry Christmas to you and yours. May the barred gates spring open, may streams flow in dry places and may there be Bread for all.

Thanks be to Godde.

I haven’t Blogged much lately. I’ve been thinking about writing things but work just keeps me too busy. But I was on the roster at church this week and managed to throw together a reflection on the readings. I used these first reading, psalm and gospel and added in Marina by T.S. Eliot (an old favourite of mine as regular readers know) as the 2nd reading.

I spoke without having written down my thoughts, because now that I teach and lecture that seems easier than reading…but later I reconstructed more-or-less what I had said. I also used a “Eucharistic prayer” that I wrote back in March but hadn’t had an opportunity to use today. It’s been sitting in a cupboard at church with noone aware it exists. It focusses on the earth.

Here  is my “reflection” on the readings:

I grew up with a “face value” reading of today’s gospel which I didn’t (in retrospect) find very helpful. In this way of thinking the Pharisee was wrong for thinking so highly of himself, whereas the tax collector was to be emulated as being humble and not thinking well of himself. I cultivated my low self esteem carefully, thinking it was virtuous to do so. It became self-hate and was quite a toxic thing to live with. I want to be careful today not to repeat the same mistake, to look with a more nuanced eye at today’s parable.

Parables are not simple surface-level morality tales anyway. They are meant to deeply challenge us, to niggle away at the things we think we know and invite us to come deeper, experiencing otherness rather than analysing it from the sidelines. Our experience of a parable should be a long journey of learning not a point of revelation or answers. Today’s section of the journey will be looking through the lens of the first reading. When the lectionary gives us groups of readings it is an invitation to consider them together and in light of each other.

So I will look back on Sirach. This reading is about God being responsive and empathetic to the plight of any who suffer from not being heard or having their needs disregarded.  God desires justice and will advocate for the widow and the socially, materially or emotionally vulnerable. The reading also has teeth- although I don’t like the violence sometimes present in the Hebrew scriptures I feel there is a risk when we sanitise our tradition too much. God break’s scepters, acts with anger and destruction toward those who hold unjust power. From our vantage point in a wealthy, overconsuming, exploitative country we would do well not to sanitise this part of our faith out.

But the focus is certainly comfort for the oppressed. God is not neutral is clearly taking sides here. This is consistent with a 20^th century Catholic teaching that used to be spoken about more- that God has a “preferential option for the poor”. God is present in the relationships and angry at the inequities of our social world.

So if we take this social justice focus back to the gospel, how to we view the two men in Jesus’ parable? The pharisee is not wrong to think well of himself and his achievements, but he is displaying a faith that is performative rather than relational. His focus is on impressing other people, comparing himself and feeling superior to others who he can pre-judge at a glance. He has filled in all his spiritual KPIs but become separated from other human beings.

The tax-collector has no such shield against the world. He has come to God with his vulnerability, his knowledge of his own failings. I am probably projecting a modern-day understanding onto him if I talk about his awareness of privilege, but I will try to explore that idea in view of what tax-collectors were and did in Jesus’ day. The Roman Empire used to impose taxes on the people- these could be crippling, and the men who collected them added their own fee to the tax they collected. They were hated in part because people hated paying the taxes, but also because many of them may have added on an exorbitant fee and so enriched themselves.

A tax-collector then might be caught between the competing demands of his family (who will struggle or starve without his income) and the injustice and imbalance of the empire’s taxes and perhaps his own added fees. He is caught up in a system of injustice and oppression, not just caught up in a web of dependency but maybe even benefiting from it. We know this too, that although there is much that is wrong with the world these days we are often the ones who benefit from the inequitable distribution of wealth and the exploitation and demonisation of others. The tax collector brings his awareness and his worry to God, not able to find answers but showing a willingness to let God inform and infuse his life for a better future. Jesus says that he rather than the escapist priest is the one “justified”.

What does this mean? How does it help to be “justified”?

What is it that we come to church for?

Dare we be honest and less than shiny before God…and what does this look like?

If God listens to the poor and oppressed, what is our role in all of this?

There are no answers in the back of the book, but we can reflect on these challenges and share our thoughts with each other.

