reflections from the guild

I attended my first AAR/SBL conference last week in Chicago. I attended these sessions:

Saturday
Mysticism Group - The Ecstasy of the End: Mystical Death across Traditions
Polis & Ecclesia - Investigations of Urban Christianity: Roman Corinth
Queer Studies in Religion Group - Queer Reorientations: Questioning Bodies and Futures
Reception for LGBTQI Scholars

Sunday
Postcolonial Studies and Biblical Studies: Postcolonial Theory in Dialogue
Bible, Theology, and Postmodernity Group - Flesh, Desire, Divinity: Celebrating the Work of Karmen MacKendrick
Vanderbilt Reception

Monday
Religion and Sexuality Group - Discipline & Hierarchy in Religious Practices of Sex
Women in the Biblical World, LGBT/Queer Hermeneutics - Bible Trouble panel

(I also had yummy Thai food with Britt on Sat, Chicago pizza with Brandy on Sunday, and Britt's homemade pizza on Monday!)

I wanted to poke my eyes out during the first two Saturday sessions, so I gave up on early Christianity and explored the queerer options. I was happy I did - so soul-filling, enriching, and inspiring. I reconnected with Kent, heard Brandy present, scoped out Virginia Burrus and Stephen Moore, met Dave Stuart (L's teacher), heard Ellen, got drunk with people I love.

I still worry about early Christianity - how am I going to learn this stuff? Is reading widely enough? Yet the queer stuff confirmed what I needed it to - that this stuff is beautiful, it is about desire, it is desirous scholarship and pedagogy. All of the respondents to Karmen MacKendrick's work expressed that point elegantly - the things we examine seduce us - and their responses demonstrated another point - scholarship at its best is seductive, in language and in concept. The "queer stuff" inspired a good paper for Dr. Armour that was due the same weekend, and I hope to incorporate (embody) it in the rest of my work.

Asher also mentioned last night that I should look at the gender studies dept. at Emory. (Well, he mentioned it as though he was suggesting it to himself, then helpfully included me in it.)

But Drew will always be my first choice, I think.

senior sem?

pedagogy + early christian lit or queer stuff
basically, the questions i've been struggling with this semester and voc'l discernment.
why and how do we teach? obligations, risks? 

clobber

Today at the Baptist university where I TA, we began with lectio divina on I Cor. 13. I recited it from memory while they soaked it up. Then I asked for their prayers for my undergrad community though I didn't go into detail. Then, a student said that every time he heard a person who was "pro-homosexuality" questioned about the Bible, they sidestepped the question. I swept through the clobber verses on homosexuality in 20 minutes. I knew all the arguments and most of the references from memory. Some of them were flipping through their Bibles to keep up. I think I sufficiently complicated things for them as I sat there in my flannel plaid shirt and clean face. Then I said, "No matter what you believe about the Bible, I ask you to think about the kind of love we just meditated on: patient, kind, keeps no record of wrongs. Think about how that influences your ethical stance and your praxis and the way you treat your neighbors."

Every time someone spoke up, they said: "I mean, I believe homosexuality is a sin, but..." before they said their thought.

It was strange. And I felt like I did my job well.

call and response and call

an overwhelming sadness of :
Can I find myself here,
can I place myself here,
within this constellation of brilliants ?
i, in my heart, feel suddenly grief,
wrath at a million little irritations and compromises,
annoyance with the weight of infractions and that
damn dimming sky

i love and hate the autumn
when it is gloryblue it's
very very blue
but when it is cloudy
it's horrid

i worry
at the fraud of it all
i cannot bear the pressure
of love, it is too much, too hard
too uncertain from within this web of
sins. sins this is what is really certain.
this: i am the greatest of sinners
but even there is pride

the child-me who was really a hag
in soft skin comes to me every winter
all the angst and tenuous grasping
take residence in my muscles now
i want to shatter her

friends, will you hold me
friends will you hold
friends will you
me

i remember fragments of the poetry
i made out of the grimmest seasons
i, i, i lifted my head and wove gold out of dust
it was the most majestic poesis
icarus, the goldenboy, charon,
odysseus and penelope,
the farmer and the dust bowl
they all come back in the winter
they all come back
i hate them those tragedies

senior seminar 1

michelson's syriaca project + foucault genealogy + how to do ethical history in a //cliche: rapidly changing world//

i think this practical aspect (the syriaca proj) would help my interests fit the parameters of sr sem.

summer plan

definitely
-develop a reading list to cover gaps in knowledge
- ...read those things.
-study for GRE, take it at end of the summer
-plan / read ahead for senior sem
-using list of potential advisors, get a handle on their areas and read articles & books

maybe
-kenchreae?
-syriaca.org

analogia

I have a knack for analogies. I did not know this about myself. It doesn't come out as much in my writing. But when I see that my students are very confused, I can pull out a good analogy ("so if your theology of salvation is a plant...") or an example ("remember in pocahontas? but then let me tell you what's happening now with natives and resources") at the drop of a hat. One of the things I was most worried about with teaching was that I wouldn't be able to communicate clearly. In conversations with friends and acquaintances I tend to use weird syntax, make strange examples, and generally not make much sense, especially when I feel pressure. But I think the added dash of authority I get in the classroom helps my confidence and releases my mouth and mind to do their best work.

vocare ii

My Episcopal partner's tradition dictates that a vocation is not only something that is spoken to you by God. It is also voiced to you by your community.

Since July, so many affirmations of a possible future in the academy have visited me from my colleagues and friends. Sometimes in passing, only occasionally when I've brought it up first, and always with exaggerated tone of voice. Something like KW:

"So, how do you like TAing? Are you going to apply to grad school?" she asks with exaggerated nods, to answer my own question without my speaking.

