The good news appears to be that the epilepsy is treatable with a fairly safe surgical procedure.  Free of this illness, Sr. John’s community would be free of the burden of worrying about and caring for Sr. John when these trance-like experiences come over her.  Yet, assent to such a procedure is in no way simple for Sr. John: while the symptomatic mystical writing has brought her fame, it has also, more importantly, given her a consistent, incredibly intimate experience of God’s presence.

Amid her story, any reader is inevitably confronted by the question she faces: If I were in her position, what would I do?  Would I rid myself of these symptoms for the sake of my health and my community—but at the potential cost of losing this feeling of intimacy with God?  Or, would I accept ill health for the sake of this mystical life?

When discussing this book with friends, I have often said that I would choose mysticism.  So much of our lives are spent seeking clarity about the decisions we make, about the convictions we live by—thus, I can only imagine how liberating it would feel to experience the kind of clarity and peace that would accompany this type of mystical intimacy with God.  How could one consciously give that up after experiencing it?

However, one scene from the book made me re-think all that.  On the night when Sr. John must make up her decision, she vows to stay up all night, keeping vigil in the monastery chapel until she finds peace with her choice, one way or the other.  After a few hours in the darkness and quiet, her sisters, one by one, fill the chapel.  Saying nothing, their presence implicitly communicates that they, too, will keep vigil with her until she reaches her decision.  And in reading this, it occurred to me: It is very rare that God gives us the type of mystical clarity that Sr. John experienced for so many years. More often, I think, God gives us each other.

Surely, most of us still long for the sky to open and a divine voice to call out how to live and what to think.  But a longing for this type of clarity, for this type of conviction, can distract us from the gift of God in our midst—the God embodied in those who sit next to us, in word and in silent, as we discern all those small decisions that make up a lifetime. Would I exchange that for mysticism?  Well, maybe—I’ve never experienced the sort of thing that Sr. John did.  But, when I recall the many nights when people have kept vigil with me—around dinner tables, on long walks, over drinks at the bar—I can’t imagine trading that for anything. And I can’t imagine that God wasn’t right there, too.

In Lauren Winner’s memoir, Girl Meets God, she recounts her transition from Orthodox Judaism to Anglican Christianity.  Couched among the tales of her various love affairs, the story of Winner’s tumultuous conversion mirrors her romantic relationships with men.  Winner writes of how she found herself consistently enamored by Jesus while persistently fighting against her burgeoning devotion.  In the end, she gave in to the love affair.  I read this book for the first time when I was sixteen—at the age of first love and first heartbreak—and undoubtedly, it gave me a paradigm for understanding my increasing attraction to the Catholicism of my upbringing.  If becoming Catholic was like falling in love, perhaps leaving would feel something like a break-up.

We have rituals for break-ups, for mourning the loss of a lover, a once-constant life companion.  We let ourselves cry.  We call our friends, and they show up, sit on our couches, and hold us as we try to catch our breath, like Kate. We take down pictures and put old letters into shoeboxes that we shove into our closets, perhaps opening them from time to time for grieving. When we have no paradigm for life without that ex-companion, friends tell us to wake up in the morning, to get out of bed, and they promise that someday it will be a little bit easier. Those around us testify to a hopeful future until we believe it.

Later in the day after reading Kate’s blog entry, I sat at dinner with my boyfriend Jack, telling him how I had carried her heavy words with me all day.  Jack leaned forward to speak—then paused. “I have a frank question for you, if I may?” he asked. “I know you don’t think you can leave, Jessica.  But do you ever wonder if you could, maybe some day?”  Jack has stood beside me during Episcopal liturgies where I wept silently, yearning to belong to a community like that—a more egalitarian space where, for instance, a woman could consecrate the bread and wine of the Eucharist.  Afterward, I told him I was crying because I could never imagine leaving the Catholic Church, even in the moments when I want to.  Feeling stuck in my relationship to the Church hurts sometimes—but I have no paradigm for life without the liturgy and people and tradition that I have loved for so long, even with its major imperfections.

“Sometimes I think it’s possible,” I responded.  “But, I think I would need a funeral first.” Jack tilted his head, wearing a confused look.  This was not a clever way of saying I will be Catholic until I die.  It had simply occurred to me, “I would need some sort of ritual. You know, at funerals everyone who loves you gets together, and they celebrate your life with them.  They mourn your absence but they commend you into another space.  At the very least, I think I would need that to leave Catholicism.  To feel okay about it.”