The time has come…to talk of many things

“The time has come, the walrus said to talk of many things,

of shoes and ships and sealing-wax, of cabbages and kings

and why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings”

A few things happened this week to call me back to my blogging, but similarly I had a look at the lectionary readings and found them a particularly uninspiring bunch. See, the first reading seems so colonial and militaristic. It’s hard to read it any other way the week I had to teach a whole lot of undergrads about the colonialism in our (Australian) history and the subsequent racism and how as privileged (white) people we may be unaware of things…like we take for granted that “skin coloured” bandaids will be a good approximation for the skin we have. Bigger things too!

The psalm tells me to tell the “good news” to all the world, which would seem to me to be liberation. Something like “you can keep your language and your identity, you can keep your sexual orientation and your food security. You can keep your meaningful work and your butterflies. There will be no more billionaires and we will all be kin to each other”

That’s my idea of a “good news”. The good news to me more personally is the work I do, I have a job which is teaching, it is about sharing good news – that we can make a difference, that what we do matters, that the content of learning can be engaging, that young people are worth our hope and our labour. I love my job. And I am not finding the gospel in the lectionary I am finding it in my work. How can this be?

The second reading continues with the same old power differentials that have got the world into this mess. Fathers “scourging” their children. How is this to be heard by a church with a whole bunch of old, insensitive men who have crowned themselves “Fathers” and perpetuated a whole lot of abuses on others? As someone who used to work with children and raised my own without hitting them this is unrelatable. As someone who reaches students through showing my love for teaching and my care for the world they will influence this is almost unthinkable. Where has scourging got society? I am reading Foucault’s Discipline and Punish as well as Ecofeminism by Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva. I just can’t reconcile the toxicity in these two readings with what the world actually needs.

I am having trouble having faith (and yet here I am writing).

The gospel talks about a “straight and narrow way” an exclusive banquet and many to be rejected by God. We are not told here which values are the accepted ones and which rejected. I would read the whole of the text as preaching love and neighbourliness and justice to all but this text is also used by others for narrow obedience. I don’t feel that with the readings it has been selected it is of much help to my Spiritual journey at this time. Hence the walrus and the carpenter.

Why shouldn’t I talk about things other than the lectionary? If Godde is present to me at all she is present in the every day world of a burning Amazon forest, of a tonne of assignments I will need to mark next week (without ceasing to teach all my classes…I am not sure how I am supposed to do that). She may be present in a huge disappointment I suffered this week and in me having to try to explain my queer-trans identity and faith to a researcher. She is present in the joy I feel in the classroom, that grows whenever any of my students catch it off me (and they do!!!).

Shoes and ships and sealing-wax: the ethics of consumption, the difference between needs and distractions, the responsibility each of us has. Who makes our shiny goods? Where are they from? What sufferings and transport emissions do they conceal? We could talk of those things, there are no easy answers but there is joy in the small things I can do, like buy my coffee in a real ceramic mug (not a disposable paper thing) or bring my produce bags to the shop. Planting trees and eating less meat are things anyone/everyone can do. One thing won’t change the world but we must talk of the “many things” and do what we can.

Of cabbages, of gardening (which I do not do well), of vegan recipes, of food-miles and community gardens. Of kings- outmoded systems of power that bear examining and gently (but not over-generously) pensioning off. We do not need the billionaires, but we do need the butterflies and bees. And why the sea is boiling hot? And the icecaps melting? And the forest burning? And our government approving more coal mines? And we have “island-hopping” advertised to us but those islands will be underwater soon. “And whether pigs have wings” and whether our species has a chance of survival. I love my children.

I wanted to write on Wednesday night but instead I went out with my middle son to talk about vegan food and politics and his work and my work and why he makes ethical choices, and what his former tutor said to me.

I wanted to write on Thursday night but instead my youngest son wanted to tell me how angry he is about injustice and about the government selling off the trains and trams. He wanted to discuss economics and ecology while eating three serves of the vegan food I left on the stove. I lied to him and told him I didn’t need it for a work-lunch the next day and I thought of all the vitamins in his growing young body. He washed the dishes anyway.

