Jesus' Gifted Sister

To allow “the flesh to show us the divine,” rather than the other way around, requires a certain courage in the face of long-standing theological denials of the flesh that have shaped contemporary cultural assumptions about the relationship of divinity to bodies.

--Laurel Schneider, Promiscuous Incarnation

Chastity has then, it has even now, a religious importance in a woman's life, and has so wrapped itself round with nerves and instincts that to cut it free and bring it to the light of day demands courage of the rarest.

                        --Virginia Woolf on “Shakespeare’s Gifted Sister” from A Room of One’s Own

Jesus’ Gifted Sister 

Let us for a moment suppose that Jesus had a younger, gifted sister called, say, Judith.  Let us suppose that the circumstances of her birth were no less awesome and particular than those of her brother; let us also suppose that she, like her brother, was gifted in communion with the Divine, thus experiencing the world somewhat differently than her other immediate family and tribe.  Perhaps Judith and her brother took long walks into the foothills, sitting under the branches of an olive tree, joyfully and reverently discussing the glories of G*d’s exquisite world.  They might turn, of a moment, to face each other, sharing a smile of secret knowing.  Perhaps Jesus would come home from shul and share with her his learnings of Torah, or tell her with suppressed mirth of how the Rebbe had farted during the lesson.  They would laugh and cry together, seeing the exquisite beauty of life in all things.

The siblings’ parents, Mary and Joseph, are chronically frustrated by Jesus’ failure to be obedient in even simple things, like coming home from the Temple on time.  It is gentle, convivial Judith who is the apple of her parent’s eye.  She helps Mary around the house, turning dirty clothes to clean, simple foods into feasts.  Judith is modest and humble, allowing herself to be governed by the rules of her faith.  It makes her lonely, with no one to talk to but Jesus when he’s not gallivanting about, but she doesn’t mind.  All she wants is to be seen and valued equally with her brother, the one person in all the world most like her, so that she might go out into the world and help to heal it. 

Her brother leaves home, to share the knowledge and mystery of human existence as a divine experience.  She gets word, occasionally, about his miracles and teachings.  She is proud of him, happy to think that his presence alone is sufficient witness to the presence of G*d in man, and man’s abiding home in G*d.  She is certain that people, exposed to such unconditional, radical and superabundant love, will see themselves as they truly are and mend any errant, uncaring, ignorant ways.  Understanding for herself the blissful mystery of divine intercourse, she is certain that it cannot help but change the world by moving people’s hearts.  Judith senses that miracles are a fine way to illustrate the abundance of power to be had in surrender to Divine Will, and begins to perform small ones of her own around the neighborhood.  Judith is promptly summoned home and told by her father that she must hide her miracles, for they threaten the ‘natural’ order of things.  Judith is taught that she must not be seen as anything less than a treasure of soft, compliant womanhood and will never be anything more than a commodity, a property.  

Judith is confused.  After having spent so much quality time in the presence of someone who understood her inherent divinity and value as a human being, she is reluctant to be or feel less than; she is reluctant to lie.  Soon, an arrangement is made with a stonemason’s son up the street to marry, to become his property instead of her parents’.  Judith is appalled and miserable.  She knows she is made for more than her community will allow her to be or do.  Late that night, she clambers out the window, down a rope and sets off alone for Jerusalem, where she is certain she will find someone who is willing and able to see her for the divine embodiment that she is.

As she travels, she heals others.  She feeds and is fed; she teaches and is taught.  It is an arduous trek, riddled with violence and hatred.  She arrives in Jerusalem and is denied all succor.  Having been raped on the way, she is now unclean.  Having arrived poor because she was robbed, she is seen as unworthy of anything but condescending pity.  No one wants her, no one helps her, no one sees her.  It requires little imagination to consider that a highly gifted girl trying to use her gifts for beauty and compassion is so rejected and denied, so tortured and torn apart by her own lived contradictions, that she loses her health and a good bit of her sanity. Yet, she perseveres.  Trying ceaselessly and by embodied example to share with the people of Jerusalem the urgent beauty and compassionate necessity for all G*d’s creatures to care for one another, she resorts to publicly performing a miracle.  Before Jews and Romans alike, right in the middle of the market square, she turns an old, ailing beggar woman into a fresh, vibrant young man.  She is stoned to death on the spot.  So is the miraculous young man for, having once been a decrepit old hag, surely this transformation from second to first class citizen is an act of the greatest evil, imperiling all who witnessed it—especially the other women in the market.  