Or SH:

"I look forward to reading your first book."

Or the other SH:

"You can do this."

I leave out voices like BD and RJ, whose opinions I solicited but are still positive.

----

Last night I dreamed about archaeology. I've never done it before, and I haven't thought about Kenchreai in awhile. But I was required to jump into a dark deep pit. I jumped. I was caught. And I happily began to dig away.

In the shower this morning I thought it over. Thought about setting up one of those registries that B&J put together. Thought about how maybe just maybe the in-laws might donate if I asked. Thought about the Imagination Grant, which VJ encouraged me to apply for.

Looked up the cost: over $7000, including tuition. But master's students don't get course credit, so I subtracted $4000. $3000 for room and board and lectures, $1000 for flights, $1000 for pocket money. If the Imagination Grant just covered the $3000...I wonder if I could raise the other $2000.

So today I e-mailed JR about going to Kenchreai. 

identity politics in the classroom

I'm TAing a seminar on Christian ethics at BU, a large Baptist university in town. Two years ago, BU had a huge controversy over the rights of queer employees and students on campus after a coach was fired for telling her team she was having a baby with her partner. Being a queer woman myself, it would be understandable if I felt concern over my identity in the classroom. Being out could compromise my moral authority or make me less approachable, which could indirectly result in our readings being handled (even more) uncharitably by the students. I care about that.

I'm not too hung up about it. BU is largely populated by hipsters...my queerness looks to them like straight-but-alternative. Plus, I don't really care what would happen if they found out. I'd be interested to observe it. However, I did notice that while my professor was introducing herself, she first mentioned that she was married with two children. And I do dress with care, frequently tending toward femme or femme with a few key andro pieces.

My prof asked why I wasn't telling the students, probably curious about my sense of safety in the classroom. I was surprised how quickly the answer came to my lips: I enjoy that they can't know for sure if I'm queer or straight. I like that I can keep them guessing, that I'm a difficult text to read. I think this is one instance of feeling a sense of femme-empowerment. (And isn't all that "being queer"?)

Yet there's another reason. I've had a lot of anxiety over passing as straight in the rest of my life lately - I do tend to dress more casually when I'm not TAing, and I worry about how I'm read on the street, in stores; I worry about my safety. It's actually nice that it is such a non-issue in the classroom - a non-issue that I've exerted power over, that I've made it a non-issue on my terms. I like to fantasize that this is what the world would be like if we maybe didn't get so startled when women have sex with women. No need to disclose. No activism to do (at least around LGBTQ issues...).

But I think all my talk about 'non-issue' was overly simplistic. It's not a non-issue.

Still thinking.

vocare

Thursday, August 9. It had rained earlier, bringing a cool relief. Around 7:30pm. Sun glinting off of wet leaves made everything golden. It beamed across the garden and the labyrinth. Everything golden. Yet the rain was so far gone that the grass was not that clinging wet that sticks to bare feet, that obnoxious feeling I hate. It felt like what a crazy old acquaintance used to call fairy time. 

Earlier that day, we’d written anonymous affirmations, encouragement, drawings, or prayers for each other on white squares, which D and JH and N had folded into cranes. They perched in the center of the labyrinth, twenty of them, waiting for us.

Only one of us was not there, I think. We gathered in a circle a few steps from the labyrinth. M rang the singing bowl and asked us to voice affirmations to each other that we meant for one person in the group but left undesignated. After awhile, we moved to the labyrinth. I went first because D was coming next, and I knew he was afraid.

Even though the labyrinth is only a short walk from my house, I had never walked it before. I too was afraid, as I am suspicious of all spiritual things. Never fully comfortable, always tentative, highly aware of the mysterium tremendum.

I worried for a moment about how fast to walk, but M had told us to go how it felt natural. I could hear my newly-made friends padding behind me. I could not see them. I brought my hands to an open, cupped position at the bottom of my ribs. In, two three four; out, two three four. 

During some moments in the labyrinth, I could not see anyone. Though I could hear them behind me, and though nothing was tangibly scary about the labyrinth, I grew frightened and deeply lonely. I kept walking. Soon enough, I would come to a turn and see everyone else in the group. Sometimes people drew up alongside me, but on a different circuit. At those moments, I felt like I had a bird’s eye view of things, though I was right there next to them. I felt warm, welcomed. This was how the life of a scholar would be: sometimes surrounded by colleagues in warm intellectual community, other times cloistered alone with my own thoughts, devastatingly lonely.

It took longer than I thought, which was good - every time I got near the center, I prayed for it not to be over, and off I would twist again on another circuit. But finally, there was the center.

I approached, walked to the margin of the center. Picked a crane. Knelt. Put my head to the grass. Held the crane gingerly. Waited. Stood up. Walked out.

I sat on the grass with my eyes closed, crane cradled in the palm of my hand. I opened them. Watched my friends encounter their divine. D was crying. So was K, who sat next to me. I reached for his hand, looked him in the eyes. Held it for a few moments. “Thank you,” he said, drawing away.

We did other meditations after that. I don’t remember them.

Later that night, at the tavern, I sat between my mentor and L. As they chatted, I opened the crane. I recognized the handwriting immediately - strident, sharp. Y had told me earlier it was good for doing graffiti. It was my own. 

“Your voice is a gift to our craft. Thank you.”

I’d written it, trying to put all I had learned into few words for the person who received my crane. Little did I know that I was writing for myself. “Your voice” - each person’s own unique individualism, without which we’re bereft. “A gift” - something that we all benefit from. “Our craft” - an acknowledgement that we do hard work, and we may be talented, but it is always at the end grunt work, always in need of refinement, always improving, always capricious, an art. Of all the cranes, I’d chosen my own, though I had the first pick.