NOT King

I’m posting this late, it was from 19th November

I’m going to go out on a limb here, suspecting some of you might be on it with me and say that we should NOT still be deadnaming Christ as a “king”. Human history is littered with examples of powerful men and their military machines using such language to legitimate their oppressions of others.

The lectionary uses interesting framing to pretty much rewrite biblical history but let’s chat about how it actually went down.

The Israelites said “God we want a king, give us a king”.

God said, “Nah you don’t want that, kings are a bit rubbish”

But the Israelites (and it’s a criticism of the way we do human societies in general) kept pestering and pestering like the toddler that wants a McDonalds meal until God (like a tired mother) gave in and said,

“I don’t recommend this but mess around and find out” and from then on tried to help with damage control. The damage control didn’t stop the kings from being oppressive. Even David, the supposedly good one had Bathsheba-gate and all his wars and all the women he collected as trophies.

That’s not a good start. But we need to remember it was humans that INSISTED on this nonsense it was never a form of government recommended or valorised by God, God merely tried to stop it getting out of hand. God has a questionable commitment to free will which seems to be why it’s been allowed to go on for so long even though it is a mess.

I can’t think of a single king ever that was not oppressive, though some did charity work to redeem their public image (which is what Jeff Bezos is also now doing I notice). They take so much of it away as their privilege and then they give a small fraction back where they choose with much trumpet blasting and proclaiming their generosity. Such are kings.

The second reading appears to valorise “thrones or dominions or principalities or powers;” as being created through Christ and for Christ. Mark Medley has produced a wonderful counter-reading of that which biblically makes sense. He sees in this section a “lyrical capacity to transform political and socio-cultural realities, as well as to empower and mobilize protest and resistance against imperial hegemony and coercive structures of domination” (Medley 2019). Rather than adding legitimacy to oppressive powers, Christ is the one who comes to call them into question and undo relations of exploitation and abuse. Today’s liturgical booklet seems to take a similar subversive stance, asserting “mystery” and that “Christ is among us” unlike kings who are a kept from nasty mob like us behind guards and locked doors.

Ask your heritage- if you have any blood of people who have been illegitimately annexed by kings. There are Irish people here, I myself am Latvian. Christ’s supposed kingship has been used against our people and against Kaurna people and Ngarrindjeri people and First Nations over the globe. First Nations did not have “kings” that was a cultural imposition from white empire-builders. The reign of white-supremacist, capitalist, heteropatriarchy needs to end, and it is a misuse of Christ, an idolatry, a blasphemy to reconstitute Christ as a poster-boy for wrong relations.

Jesus in the gospel is suffering and being mocked. This is not a triumph of Christianity it is not desirable for Jesus the man, the grown-up baby of our sister Mary to have been tortured to death just because he thought and said and proclaimed liberative possibilities and healed people. Why do we celebrate this and not Christ the healer? Christ the vine? Christ the wine-maker?

It’s his enemies that positioned Christ as a dangerous radical and a king as they could not conceive of a power that was collective or kind or healing- therefore he must like them be a military leader. When Pilate asked Jesus “Are you king?” Jesus was VERY clear that the word “king” was Pilate’s terminology not his own. When he defined himself he was a foot washer, a friend, an opinionated preacher- the Word, a shepherd, a fisherman, a mother hen, and after all his father was a carpenter. Of all the beautiful words of Christ, and all the beautiful deeds of him, why have we allowed our leaders to push on us a name Christ did not choose a name that benefited Constantine’s expansionism, not the sharing ideology of the early church. Poynting and Donaldson (cited in Rozitis 2021) have pointed out that the suffering male body is often portrayed as a necessary sacrifice for manhood, to establish male supremacy and homophobic ways of being. This can be seen in some valorisations of the cult of sport, in the celebration of the “sacrifice” of young men in wars and in the way abuse by boys of other boys is routinely normalised and ignored.

I’m a mother. I don’t want to torture and sacrifice boys and neither did Mary want that for her son. It’s not a cause of celebration, the heroism of dying on a cross or in trenches or by suicide if you are gay. NONE OF THAT IS GOD’S AUTHORSHIP!!!!! It was human greed for hunger and control that killed Jesus though it was the tenacious love of an earth that wants vines that brought him back. Christ came back to console and feed, like a sapling after a bushfire, like a river when the drought breaks, but not on the backs of slaves and prisoners-of-war like a king.

Jesus accepted the desperate plea of the dying man for recognition, dignity and friendship but he did NOT emphasise the metaphor of “kingship”. Let’s work on moving beyond kyriearchy to genuinely liberative possibilities of the kindom (no g), the Kindom of Godde.

In our silence and sharing time, I challenge you to think of a metaphor for Christ- from the bible, from the life of Jesus, from our sacramental life together that rings true and brings healing.

Medley, M. S. (2019). “Subversive song: Imagining Colossians 1: 15–20 as a social protest hymn in the context of Roman empire.” Review & Expositor 116(4): 421-435.

Rozitis, S. (2021). “Understanding and celebrating advantaged boys: education that excludes.” Journal of Educational Administration and History: 1-11.

Christ our kin

I was asked to give a reflection on the feast of “Christ the King” but I conscienciously object to monarchs. The more history I learn the stronger my conviction that kings are always oppressive (yes always) and that they are grounded in always/already oppressive ways of relating. So what could I say? Apologies that it has taken me until the eve of the 3rd Sunday of Advent to even post this.