For many people, leaving Catholicism is a courageous decision made in response to the painful circumstances imposed on them by the Church.  Many suffer within Catholicism for many years before they leave, and for many leaving is a concerted effort to salvage Christian faith.  It is not a rejection of it.  More than ever, it is apparent to me that we need a pastoral response for those who need to leave.  We need some way of communicating those messages of condolence and hope that we share with our friends as they mourn the loss of a lover: “It seems that this is the best thing for you right now, even as it hurts,” or simply, “It’s going to be okay.” We need to go sit with them, and listen to the stories of their grief.  We need some way to say, “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry…”

It was a friend’s mother who gave me Girl Meets God in high school.  She was raised Catholic, and during her college years she increasingly attended a local Protestant church. She became involved in their ministries, and eventually she found herself identifying with this new community much more than the Catholicism of her upbringing.  One summer she was at a Christian camp with young people from her church, and she befriended a Catholic priest who was also there with a group from his parish.  She told him about her life in the Church, and how she had decided to leave Catholicism for this new Protestant community.  This priest offered to say a prayer with her, one that would mark her departure from Catholicism and her entrance into this other Christian community.  And indeed, their prayer marked this transition for her all those years later.

When she told me this story as a high school student, I thought it was so strange. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would intentionally seek a mark of separation from Catholicism. Excommunication was the only thing I could equate to this type of event, and that is something forced on people—not sought out. But today I wonder what a prayer like that could do for people like Kate, or for many of the people I know and love.  And I wonder what the offer of a prayer like that would do for me.

Yesterday in the New York Times his op-ed was titled, “Religion and Women,” so naturally I was eager to read.  And I really appreciated many things about this piece.  It highlighted a multiply of oppressions against women, both some regularly witnessed and experienced by women in the US, and some more commonly associated with other parts of the world. He also illustrated how widespread these problems are in relation to religion–many types of religion throughout history and across the globe.

Most of all, I appreciated how Kristof demonstrated the complex relationship between gender and religion.  While religion is often sighted as a source of women’s oppression (and rightly so, I think), frequently it is also a context wherein women receive opportunities to exercise their power and authority. In my experience, people commonly dismiss religion as entirely sexist and misogynist, missing the complexity of gender dynamics that exist within many religious communities. Kristof points this out with an example of conservative Christian and pentecostal churches in Africa, which often recognize women’s leadership more than their other community’s outside religion.

We absolutely need to call out religion whenever and wherever it oppresses others, but I hope we can do this accurately so as to honor the women within religion.  If we simply dismiss religion, I think we run the risk of dismissing the reality of the women within the world’s many traditions.  That would be a very contradictory attempt at battling women’s oppression.

Image from http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/04/02/opinion/ts-kristof-190.jpg.

“Rita Louise Watson! You better get your behind back in here…”

If that line carries a ring of familiarity and the image of a young Lauryn Hill, you probably grew up watching Sister Act II just like me. My friend Steph and I wore out a VHS tape with our exhaustive viewing. We can recite the script along with the actors and dance the film’s choreography. To this day, we have been known to sit down with a bowl of popcorn on a Friday night and fast forward through the movie from musical act to musical act, just so we can sing along with one of our favorite collections of songs ever compiled in one place. We love Sister Act II.Growing up, I wanted to be Rita, the movie’s main character. I wanted her beauty, her funky wide-leg jeans, her voice—one of the most breathtaking I have heard to this day. And I related to her restlessness. Rita is a tremendously talented singer, but her mother thinks music is impractical and thus forbids her daughter from it. Consequently, Rita fronts a bad attitude that guises the pain and disappointment she feels because she cannot pursue her love of music.

I related to Rita’s struggle to integrate what she loves with the reality of who she is. She knows that she wants to be a singer, but life’s circumstances seem to obstruct the possibility of actualizing that dream. As a teenager in inner city San Francisco with an unsupportive mother, how could she actually become a singer?

At a turning point of the film, Rita’s music teacher, Sr. Mary Clarence (played by Whoopi Goldberg), confronts the teenager about her bad attitude. Clarence sees right through Rita, charging that the teen’s bad attitude is getting in the way of what she really loves—music—and who she really is—a singer. Goldberg gives Rita a copy of Rilke’s “Letters to a Young Poet,” and, appropriating Rilke’s message in the book, the teacher tells Rita, “If you wake up every morning and the first thing you think about doing is singing, then you’re supposed to be a singer, girl.” After reading the book, Rita realizes that she may or may not become the type of singer that she dreams of being someday, but her frustration with that is presently keeping her from being the singer that she already is.

I’ve been thinking about Rita’s paradigm shift a lot lately because so many people my age struggle with the disparities between the life they have and the dreams they want to live out. Friends are grateful for employment, but often say, “This is not the life I dreamed of. This is not who I am. This is not what I love.” This can feel incredibly disheartening and discouraging at times, and the overwhelming realization that one is not living the life he/she desires can often be paralyzing. It is easy to see the obstacles that lay in the path to the future, rather than focusing on the steps we can take within the space of the present.

Rita was so disheartened by her dream of becoming a singer that she stopped singing in her present community. I keep reminding myself that anxiety about dreams for the future should not stop me from living out my loves in the present. I may not have a book, but it doesn’t mean I am not presently a writer of sorts. I may not have a degree but it doesn’t mean I can’t do theology today. We can’t think about tomorrow in a way that keeps us from living today.