I wanted to write on Friday night but it was noisy at work so I came home expecting and empty house. My eldest who never comes out of his room came and sat down and asked me about my work and looked over my draft (very unusual) and started telling me about the public health system and how important it is and how we should not erode it. He mentioned the environment “everyone has their thing” he said “and mine is the Great Barrier Reef. I just don’t know how to go on without it”. Of course I told him I love him and need him to keep on even if things are very rough for the earth. He talked about animals going extinct and he didn’t weep, but there was unvoiced weeping between us.

My children. The loves of my life. The only thing I consistently put some positivity into even in the bad years. I can’t let go of this planet and I can’t let go of hope. I don’t care about people believing things or paying tribute to some “Lord” in fact I think that way of conceiving God’s sovereignty is counter-productive. If Godde must have sovereignty let it be the sovereignty I witness from Aboriginal people. “We know how to wait” says Vincent Lingiarri in Kev Carmody’s song. These are a people who have unfairly suffered much but survive and hope and nurture. This is sovereignty and I can see gospel in it the good news of Godde even though I want to cry at the colonialism and put it in the bin. I can’t see Godde’s “love” in punishment, the less I punished my children the more they developed into ethical beings. I don’t know where the narrow gate is but if it is not wheelchair accessible then we need to pick a different venue (my campaign manager last election taught me that).

So thanks lectionary, but no thanks. I am going to get an expensive haircut to restore my queer aesthetic and I am going to finish my article and submit it. I am going to handwash clothes. I am going to buy food for the week. I am going to make an anti-plastic video. I may go to church for the beautiful people not for the readings. Godde is in the ways we mean well. Godde is in the way we orient to each others needs and wellbeing. Godde is in the earth herself. Words can be good, but must be used with care.

If you don’t like my words, you are free to find your own. If words don’t cut it, you might dance a prayer instead. Happy surviving 🙂

“Prayer” of the once faithful

I wrote this almost a decade ago. I didn’t post it anywhere. It’s not properly speaking a “prayer” since it addresses and idol once held up as God and not Godde, Godself. Perhaps the idol is the church or perhaps it is the version of God/de I was given by the church. Anyway the thing I am addressing here is no Godde of mine.

When I was a child, I thought like a child

and you were always right,

while my role was to follow,

to punish myself with secret insults, self-harm, microaggressions.

I punished myself

for seeing your flaws.

 

Like a child I was powerless

and accepted that the fault was always mine

ever since the sin of Eve

the first (bar Lilith) to get above herself.

 

When I was a child I would have

jumped off even more cliffs than were on offer

to prove my faithfulness,

to deserve your protection,

and love.

 

When I was a child

so before I knew your history

or how you have always treated

little ones.

Triptych of heart 1: Beloved Wisdom

Dear Wisdom,

And what of the aftermath? After the earth or at least the life of humans upon it?

What will our last days be like? Will you stay? How can you stay? It seems that you are not welcome in our houses of parliament, in what were formerly our places of healing and learning. It seems as if we would banish you. And yet…a person of hope may open a chink for you to squeeze in after all. Radiant though too often silenced, Wisdom.

After the depths are gone, after my kind has managed to erase itself from the book of life will you remember us? Will it have been worth it?  What will you do, will you recreate? Or will creation be better with humans gone? Were we a bad experiment after all? We thought we were so important. We thought we were everything. Dangerous vanity!

And yet I somehow hope in your love. What can you do though? We are a stubborn creation.

Out of the depths Wisdom, I pray for the hope, the courage, I pray for your whisper or the pull of your hand. My feet are sore and cold but there is still a journey, Lead kindly light, lead thou me on.

You were beside God when she fixed the limits for the sea so that the sea would not transgress, and yet the humans in their transgressing have even pulled the sea out. She transgresses now, released from the law of creation, she will destroy us because we abused her too long, the never-tamed sea.

You were always God’s delight little child, master craftswoman. You played upon the surface of the earth but what we do now is not “play” but violence and despair. How could you delight in us Wisdom of God? How did you ever delight in the human race? Can you still? Unblock my ears to hear your voice, my soul to feel your pull.

Do not abandon us, though we have abandoned you. Wisdom we need you more than ever!