I’m Latvian, part of a tiny country that was taken over by powers from other countries. I associate kings with colonising, enslaving, exploiting. I also play chess where the king needs protecting but is a useless bit of dead wood and the queen has to do literally everything and protect the pawns so they become queens. Perhaps you could say I am biased, but it is not possible for me to sincerely see the metaphor of “king” or “kingship” in a positive way.

In the past I have attempted the convoluted spiritual gymnastics where I take language that is alienating, and relations that are in real life oppressive and try to twist them. #NotAllKings or something like that. But I am a simple history teacher, I am tired and not feeling very philosophically or theologically agile. I want a faith that heals and feeds me in a heartbreaking and frightening world. I don’t want to have to twist the word of Godde to make it pronounceable. I don’t want to have to take the stale bread that is Word yet again and soak it to try to bring back some goodness.

Patriarchy, the rule of men over women has been analysed as being kyriearchal[1]. Even most men are oppressed within such a rigid hierarchical structure. Having brought up sons I have witnessed their heartbreak and confusion when their heart wants to connect with the world, but there are so many messages out there for young men trying to forbid it. Forbidding connection leads to having powerful men in our world who think thrusting an expensive rocket into space is a higher priority than saving our fragile blue bead on the necklace of the deep, our planet. Forbidding relationality and vulnerability leads to the rape culture in parliament house and the denial and avoidance of deep shame that comes with it. Layers upon layers of lies. We become less human. Instead of a loving parent, sibling or song we have a king. We build an institution. We construct rules and walls to keep the wrong people out. We use shame and punishment and pomp and ceremony to hide from the emptiness we fear may be at the heart of it all.

We can refuse that.

Vicki and Jane have sensibly provided us with a theme for today “God of tender care, you have loved us into birth.” That image to me sounds more like midwife than king and I am tempted to drop the “g” as we sometimes do and celebrate Christ the kin. Kin not just to you and me, the privileged ones but kin to the refugee and the dispossessed. Kin to the creeks[2] and mountains that make up Country. Kin to the butterflies who pollinate the plants so we will still have bread tomorrow. Donna Harraway says that in the face of the way humans have irreparably changed the natural world there is no place for hope OR despair but only for making kin and learning to live wisely without hiding in an innocence that does not convince[3].

Harraway says “make kin”, and talks about string games where many hands have to pass the pattern to each other -watching and trusting, receiving and then relinquishing the shape of the whole. Can I “make kin” anywhere within todays readings?

The second reading is a beautiful contrast to the first, as a string game, like cat’s cradle it has all the power of juxtaposition and movement. Daniel has taken his substances his vision inducing herbs and is trying to articulate the greatness and exceptionalism of a God who is greater than humans, but lacks the imagination to take this outside of patriarchal fantasies of power over. The hymn discreetly subverts invoking an “Everyday God” a God who makes kin of us, a God who works collaboratively even within their own trinitarian self.

I love that I just used the pronoun “they” for God by the way.

In the gospel we have Pilate, who is only concerned with human, phallocentric politics trying to trip up Jesus who is more of a rebel than even Pilate understands. Jesus comes across as frustrated, “you are reducing me to king, that’s your language, that’s your narrow worldview, it’s not quite what I am claiming” but I’d venture to suggest none of us fully understand any identity claim by Christ. It has to be bigger than this delusional talk of “kings” and “governing” and the trickling down of the practically empty rivers and the hell our govenrments seem intent on building upon the fracked and desolate earth.

Jesus’ body too is fracked and made desolate by the empires of the greed and vanity of men (and let’s be honest given the chance women too can be greedy and vain). Jesus is the land that is burning in the too hot, too dry summer. Jesus is the young shoot hit by a hailstone as large as a golfball. I don’t believe that God will magically make climate change go away, any more than God sent legions of angels to take away the agony of the cross from Jesus.

But stubborn Jesus testifies to the truth and so can we. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to the truth and so might we. We might call Christ the “king” or “midwife” or “blade of wheat” or “water of life” but the words are our words, we are expressing our own world-view and identity in what we try to limit Jesus to. The Word of God will not play that game with us any more than Jesus did with pilate.

King is a human term, our salvation is not in kings but in the whole truth albeit we can’t grasp the totality of it.

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[1] Fiorenza, E. S. (1992). But she said: Feminist practices of biblical interpretation. Beacon Press.

[2] Povinelli, E. A. (2016). Geontologies. Duke University Press.

[3] Haraway, D. J. (2016). staying with the trouble: making kin in the Chthulucene.

I’ll believe when Christians stop oppressing others.

I thought I would at least look at the lectionary before I went off in my own direction again. The first reading once again is one of those- helps you see why so many Christians treat others so badly, why so many more sensible people lose their faith. I want an excuse to believe in Godde but it’s certainly not here, nor in the words of people who bible-bashed me recently who were preaching an individualised opiate grace that is blind to the oppression in the world. I don’t want to make my peace with the oppression. I don’t want to “believe” that my privilege will continue no matter what. I don’t want to follow some narrow and personalised “morality” that condemns others (morally and materially). This is how according to Beauvoir people were in France just before the German occupation of world-war II. They too (and the Nazis themselves) thought of themselves a “Christians”. I cannot follow a Godde that would want that in their name.

In the first reading God has “degraded” the land but is portrayed as deserving a cookie for having stopped. Very toxic masculinity. Very kyriarchy. Very much NO. God stopping degrading the land has made everyone as happy as people who are dividing the spoils after invading someone else’s land. Cue for rape humour and roasting animals (invisible referrents abound). This is progress, one people’s liberation bought by the genocide of another. Once again I am disinclined to save this pericope from itself. Not so many people read me anyway (thank you if you do).

