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Grief for a View of the God-Character

Grief for a View of the God-Character

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I remember the primal anguish that is born out of the belief that God is the source of both love and pain.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve observed that the feeling toward the universe it engendered is very similar to that of a hostage, a victim of abuse, a prisoner. Instead of creating a subjectivity of love in freedom, of caritas and kindness, and peace, it seemed to create an obsessive and paradoxical longing and fear that felt so meaningful that it was difficult to release.

The first stage of exit was pure rage, in my case perhaps only because of some hard-wired sense of self-preservation. If I hadn’t become angry enough, I never would have left. Yes, I also wouldn’t have spent years in college, or racked up student loans, or seen my career path veer off into something I never expected, but I also wouldn’t have had anywhere to stand, wouldn’t have slowly reconstructed a space in which I could live.

I’ve been thinking about the pathological aspects of religion for many years now. Talking with others who left the Jehovah’s Witnesses has been very healing, and I’m so very happy that such discussions have been made available. I was alone, it seemed, at first. As much as our conversations mutually heal, there are still times when the raw feelings burst through. Yes, even now when it seems that early experience shouldn’t matter anymore, I look around at our cultural landscape and see all the similarities to the dynamics that I felt way back then. The stated arguments, then the cruelties beneath them. It’s part of the reason that I follow politics so closely.

When you’ve lived in a space where justice is proclaimed, but unkindness rules, you feel things. I’ve always been too sensitive to that difference, to the unfairness, and it’s only expanded into more understanding of structural, institutionalized unfairness. For that reason, I was never able to reach that enlightenment space that some highly-evolved religious people sometimes reach, where you’re in tune with the love of the cosmos and shine out in peace and love because of that.

I am amazed at people who first question God because of logical arguments – it’s why I was first interested in philosophy and theology. I never expected answers, I was just fascinated that anyone could ever manage to think clearly about an embedded belief system. For me, the questions just keep getting better and better.

But first, I had to step away from the thing that felt so inherent to my soul. It helped and hurt that I was a woman, and one gifted with both imagination and intelligence. I was rewriting stories all the time.

Throwback moments are still powerful because I still recognize them. If they ring true, they can almost call me back. Some versions of religion look nice, but they don’t address this hard-core total involvement of the person. The pathological edges of religion do – and this, I think is both their advantage and their biggest threat. They encourage power distortions – masochism and sadism, entwined, enthrallment and rebellion, entwined. Fanaticism has incredible payoffs. I understand.

When I saw the song below performed, I didn’t know the words. I didn’t have to know them, although they do fit (a bit strangely so).

What I saw was a priestess exorcising her demon. It was so powerful that I was shaken for the rest of the night.

Every time I hear it, like I accidentally did over my morning coffee, I feel it punch the solar plexus of my soul. I cry every time, and I always remember, I remember how it felt.

This was how I felt about God.

Although I haven’t been in that particular space for many years, it still has a power, and as much as I remind myself of the path of forgiveness and kindness and peace, as much as I am more lovingly attuned now, I still lack the total transformation that would make this song just a song like any other.

Music is a personal thing. Everyone projects onto music to some extent. This is not meant to be a song about God, but it resonates there for me.

For you. In remembrance, in grief. To sing, to exorcise your demons, and perhaps to be able to voice some aspect of the experience that conversation can’t really ever address. But, lovelies, sing something sweet afterward… If you can grok it, this one takes strength to hear.

Alanis Morissette, “Sympathetic Character”

I was afraid you’d hit me if I’d spoken up
I was afraid of your physical strength
I was afraid you’d hit below the belt
I was afraid of your sucker punch
I was afraid of your reducing me
I was afraid of your alcohol breath
I was afraid of your complete disregard for me
I was afraid of your temper
I was afraid of handles being flown off of
I was afraid of holes being punched into walls
I was afraid of your testosterone

I have as much rage as you have
I have as much pain as you do
I’ve lived as much hell as you have
and I’ve kept mine bubbling under for you

You were my best friend
You were my lover
You were my mentor
You were my brother
You were my partner
You were my teacher
You were my very own sympathetic character

I was afraid of verbal daggers
I was afraid of the calm before the storm
I was afraid for my own bones
I was afraid of your seduction
I was afraid of your coercion
I was afraid of your rejection
I was afraid of your intimidation
I was afraid of your punishment
I was afraid of your icy silences
I was afraid of your volume
I was afraid of your manipulation
I was afraid of your explosions
I have as much rage as you have
I have as much pain as you do
I’ve lived as much hell as you have
and I’ve kept mine bubbling under for you
(repeat 2 x)

You were my keeper
You were my anchor
You were my family
You were my saviour
and therein lay the issue
and therein lay the problem

Contraints on Communication Construct More Interesting Truths

Contraints on Communication Construct More Interesting Truths

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I would like to see someone do some contemporary intellectual work on how indirect communication – communication by signals and pointers and gestures rather than direct statement – produces the best art.