Starring Wisdom and justice

33rd Sunday Ordinary time, year b      November 18, 2018      Stef Rozitis

Am off to use this reflection at church. I hope it will be OK
“A time unsurpassed in distress!” Sadly one of the themes of human history is this great distress. Persecution. Oppression. Dispossession. Disorienting change and now climate change confronts us. These times stare us in the eye and remind us how fragile we are and can make us feel horribly insignificant, even as though everything we do is futile. Daniel’s view of the end-times is horrifying, of course he was of a prophetic tradition where substances were used to aid the seeing of visions.

 
The point of consolation in all this is the wise who will shine brightly, those who lead many to justice being like the stars. I think of the turbulent world events, my hopes and often fears for a future for myself or my children. I think of times of great despair and desolation in my own life and of the bright stars, the people who come with consoling wisdom- not to trivialise or dismiss my fears, not to try to silence or repress the negative things we see and experience and our heart’s need to cry out against them- but just to show us God’s face amid the strife. To shine.

 
I could cry when I consider some of those stars, because the world does not always treat people like that kindly. I consider all my heroes- the people who speak out so courageously about human rights, the abuse that gets hurled at them. It’s well documented how in particular women who advocate for others get rape threats, or threats against the safety of their children “Those who lead many to justice” walk a risky path- they may lose their job, their security, their peace of mind.

 
After the psalm reminds us that we have everything we need in God, the second reading talks about how human religions are in some measure obsolete. This does not mean that we should not gather, that we should not break bread and word in memory of the real sacramental action of Christ’s being born into us; of facing our unsurpassed distress to its logical conclusion- the cross. I need to be here. It does however call into question the structures we build around our sacraments- the way we try to imprison some people in various identity cages(1) within overly rigid church structures, while simultaneously keeping people out- out of participation in this way or that, out of democratic leadership, out of allowing their embodied human experiences to inform theology, rather than iron-clad theologies limiting and labelling human experience in narrowing ways.

 
Whatever it is that we celebrate here together- the one we call Jesus has already acted. Wisdom has already set the table and prepared the banquet. We have no right to try to control the flow of grace in this direction but not in that. Sacrament is for all, and the sanctuary is our place to be- women, men and children and perhaps a broader sweep of creation too. The earth’s resources also are prepared by wisdom for all creation and for itself. The amassing of wealth in pockets while so many starve goes against Jesus’ sacrificial action of trying (in history and in the now as well) to open up heaven to the human heart, and open up the human heart to heaven. If all our sins are forgiven dare we enter a new and engraced way of being?

 
The gospel also speaks of dark and turbulent times, but of the coming near of God within these times. We see signs of what is coming. We are asked not to be naïve in our spirituality, or our politics, or our daily living but read the patterns and face reality with courage. Nothing is inevitable, nothing is sure, all things can pass away except God’s Word. The Word has already spoken to us today through the first two readings (and speaks through our hearts and bodies also). Wisdom and justice are the signs of the Word’s bright indwelling in a person, all sins are forgiven and we are free to be part of a new reign of God.

 
Some of the imagery in these ancient texts seems militaristic and kyriearchal to me and it took me a long time this week to look beyond that to the invitation in them. I look from the readings to my world, to the people who give wisdom, the people who lead me to follow justice in everything I choose. They are indeed like stars. The joy and love in my life is always from the goodness of others, from the beauty of someone who is radically oriented toward a redeemed way of being human. When I see those people at times devalued by the world, small voices in a growing clamour of consumerism, greed and corresponding hunger and desperation then I see also what my call is.

 
It is my call to be one of the stars for the people who are stars to me. The darkest night has beauty when we look up and see the pureness and twinkle of stars. We connect them together into pictures, we see them as constellations as relationships. The wise and justice oriented people in our lives, the true stars hold out their hands and call us to join them. Star to star we bring light to a world following the first and last star, the Morning Star, the Christ.

 
Let us sit now and think of the stars who have shone wisdom and justice into our dark nights. Let us think of the ways we are called by God to do the same; to lead others to the justice they thirst for and “shine like stars forever”. Let us know that no darkness is ever complete. Let us resolve to connect and support the networks of light, the communities of hope, the constellations of stars in the image of our loving and healing wise God.

 

1. Morley, L. (2013). The rules of the game: Women and the leaderist turn in higher education. Gender and education, 25(1), 116-131.