The psalm is nice. At times I have felt that way about “beautiful Wisdom”. My feeling in the moment is “Where is she?” even if I ignore the word “Lord”. When I went away fro a few days I had actually stopped clenching my jaw and my gums had stopped bleeding for the first time in over a year. While I was away I had a full nights’ sleep and a whole 24 hours without a headache. My writing got easier as well but alas I had to come back. Life is not about those moments of escape anyway though my son did put the bins out and wash dishes in my absence. The cat cuddled me and purred, my escape had been her anxiety. We are all each other’s light and salvation except when we get too worn out, anxious and depressed to do it well. I need a longer lasting shot of something. Something. Not wine. Not caffeine. Not even salad. Light and salvation. Don’t we need some? There is one thing I ask…some sort of hope. Some sort of reason to keep going.

The second reading talks about that scene in Life of Brian where the People’s front of Judea is definitely NOT the Judean people’s front or any of the other cliques. I see this is real causes that I am involved with. People’s egos get in the way of real progress, partly to be fair because issues really ARE that complex. It’s always hard to decide where to draw the line. What can I work with for the sake of harmony and progress and at what point to I have to conclude the real point of the movement, it’s essence has been lost? It doesn’t help that the right is good at steamrolling us all under it and sowing seeds of doubt in us. It’s a reminder to me to try to work with other people, to trust them and to focus on their needs and thoughts not only my thought. It’s a reminder to me to practice holy silence which I am outwardly maybe getting a little bit better at but inwardly…well coming back from Goolwa has not helped.

I read the gospel and today it would take too much work to see past the male hero calling men to make a church that people like Scott Morrison and Trump and all their ilk can feel comfortable with. Where’s the liberation in that? I feel it should not be up to me to call Jesus to transgress (through the ages and the pages). Has it been arrogant of me in the past to try to stitch together some sort of meaning, some sort of inclusion (illusion/illness/ill-used). Has it been naive like expecting Indigenous Australians to “celebrate” January 26th. Why is it that on the one hand people are told to “get over” oppression and move on but on the other hand the oppression does not stop?

So unhappy oppression day. Unhappy invasion day. May the roasted animals (on our plates and in our bushfire zones) stick in our throats, may the coal dust make us cough our way to repentance for letting this happen, may the hailstones and big as golf-balls that feel on Canberra this week not fall on deaf ears. The Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh nine times. WHY??? WHY???? Were there no women in Egypt to call for change? I am not prepared to leave it until we lose our first-born (or any-born) sons. Jesus said “Repent for the kindom of heaven could be at hand”. Could it? Why do we sometimes seem to repent in the wrong direction? I don’t care who is wearing makeup or sleeping with whom (though religion is no excuse to bully them) I want to repent from the suicidal impulse of white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy. I want to repent from the exploitation of land and the bodies of beings (human or not). I want to repent from a work-ethic and a precarity that is honestly starting to feel like it is killing me, to repent from that without having to do only joyless routine work that harms my body and heart.

Like Mulder I “want to believe”. But the ones who claim to speak for Godde make that very hard! Instead I ask with the Black-Eyed Peas where is the love, the love, the love?

The “best interests of children” is not best determined by bishops.

Did anyone notice I didn’t post a blog last week? Now I have a sermon (ok a “reflection” because only boys can write “sermons” in my church) to write and I feel on the one hand full of the hope and happiness of what I want to say about the readings this week coming, and on the other point blocked up…theologically constipated as though last week I didn’t manage to get out what I needed to say and I am now sick with it. It will probably lack coherency but I will cry and I will write it.

What I wanted to say, I started writing a few times in a few different ways. I couldn’t come into the part of the liturgy I was “due” to write about because I feel profoundly angry and sad and resentful at the church and sort of not in synch with them. But it’s complicated because I am absolutely in synch with my lovely community who affirm me and challenge me and act like sisters and mothers and such to me.

I am still finding it hard to write about my anger and pain but the whole thing was compounded today by what I view to be a HUGE piece of hypocrisy. This (trigger warning, this has made people depressed and even suicidal so be careful if you want to read it closely).

In a nutshell, this document from the Catholic bishops of Australia paints gay marriage as a threat to family life and to children. Yep! Apparently they don’t see anything tragically ironic about talking about “the wellbeing of children”p6 and “the best interests of children” p8 and the rest of the time wax eloquent about the wonderful and important place of mothers and fathers (which with qualifications I agree with) and generally how much we should all celebrate the huge “difference” between men and women and the lovely celebration of gender binary that marriage is meant to be and sorry gay people you miss out with your “friendships” that are not as awesome as all the “differences” that people can only “enjoy” in their “masculinity” and “femininity”.

Speaking for myself I never have enjoyed the “femininity” which has been imposed on me nor the “masculinity” of men and that view of heterosexuality makes it seem toxic to me even before they use it as an excuse to exclude homosexual people from having their families recognised as “real”. In the view of marriage where men and women are opposites and are forced to take opposite roles I think few women and not all men can be said to “enjoy” their difference which can easily become a divide of misunderstanding and exploitation. I am not saying all marriages between a man and a woman are necessarily unhealthy, but not all are based on an essential and universal “difference” either!

But also if mothers and fathers are so important for a child’s well-being, why does the church have such a poor history of listening to them. Why can’t mothers and fathers in the church get together and produce a document on what is best for children, rather than a bunch of supposedly celibate men who have neither wives nor children themselves. Why in the past when mothers complained about their children being terrorised and abused in various ways by the clergy did the church not recognise their now supposedly God-given role in the centre of their child’s life and dismissed them as “hysterical”.