The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple. ~ Oscar Wilde

Communication whose style and content is dictated by constraints imposed by the rules of a scene is more creative, even more joyful, even if the realities of the life that produces the thought is very difficult.

Jean Baudrillard did some of this work in bemoaning the loss of the scene itself, which is the stage for the distinction between good and evil that we all navigate. Without the binary antipodes of cultural constraint, do we really find motivation to do anything of importance?

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it. ~ Oscar Wilde

Art communicates what cannot be expressed by other means. There is more truth in fiction and in art than in any amount of moralizing speech.

When homosexuality could not be spoken, thinkers and artists – and even politicians – discovered ways to indicate what was already known, and to do it without speaking it. We love to bust these out into the open, but the art was all about indications and play.

It made great art. Plays, paintings, poetry, speeches, philosophies…

Oppressed people can create the most amazing stuff – amazing music, amazing fiction. Think of Russian novelists. Think of black gospel music compared to the dirge-like church music of privileged white colonizers. It’s true that abject poverty can also denigrate people below any ability to create, too, but among them… always a genius, a prophet.

Sometimes I wonder if that’s not at least part of what is meant by not being “of this world.” The rewards of this world – money, power, and so on – are rewards in themselves. They are rewards for now, to be enjoyed now. But that’s all.

The rewards of those who are censored and constrained and even oppressed are, by their very structure and nature, more complex – more insightful – more subtle – more deeply real. When you care enough to work around tough rules of expression, you find a way – like life itself always finds a way.

It will be a marvelous thing – the true personality of man – when we see it. It will grow naturally and simply, flower-like, or as a tree grows. It will not be at discord. It will never argue or dispute. It will not prove things. It will know everything. And yet it will not busy itself about knowledge. It will have wisdom. Its value will not be measured by material things. It will have nothing. And yet it will have everything, and whatever one takes from it, it will still have, so rich will it be. It will not be always meddling with others, or asking them to be like itself. It will love them because they will be different. And yet, while it will not meddle with others, it will help all, as a beautiful thing helps us by being what it is. The personality of man will be very wonderful. It will be as wonderful as the personality of a child. In its development it will be assisted by Christianity, if men desire that; but if men do not desire that, it will develop none the less surely. For it will not worry itself about the past, nor care whether things happened or did not happen. Nor will it admit any laws but its own laws; nor any authority but its own authority. Yet it will love those who sought to intensify it, and speak often of them. And of these Christ was one. “Know Thyself” was written over the portal of the antique world. Over the portal of the new world, “Be Thyself” shall be written. And the message of Christ to man was simply “Be Thyself.” That is the secret of Christ. ~ Oscar Wilde

The traditions of men serve to stabilize communities, but they also create boundaries that are made to be flirted with – deconstructed. As you toe the line, you doodle all around that line. Without a line, you can’t… doodle.

It’s not brazen. It’s not open. It’s not honest. And yet – isn’t it more truthful to experience? Doesn’t it really address you all the more forcefully?

It does me.

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant—
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightening to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind— ~ Emily Dickinson

“…music is the perfect type of art. Music can never reveal its ultimate secret. This, also, is the explanation of the value of limitations in art. The sculptor gladly surrenders imitative colour, and the painter the actual dimensions of form, because by such renunciations they are able to avoid too definite a presentation of the Real, which would be mere imitation, and too definite a realisation of the Ideal, which would be too purely intellectual. It is through its very incompleteness that art becomes complete in beauty, and so addresses itself, not to the faculty of recognition nor to the faculty of reason, but to the aesthetic sense alone, which, while accepting both reason and recognition as stages of apprehension, subordinates them both to a pure synthetic impression of the work of art as a whole, and, taking whatever alien emotional elements the work may possess, uses their very complexity as a means by which a richer unity may be added to the ultimate impression itself.” ~ Oscar Wilde

Morphing Woman

Morphing Woman

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Beautiful metamorphosis videos! Take a look.

Women in Art

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUDIoN-_Hxs[/youtube]

(Thanks Jacque)

Women in Film

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEc4YWICeXk[/youtube]

Friendly Easter Roundup

Friendly Easter Roundup

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Happy Easter and Mystical Bunny with Eggs Day!

Catchin’ up with a few friend-blogs for a semi-random roundup…

Richard Shining Thunder has a new radio show in Cincinnati called High Spirits. Listen in at 1530AM WCKY, Cincinnati or online Sat 8-9 PM. I’ll personally vouch for him. He’s one of the good guys. Call in from 8-9 PM EST with spiritual questions and concerns – 877-345-3779.