What does it mean to claim to be a Presbyterian, or a Protestant, or a Christian?…What if we were to walk through the Protestant churches of the United States today, especially the centrist-to-liberal churches, and ask such questions of every member? How many would be left in the pews if all had to profess a belief in the supernatural claims about God and Jesus? I won’t venture an estimate, but my hunch is that the collection plates would be considerably lighter if churches were to expel all the skeptics and all who held non-orthodox views.

If there existed a huge, neon yellow highlighter for computer screens, I would have taken it to this passage from “The Inquisition,” an essay by Robert Jensen that I read yesterday on Killing the Buddha. The piece details Jensen’s removal from St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas after fellow parishioners read some of his writing on “radical Christianity,” the label Jensen has taken on to describe his agnostic/atheistic faith.

The essay immediately captured me because I’m used to hearing stories like his concerning Catholics (both of the present and past), not Protestants (at least not Protestants who lived after the Salem witch trials). What’s more, the quoted passage really captures the spirit of many of the questions and ideas I explore in my academic research, and I’ve realized that I haven’t shared much about that with you in the blogsphere.

As an undergraduate I was drawn to various forms of identity theory explored in Postmodern (and post-Postmodern) thought. The more I considered these explorations of race, nationality, gender, sexuality, etc., I more convicted I became that identity is much foggier than most individuals and institutions acknowledge, and that there are serious consequences to overlooking the reality of how people make sense of themselves and their communities today.

In the case of Robert Jensen, his Christian identity did not match that of many in his congregation, so they used the pre-established power structures in the church to remove him from a community that is both life-giving from him and central to his religious identity. My point is not to make a judgement about the moral “rightness” or “wrongness” of his church’s decision, rather I want to highlight how this situation exemplifies observations I commonly make about religion today: First, there is a great diversity in Christian (and generally, religious) identity, and both individuals and religious institutions struggle and/or refuse to acknowledge this reality. Second, situations like this beg the question–Who/What gets to decide individual and communal religious identity? Doctrine? Past or Present doctrine? Tradition? Which tradition? Current Authorities? Which authorities? The Bible (or a particular interpretation of the Bible)? The individual, him/herself?

I find that contemporary theories of gender and sexual identities are extremely compelling when it comes to questions of communal and individual identity, and the battling power structures that delineate these identities. I want to bring these theories into conversation with theological understandings about religious identity and belonging, with hopes of generating a more accurate landscape of Catholicism, and religion in general.

I’d love to know what you think!

My friend Lacey is finishing up a one-year Master’s program in Critical Theory.  I am really terrible about keeping in touch with her, like I am with so many special friends unfortunately, so I often sneak a peak into her life via the blogsphere.  She has an interesting, creative space on the Web called She Minds.  

The blog’s title, “She Minds,” really sums up one of Lacey’s greatest qualities: She does mind.  Lacey really cares about the world she encounters and the contribution she puts back into it, especially the contribution she makes through her brilliant thoughts and writings.  In a world and generation where I so often hear apathetic expressions like, “Oh, it doesn’t matter,” and “I just don’t care,” her commitment to all the best in life is striking and refreshing. 

As I read Lacey’s words online this evening, I was reminded of another friend’s wisdom about the importance of taking life seriously.  At Santa Clara I belonged to a “Residential Learning Community” (SCU’s version of a residential college) that expoused five main pillars.  One was “vocation.”  Most college freshmen do not understand the complexities of this term (I sure didn’t) and it was the task of Fr. Rob Scholla SJ, our community faculty director, to explain the term to new students. He said something like this: “Vocation is about realizing that this is your life.  It matters.  You only get one. And the decisions you make, even the small ones, make up its precious content. So you should pay attention, and choose wisely. It does matter—you only get one life.”

This mindfulness pertains to examinations of our own lives, and the lives of others.  I should mind when I’m simply not alright.  When I am not okay; this is my life, and while perspective is important my state of being is too.  I should do something about this.  I should also mind that other people in the world endure incredibly difficult physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional circumstances. These are their precious lives.  And I should do something about this, too.  I should mind.

Do you mind? 

The storyline follows Ensler, the narrator, all over the world as she performs The Vagina Monologues and works on other feminist projects and presentations. All the while she struggles to love her stomach—that one part of her body that she just despises. Interwoven into Ensler’s struggle to love herself, monologues about bodies—parts of them, all of them, different types of them—are spoken by various women she encounters around the world. Some love their bodies; others hate them. All of the women are fabulous, diverse characters like the ones you find in The Vagina Monologues.

Naturally, The Good Body doesn’t match the exhilarating, taboo character of The Vagina Monologues. That’s because we are talking stomachs and butts and wrinkles and rolls, not vaginas. (Okay, there is a little talk of vaginas in this book too). It does, however, accomplish the same difficult task of making an important feminist issue—our battle with unattainable body and beauty standards—relatable, understandable, creative and entertaining.

With all this talk about the body, I got to thinking about Jesus. As Christians, we glorify the body; the incarnation is everything to us! Yet so many of us, myself included, struggle to love our own bodies—our own incarnate selves.

So, spend some time loving the body you’ve been given and read The Good Body by Eve Ensler. Your hips will love you for it.