To me this document is very offensive coming from the same church that STILL refuses to confront the extent of the organised networks of child-abusers, to have any humility or reflexivity about what needs to be changed or even to reach out to LISTEN or give healing to victims of horrendous abuse.

I have prayed a lot about “Cardinal” George Pell this week. I feel very worried for him, he seems intending on appearing a soulless, heartless husk of a man. Can anyone really be so? I pray he will break down and feel pain to his core at what he has done. I don’t feel any sort of love for him whatsoever, only for his victims but I feel that he must be a human being somewhere in there…there must once have been a vulnerable little boy and hopefully even a well-meaning man in there though it is hard to see traces of that now (and I just can’t).

But he is a bishop of the Catholic church. He has long been too cowardly or arrogant to face the charges of child abuse and has made excuses to stay away all while hair-splitting about what Catholics are and aren’t allowed to believe.

The very idea of bishops lacks integrity while the church still tries to pretend the horrendous abuse never happened and then they try to tell us “gay marriage” is a threat to the safety and emotional and sexual health of children and families? They can say all this without shame? They can continue to persecute? I know a lot of lesbian couples who are bringing up children, have met at least one gay man who fosters with a lot of love and know others- lesbians and gays who childlessly live what seems to me to be a very Christlike and beautiful example of “two become one” in a love that flows between the couple and so out to the world in generosity and hope. Yes there are some heterosexual couples too who inspire in this way. My point is that this sort of love has NOTHING to do with the gender binary and everything to do with being radically committed in love and ready to make a long-term project of collaboration that affects every aspect of life (career, friendships, creativity, politics, faith).

But anyway whether gay marriage is “right” and “wrong” a bunch of bishops don’t get to make that decision citing the interests of children, when they can’t even face the widespread abuse of children perpetuated by some of them and ignored by others.

Let us pray. (Ineptly, inelegantly, but with great need)

Holy Spirit, by the fruits of our lives people may see whether or not our words are full of you. Teach us to listen carefully- to children and parents and lovers and friends who respect and nurture each other or who ask for our protection. Teach us to listen to the children and parents and lovers and friends who love and nurture each other and who are vulnerable or call to us for protection and justice. Teach us not to give too much heed to the voices of power that would silence your little ones or hide behind overly neat and structured hierarchies that allow abuse.

Sophia you danced with God “like a little child” from the beginning and were embodied in the baby-toddler-boy-youth Jesus who grew to adulthood in a less than respectable family. Give us grace to dance with all who truly love and to celebrate and protect the young and the hopeful, the old and the hurting.

Creator God you always queer our expectations and upset our ideas of “normal” in the breadth of diversity that is your creation. Help us to recover from our need to limit and control others for the sake of a “church” that we have built to consolidate human power not as a centre of your influence among us.

Make us wholly committed to your dream and your dance of love. Paint rainbows with us. Give healing to those who have been harmed. Give voice to those who cry out to you. Give us ears to hear the call to healing and peace.

Help us get through this time in history. Show me how to carry this stone in my heart and gut.

Loving God hear our tears.

 

 

Where is the love, the love, the love?

The title for this post comes from a song by Black eyed peas, but it refers to my idea that where we locate and source our symbols of what “love” is and how it “moves”, who owns it and who can rightfully give or receive it matters very much in terms of how we end up treating each other.

“Father, all-powerful and ever-living God, we do well always and everywhere to give you thanks.” Literally every single option for prefaces (and there are 26 pages of them and more than one to a page in my missal) starts with these words. This ideology then is not accidental to the mass, it is central to the way we have been told to celebrate it. Since 26 pages of many prefaces is a lot for one short blog post, I will be self-indulgent enough to zoom in on one and look more deeply. I was planning on looking at an “ordinary time” one since it is so often ordinary time, but the address of God as “father” makes me think of the human families we build in the image of the values we project onto God (ironically out of human society to begin with) with hetero-patriarchal roles and so I will look at the preface of marriage II more closely.

About half of the prefaces (including this one) complete the opening sentence with the words “through Jesus Christ our Lord.” If God’s embodiment as Jesus has meaning for us, this clearly states that his identity to us is “Lord” and we could also question who are the “our” who possess (or come under) his Lordship.

“Through him you entered into a new covenant with your people.

You restored man to grace in the saving mystery of redemption.”

Here we have a fallen humanity and a “new covenant” replacing the not mentioned “old”. The word “covenant” will be used as a symbolically significant term within the idea of “marriage” and I have read some very interesting feminist analyses what the concept that marriage is a “covenant” means for women’s rights to leave an abusive marriage (the abuse breaks the covenant so leaving is not only allowed but logical and right, the marriage no longer exists once it has become abusive).

“you gave him a share in the divine life

through his union with Christ.

You made him an heir of Christ’s eternal glory.”

although as feminists/women/little girls we have all been told 1,000 times we are meant to smile and allow the term “man” as inclusive of “all people” the male pronoun is clearly and repeatedly used here begging the question “how stupid do they actually think they are?” and also “can we really keep lying back and thinking of England no matter what?” But interestingly the “man” through union with Christ (this in the context of a marriage service) is made an heir. So there is a queer reading possible here (though not one that does much for women apart from the potential to snigger at why they REALLY want to leave us out).

“The outpouring of love at the new covenant of grace”

“the covenant of grace” lavished upon “man” in the preceding paragraph so I guess women as usual get their crumbs under the table of “man”- a great start to a marriage wouldn’t you (dis)agree?