Grateful Bear posts on a Pentacostal scholar who argues for the idea of the Holy Spirit moving like a wind through all the world’s religions. Great post! Call me to catch up when you’ve got a chance.

Etherealfire has a wonderful blessing for the day.

Just-Rambling thinks a surrender box is good idea. For an astonishing variety of reasons, I think so too.

No no no! It can’t be!!! Virtual Pus is gone! “2002-2006 – Killed by hackers”!?!? Come back!!!

Mr. H.K. skipped church today and instead went to the Museum of Modern Art’s opening of “Without boundaries: seventeen ways of looking,” featuring work by artists who come from the Islamic world. I’d better not link to his naughty naughty Easter graphic (heh -heh).

The philosofairy at Mermaid Tavern tells us why Arizona is the smartest state.

Rosei is planning her wedding as the rain pelts down in Brazil. I have fallen behind on the Photomeme posts, but not to worry, Rosei! John and Ben got me a digital camera for my birthday and it should arrive this week. I’ll catch up.

Raven, embroiled in activities with the boys, wishes everyone a Happy Easter/Ostara.

Lovebevvy is getting ready for a big move and new beginnings. Good luck Bev!

Mystical Grrl really has her hands full, as usual! Deep breaths Sara! Sending thoughts of warmth and calmness, and wishing you the very best of all news on the pregnancy. And I agree with you about the dog-sitting.

Dolphin and Leena have great feline Easter pics.

And keep your eyes out for the latest Progressive Faith Carnival Roundup!

Progressive Faith Blog-Con 2006 Carnival

Nechvatal Contaminations

Nechvatal Contaminations

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Joseph Nechvatal, my friend and intellectual compadre in viral realms, has his latest exhibition in Ohio. “Contaminations” has been extended to run through June 25th at the Butler Institute of American Art’s Beecher Center. The show includes a selection of computer-robotic assisted paintings starting in the mid-1980’s and concludes with a recent electronic viral installation.

Go see!
Joseph Nechvatal: Contaminations

Or if you happen to be in Youngstown, Ohio:
The Beecher Center for Technology in the Arts
Butler Institute of American Arts
524 Wick Ave. Youngstown, Ohio 44502
tel# 330-743-1711

While you’re visiting his website, be sure to see the new nOOlOgy : guilt of a nation. Here is his introduction:

In art, pleasure is a most legitimate aspiration. Still one may not ignore that people all over the world today bend-over painfully and act in accordance with seemingly normal systems of control: noological systems (*) that may seem at the time logically inevitable.

My current chain of history paintings called “the new nOOlOlogy” are based on a fraction of the infamous digital photos from the Abu Graib abuse scandal. As such, they present embedded images of American torture. Here American detainees are punished and humiliated and then adorned through an a-life process of viral attack laden with the latent content of ambiguous bioterror. These digital (computer-robotic) acrylic paintings link together systems of exposed nerves with the torture at Abu Graib – now festooned with miniature hermaphrodites infected by viral attacks that undermine them.

For me they are an attempt at expressing America’s deep demoralization. They are moral acts then, free with the truth of our penchant for desire. As such, these paintings contribute slightly to the downfall of the present reality in that they bury visual memory at the outset.

To those that persist in the amorality of Abu Graib, I shit on you. You have discredited me by creating a rotting nation. Although I have opposed you at every turn, never-the-less, you have made me feel guilty and dirty too, as only a single officer has been reprimanded for this disgraceful display thus far.

This artistic activity, in tribute to Leon Golub, is a conscious response to the world of irrational conventions in which I can find even myself.

Joseph Nechvatal

(*) Noology is the science of intellectual phenomena. n. study of intuition and reason. nooscopic, a. pertaining to examination of mind.

And as if all that weren’t enough, he has a brilliant article (“Jean Baudrillard and a Counter-Mannerist Art of Latent Excess“) in the latest issue of the International Journal of Baudrillard Studies (Volume 3, Number 2 – July 2006).

Intellectual acumen, creative artistry, ethics and tech – this guy stuns me, always. Keep it going Joseph! You are an oasis in the desert.

Illustrated Sarcophagus

Illustrated Sarcophagus

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A major find in Western Cypress, in an already-looted tomb near the village of Kouklia, in the coastal Paphos area. The area contained several ancient cemeteries that belonged to the town of Palaepaphos, site of a temple to Aphrodite (goddess of beauty and love, believed to have risen from the waves of the nearby sea).

The sarcophagus is 2500 years old, and its ornate illustrations are painted in red, black, and blue on a white background.

Experts believe that some of the illustrations depict scenes from Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. These and other scenes suggest that this was the resting place of a great warrior.

This kind of thing makes my day.

Check out the photos.