“is symbolised in the marriage covenant that seals husband and wife and reflects your divine plan of love”

Oh I see. So as God is to man (father all-powerful…lord…active…giving…union), husband is to wife. No use trying to tell me I am paranoid, because we constantly see just this sexual politics played out all over the church and societies that claim to be founded on “Christian values”. God’s “divine plan of love” is a powerful top-down movement, from a “lord” to someone who simply does well “everywhere to give you thanks”

“And so with all the angels and all the saints in heaven we proclaim your glory and join in their unending hymn of praise: Holy, holy, holy Lord God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest” This last little prayer/poem often called the Sanctus and at the church I grew up in generally sung in Latin by the choir, signalled that it was time to kneel “for a really, really long time” as I felt it, for the Eucharistic prayer.

I have no good memories of the preface and Sanctus (although the singing is often beautiful), nothing but discomfort about this part of the mass and so instead of trying to reclaim it, I will rewrite it queer (ignoring some questions I have in my head about whether “marriage” is a good idea to begin with…) and see whether I can at least get a different sexual politics by taking it out of the heterosexual matrix.

All dancing, all loving, ever living God, you call us to come and dance with you in your joyful hope for all creation, through Jesus-Sophia your living Word.

Through Jesus you became embodied in the messiness, heartbreak and celebration that is human existence- the desire to touch and nurture and be one with the “other” that we celebrate today. You shared life- human and divine with us and with every living atom of a universe created in your image and suffused with love. You draw near to us in love, you are glad when we draw near to you.

This outpouring of generous love and delighting is symbolised in the desire of these two who are “other” to each other to be united in a commitment to nurture, challenge and learn from each other and to nurture the world from the secure space of their loving. We, their community celebrate and support their love and commitment.

And so with every leaf, stone and molecule of star-dust in the whole of creation, with angels, dreams and human desires we join with you in your dance of love and renewal

Calling us, calling, us calling us always, beloved and loving God of all creation. Seeing your radiance in this beautiful world we are moved to sing, Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is our life when we encounter your reality in each other “Hosanna” also in the depths.

but of course like all attempts to pray, it is partial and someone else would do it differently…

 

 

 

Eleison

So I skipped over the “Kyrie” and did not even notice until I was trying to contextualize the “Gloria“. Part of the reason for that I suppose is the way I grew up seeing it as part of the penitential rite, because it is tacked onto the end of it and at times you don’t “have to” have the Kyrie if it is embedded in the way the rite is worded (with the “Lord have mercy..,.Christ have mercy” used as a refrain within the list of things we are sorry for. So then when viewed that way the “have mercy” sounds like a plea to not punish us…or not too much…like a plea for forgiveness or clemency out of a knowledge of sinfulness. Or at any rate that was how I read it as a child.

And then of course the Kyrie is inherently problematic to me as I try to avoid “kyriearchal” thought and language and a cringing relationship with God. But when I have worked with liturgy I have been able to change the words to “Sophia eleison, Christe eleison” (Wisdom have mercy, Christ have mercy) to dispense with the Kyriearchy.

But is “have mercy” problematical too? What are we really asking? Is it a cringing in our sinfulness and awareness of a basic dirty worthlessness? It has been used that way. Or is it a request to be “saved” or rescued, a sort of damsel-in-distress positioning toward God the shiny saviour? How do we ask for liberation but not for rescue? It seems to me to be a fine line.

Then I wonder if I need to be more actively involved in this idea of “mercy” and I think back to my time in schools, two schools in the “mercy” tradition and their motto “Loyal en tout”. Loyal in everything. But loyal how and to what or whom?

And we deconstructed ideas of “mercy” at school and talked about how individual acts of “mercy” were only a start but social action was also needed to get rid of injustice instead of always just seeking a bigger bandaid to put over the hurts of this world. So “Sophia inspire justice, Christ teach liberation” becomes the intent of my cry in my heart. How do we deconstruct the injustices inherent in the system and how do we come to shared understandings that are more just and inclusive (and then again more just and more inclusive and again…as humans always having to renegotiate, never having found the silver bullet against all social ills).

But then can we sit back and ask God the holy ATM to dispense us parcels of this mercy or inspiration? Or is the cry more complex?

“Sophia show me how to be more merciful to myself

Christ teach me to extend a respectful merciful hand to others

Sophia integrate me with the earth’s mercy in more reciprocal ways.”

I met an atheist today, who seems to do my instinct what I need God and faith to inspire and teach in me. I see a lot of ethical atheists who honestly I can see have little or no need of religion, they seem to have an instinct for goodness and justice and I wonder why I do not have that. Why do I need God to call and motivate me out of my basic meaninglessness and lack of “good” action. If I did not believe I would not follow, I would just eat, drink and try to enjoy my time on earth and not worry about injustices too big for me to handle on my own.

But other people have a more evolved humanity than me and seem to do so much good without “believing”. So then my cry from the heart is,

“God give me meaning

Wisdom teach me to instinctively live love

Love go more deep in me than my overthinking”

because my ethical framework is still so deeply rooted in an understanding of being loved and accepted and called by God who is “other” to me, I have not fully integrated my ethics in myself. I am not fully independent and I admiringly wonder at people who can spontaneously find that within.

But let’s say at the end of the day that I can let go of “believing” in an other consciousness that is bigger and better and more loving than me and just do what is right and just for no real reason, just as an expression of my true being. Would I do that? Would I make my “goodness” my own if it meant losing the sense of being loved externally? I think of the loneliness I felt as a child and a young woman, my inability to access the imperfect love of other people or to respond or initiate love (and still I really struggle to express affection and affirmation towards others). Maybe I would not chose to isolate myself from the one ongoing relationship that has allowed me to dance back to other people I had alienated at various times.

There is something of the romantic in me after all, I crave intimacy and the acceptance of an “other”. My gratefulness when anyone likes me, wants my company or sees my worth is grounded in my growing reliance that God always likes, wants and sees me. There are bigger reserves of “goodness” accessible to me than my own. Perhaps the “good” atheists are also wrapped in this GOD that they don’t have to see or articulate (I would not try to tell them so).

God’s love is more than “mercy” it is grace and gift and growth.

P.S. I woke up in the middle of the night, knowing I hadn’t completely got it right. Trying to reduce faith to a dyad (God and me) is an indication of my own attempt to deal with being single for so long but it’s inappropriate to put that on God and anthropomorphise God in the process. That is, maybe it is Ok to get through day to day in this way but as an insight it isn’t really the whole picture. I lay there and remembered that I was linked in with refugees, and people trying to survive on centrelink; with old flames and elderly relatives; with fundamentalists who fear for my soul and rainbow youth who crave acceptance. With a little kitten who needs his litterbox changed and with the spiders, slaters and millipedes my preschoolers are obsessed with finding. With hurricanes and stars and sudden changes in weather.

To ask God to respond with “mercy” authentically, to attempt to be caught up in the act of “mercy” is to want to transform it for all of us- not just for me. I felt the very real fear of the way society seems to be descending into more and more injustice as we begin to face the consequences of not looking after the environment.

And then “have mercy” , also “may we have mercy” was a more fear-filled cry at three in the morning. And still asking for grace and gift and growth, but quickly and for all of us and in the knowledge that I would have to try harder to get caught up actively in bringing these things to myself and others.

Gloria

The Gloria comes after the penitential rite. It is joyful, especially as I recall at Christmas when the church bells were rung when it was sung. Liturgically it lifts everyone out of the depressive aspect of reflecting on “sin” into a focus on God’s redemptive greatness. God, within the prayer is constructed in a trinitarian framework. There is a paragraph each for the “Father” and “Son”. Words that are used to express their glory are masculine and kyriearchal “Lord…heavenly King, almighty…Lord…only Son…Holy One…Most High”

The Holy Spirit not being masculine enough I guess receives a mention in passing, as Jesus’ plus one while throughout the prayer Father and Son reflect masculine glory at each other in a smug exclusive fraternity. As a child I just went with the bell ringing and the soaring music and the relief from the “have mercy, have mercy” that perceded it (and possibly I should have written a post on the Kyrie as distinct from the penitential rite, perhaps I will consider that for the coming week).

Considering “Gloria” is also the real first name of the writer calling herself bell hooks, an considering the happy feel of the Gloria, let’s rework it. Before I start I return to Pied Beauty but Gerard Manley Hopkins which also starts “Glory be to God” but is written by a queer man.

What does a queer woman on the fringes of the church write. How do I relate to God’s “glory” and access that joy. I will go through the original prayer line by line and allow myself to subvert the things I can’t relate to, but attempt to be faithful to my tradition.

“Glory to Godde in the mundane routines of living,

and her joy infuse our every day.

 

Creating God- eternally working and caring,

infuser of hope into human history

we become still to be mindful of you, we learn gratefulness

praise bursts from us as song, dance, creative expression.

 

Jesus Christ, embodiment of God’s Word and Wisdom in history,

friend of humanity, Lamb of God

you transgress against every oppressive structure,

liberate us;

you live forever in the deep love of God

inspire us.

 

Holy Spirit, movement and fire of love

burn away our reluctance to generosity and compassion,

dance us into right relationship.

 

For you are the Godde who made, call and companion us

in a neverending dance together

in love. Amen

(as the rubrics in the original book instruct that the Gloria may be said or sung, so also it may be danced, drawn, silently known, loved, hugged, yelled, heard, modelled in clay or in any other way prayed. I believe as a teenager I used to dance it on the beach sometimes at night or once on the end of a jetty. Perhaps it is also there in ecstatic moment of conception of a future baby or an idea for writing)

What do we mean when we ask for “mercy”?

I am (re)writing my article and job seeking and putting together a liturgy for a few weeks’ time so no proper reflection this week. I am sort of sorry but also conscious that probably noone will miss it. But I will share here a prayer I wrote.

As part of putting together the afore-mentioned liturgy I was reading through reams of “penitential rites” full of “Lord have mercy” (sometimes in Latin “Kyrie eleison”) and not feeling ok about how glibly even feminists take on Kyriearchal language (or at least accept it so long as it is in a dead language).

Even though in my liturgy my theme for reconciliation will be Reconciliation (as in the unfinished business colonial Australia has with the real owners of this land) I wrote an alternative that I may use another time to help me reject the idea that kyriearchy is needed for repentance (which means turning around) and transformation.

I also reflected on the idea of “mercy”. What do we mean when we ask God/Jesus?Wisdom to “have mercy” on us. Are we still invoking those interpretive traditions where God wants to punish us for our sins unless we grovel? Or where God will “save” us from anything unpleasant? So I wondered how to put into words what we might mean by “have mercy” when I feel that the point of a penitential rite is to reconnect ourselves to a more positive relationship with God (as manifest in our lives and relationships with ourselves, others and the earth).

So here is my imperfect attempt, which I may or may not use or improve further down the track.

 

For making you our “Father” so that we might hide behind the helplessness of a child,

for making you our “Lord” so that we might put down ourselves and others in your name,

for expecting you to lead us into battle when you came offering peace:

we are truly sorry.

 

For the anxieties and mistrust that stop us living more genuinely,

for the despair and retreat that stifle our response to your call,

for the profound loneliness of a life focussed on comfort and privilege:

we ask healing and transformation

 

For the days of our life yet unlived,

for our suffering brothers and sisters that call out for us to join our voices and hearts to theirs,

for the good news that has not yet opened every heart:

we promise to enter more deeply when you invite us.

 

Loving God we accept your healing and your call

as we know you accept our good intentions and our love. Amen.

Stef Rozitis 2016

Against the grain this week

 

Oh yay! I can choose between two readings from the book of kings to begin with this week. Serves me right for having a sort of week off (posting nothing but a poem) last week, when it was my all time favourite psalm (63) which I had been waiting for. Oh well, I will see what shreds of faith are left me after I deal honestly with the readings of the week.

These lovely readings from Kings exemplify for me what the whole book is about. The book is sort of a kyriarchal self-justification for an organised “church” (I realise this is an anachronistic word but I am being political in choosing it). The great Elijah and the great Elisha work on their succession plan. Elijah also anoints kings (that idea of church mandating state that caused so much trouble in later times- see e.g. Eco’s The Name of the Rose).

The whole book of Kings seems to me to be about “great” men (great meaning full of self-importance) and murderous men, some get the dubious honour of being both. If I ever start to feel warm and fuzzy about the church (and I was starting to) these two books are a great wake up call. We are grounded in patriarchy, militarism and colonial thinking. We still seem to extoll and admire what is legitimated by earthly power and politics and we still seem to silence nearly everyone, and most of all women.

The triumphalism of both psalm choices echoes the first readings. God is almighty, powerful, in control and we rejoice because we are chosen for privilege and ease. Give me a break! Against such a “god” I would side with the children and adults incarcerated on Manus for the “security” of this society and its supposedly Christian values. I would side with Penny Wong speaking out against homophobia and not with Scott Morrison who says he has been “persecuted” for his “Christian” beliefs (recently in Orlando there was a shooting of homosexual night-club goers. This is the “persecution” lgbt people want to counter, not just the “persecution” or people daring to sometimes disagree with them and their tepid religion). I would side with the single mums doing it even tougher by increments because apparently austerity is good for the economy, and with old people who have earned the right to be supported by society but may be forced to work later and later into what should be their years of doing what they like (and possibly doing good too). I side with exploited workers having even their measly penalty rates threatened, and principals facing funding cut that mean students are increasingly frustrated and some turn violent. I side with farmers wanting a decent price for the fruit of their labour, and wanting to keep the irreversible damage of fracking far from their livelihood. I side with the reef and the bight and the old growth forests.

Yes even against “god” because the god of patriarchy and unquestioned power and capitalism is no god at all, no matter how many candles we light and how many times we chant “Lord. Lord” (and didn’t Jesus have something to say about this?). So uneasy and defensive I move on to the second reading.

The first part of the second reading seems to be in the same head-space as me. It says to throw off all this slavery and be brave enough to demand that the consequence of faith is always liberation. Then the focus is on turning this agenda onto the good of others, not just selfishly seeking self-interest. My only uneasiness, is seeing the law of love “love your neighbour” made excessively personal, it is easy for elite and powerful people (and all of us in first-world countries) to have a sort of interpersonal ethic of kindness and “decency” to the people we mix with, the people like us. That’s not a bad thing of course, but it is not the full deal with “love your neighbour”. Because Jesus is always in the last and the least, not just in our good friends and loveable family. So where it says become “slaves to each other” I think that is a dangerous rhetoric open to at least two damaging sorts of interpretations.

“If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.” seems to be a good caution against hypercapitalism and neoliberalism. It seems like the exact rebuttal of Thatcher’s claim that there is “no such thing as society, there is only the individual”. In the reign of God of course, the interests of the poorest and the weakest are the interests of God, and God’s interests become our interests through relationship. So there is “society” in the sense of relevant “other”, and relevant other is always broadened. Because God hates nothing she created.

But then the author of Galatians (I can’t remember which ones Paul actually wrote) goes down the predictable and silly path of individual behaviours. I am sure it is better to be sober and chaste and all the rest of it, but the church DOES waste a lot of time telling individuals how not to have a good time, instead of reminding us constantly that we are responsible for whoever is paying the price of our ease. So the point for me is less to avoid drunkenness and excess, and more justice. In a more just world, or in working for a more just world I will in fact have to curb the excesses of my appetite, in order to ensure a just distribution of work, leisure, resources and a light touch upon Mother Earth.

But Paul (if it is him) here is focusing on the symptom and ignoring the cause. Drunkenness and carousing are symptoms of spiritual emptiness, caused by selfishness, despair, desperation or blind privilege. Becoming austere patrician saints without changing the imbalances in the world is both very difficult and I think ultimately unhelpful. Instead I think Robert Herrick has it right when he talks about starving “sin not bin”. It’s not about curbing appetites per se, it is about refocusing on the source of the real hunger, the real deep desire. We are starved for justice and we lust for meaning. It is a sort of escapism, like playing computer games (which is one of my chief vices when very depressed). Drinking, eating too much and having an unhealthy attitude toward sex similarly are ways of trying to quiet the uneasy or roaring voices in hearts that do not want to face the true extent of their brokenness. In a world where we have too many whims catered to, we are profoundly disjointed from one another.

On some level I think even the people who think justice for refugees is “too hard”, “too expensive” [please note it is actually less expensive than the current practice of incarcerating them], or “too dangerous”, I think even those people’s hearts secretly yearn to think differently. We must dare it! As a society, as individuals we must begin to build values into how we live. And maybe that will mean less drunkenness and carousing. I stopped having time for drunkenness and carousing only when I found myself and was able to step into meaning and hope.
The gospel is puzzling, and wiser heads than mine have written a lot about it. There seems to be a level of otherworldliness about Jesus in this reading. He rises above the need for revenge, to me the clearest part of the reading, and then he speaks of the heavy price he has paid for his strong commitment to his vocation. He does not have a “home”. This is where I am puzzled. Does this really mean that we have to be unanchored in this life in some way? Do we always have to wonder through as a sort of an alien? And then when he does not even allow a would-be follower to look after his family responsibilities I frankly feel angry (look at how the Catholic church views both legitimate and illegitimate children of clergy for example!).

But I remember at uni learning about the symbolism of the plough. A plough represents power and mastery over the (feminine) earth, it can be equated with a rapacious relationship. So putting your hand to the plough could represent and overinvestment in the powers of this world. The minute you start to take what is not rightfully yours, to try to control and force your way into wealth and ease you have turned your back on the kingdom of God. But of course if no one plants a garden then we will all starve. Metaphors are limited that way.

The readings are little pericopes, dividing up the long and complicated series of texts that is our “Scripture” into bite-sized chunks. They are a gift to be used carefully and in context. Just as “the Sabbath was made for us, not us for the Sabbath” so the scripture was made to help, challenge, enlighten or comfort us but not to rule us. Although I felt hostile and suspicious to these readings, they help me clarify what I think is wrong in the world and the church and to ally myself to the values I think God calls me to.

I don’t think it is arrogant to do that. I think it is irresponsible not to.

Forward in prayer and love.

Kingdom, power, glory and other distractions

“You say that I am a king.” Jesus throws that particular metaphor back on Pilate- back on the pseudo-objective, rationalist, judgemental part of ourselves, the part too cowardly to be moved by compassion and deeper visceral wisdom. Yes we do say that don’t we…we reify kingship and power and greed: patriarchy and kyriearchy in placing Jesus on side with the rulers of this world, with the fathers. Even when he criticises or replaces them he does it (in our storytelling) as a rival and a winner, as the hyper-masculine suffering body that triumphs. We have read this “truth” in this way for so many years and we have settled in this exile of Lords and Fathers. How can we sing Wisdom’s song in this desolate land? How do we differently make sense of the radical transformative action of Jesus.

I look at a greed-torn world, a “kingdom” of cowardly and wilfully blind citizens and I don’t see a “reign of Christ” in action. Not if Christ is God, is that still small voice of challenge, the call to justice, the instinct to kindness, the presence of love. Where is that in the ruling of this universe? How does the torn and poisoned earth experience Christ’s “reign”. I do not think that after two millenia of this we need to keep trotting out the same old pious Pollyanna-statements where when all else fails we are stubbornly “glad” because “Christ is king”. Religion becomes the equivalent of an ecstasy tablet, we take it to ignore reality and we feel damn good– meanwhile the oikonomia of God’s household is still in disarray. We are not taking care of our earth and our little human selves at all well.

Our so-called “king” is in exile. We are too damn racist to accept a king who sits on the earth with Indigenous people or travels in leaky boats with refugees. We are too misogynist to allow a queen within the eternal Christ/Wisdom person who walks with us and suffers with us and calls us to something simpler and truer and less glamorous than a “kingdom”. Where is the justice and kindness and simple barefoot humility that is “all” we are called to? We force this exiled, suffering Christ down onto a throne and nail a crown to his head and hail him as a human construction of oppression, as a “king”.

“Holy” we bleat, “God you are so cool”. We say “Lord. Lord, Lord, Lord” day and night and ignore the work to be done. Wisdom walks through the streets, mixes wine and talks to the “just anyones” that our church pushes out. Christ labours in the great harvest while we pour the chemicals of patriarchy and racism over everything and try to sell Christ short on infertile patented seeds of a pre-determined kingdom of euphoric nothingness. “Those who suffer the ecstasy of the animals”, snuffling up to the ankle or the hand of a master, behaving obsequiously and expecting a pat for it. “Those who glitter with the glory of the hummingbird” self made members of a royal court, dressed in the fine threads of someone else’s labour and feeling a nauseating delusion of superiority. This is our religion at times, a lip service to the truth of the labour of God’s struggle and an profound orientation to everlasting “death”.

We have one life to love God- not to worship in a way that distances God and makes a Christmas pageant of “Him”, but in a close, intimate way that is committed to the pain of always giving birth to justice, kindness and right-relationship. We don’t work, or suffer, or achieve things “for” God, for some distant and glittering king that demands things from us. We engage in the work that God is already doing, we orient ourselves toward life and love. We follow a beloved not extol a figurehead.

I realise I am quarrelling with tradition today and even with scripture and I have not had time to do a careful analysis of those readings so I am writing from the gut. But I am no courtesan playing political games and competing for the favour of a spoilt king. At my best I am a (junior) co-worker with the tireless justice-maker Christ, at my worst I might be distracted into the sort of pretty feel-good religion of the spectator at a royal progress. If we want to say that Christ “reigns”, then we have a lot of work to do to make love the new common-sense.

My heart is mutinous at the thought of a ruling class God!