Judith loses her life.  The rest of humanity has incurred a far greater loss, one they may never even notice, all and only because this time when G*d came down, It entered a female being through something other than her vagina, in a fashion other than conquest.  If we are all the arguable embodiments of the Divine, and the scriptural interpretation of getting to G*d by moving through a human body over the course of a life is accurate, then we must learn to honor G*d by our care of every body, every color, every gender and every faith.  At this stage of the game, I believe we can ill afford to lose any more of Jesus’ gifted siblings, regardless of the packaging they come in.

Transvestite Jesus, Bill Burch 2009

Happy Birthday, Annie!

And on your special day, a poem.  I hope you don't mind that I'm still writing you.  It helps me make sense of things, and honor your memory with art.  And besides--I think everyone should know how awesome you be.

 Annie was a box of jewels.  Every time you opened the box, you got a new treasure.

–Aunt Vicky

 

Annie’s Lament

That thing

that thing in the

that thing in the box is

that thing in the box is not my Annie.

She never

she never would’ve

she never would’ve worn that

that shade

that shade of lipstick.

I kissed

I kissed her

I kissed her for

I kissed her forehead.

She

she was

cold

she was cold and she

and she smelled

and she smelled like

like nothing--

she never did that when she wore a body,

like I still

I still must do.

When she wore her body, Annie smelled like life

like three thirty in the after all night dancing morning covered in sweat and the residue of sweet sounds, with tired sillygiggle smiles and sore stinky feet.

like a Priestess swinging incense circling a popping cinder tribal fire offering gentle warmth, cooked meat and an eyebrow singe all at the same time.

like fucking in the forest as naked toes dig into the verdant loam and bestir the scent of voluptuous decay beneath writhings and all the groaning moans are a good name for god.

Annie smelled like that.

Annie was communion. 

From her bread we learned worship; from her wine we learned praise.

This we did in remembrance: the divinity of being human.

Annie didn’t know what happened after death

but

she had the strength to admit ignorance, the courage to befriend the not knowing.

Now she

now she knows

what happens

what happens when you

when you die

and

and I

and I

I still don’t.

I open the box of Annie

that lives in my heart.

Every time,

I get a new treasure.

Each treasure gets wet,

threatening to dissolve,

yet stays whole.

Soon,

soon, I tell me,

soon,

I will stop sobbing

and learn

and learn what happens

what happens when you

live.

My Blue Uterus: The Bluterus!

I am deeply distressed by the fact men are once again attempting to lay down laws about women's bodies.  No one but the woman herself has any right to decide what goes into her body, what comes out of it, or when and how these things occur.  I know it should be a "duh" that women are not chattel, nor are they children, incapable of making choices for themselves, but somehow it isn't.  This troubledness I feel is the same kind of troubled I feel around the idea of a bunch of men who are (supposed to be) celibate making decisions about sex in general. And don't EVEN get me started about how religion is used in creating misogynistic biases & their resulting stupidities.  The whole thing is so ludicrous that I often can't decide whether to laugh or cry.

I won't point at any more of the political, religious and medical hypocrisies that are practiced on the female body.  I'll get sick to my stomach again some more.  Instead, I offer you some art.

One of the core principles of social justice is that the people for whom decisions are made must have a say in the creation of policy and practices that involve them. As the meme says, 82% of women's health policy decisions are made by men.  100% of them will never get pregnant.

When choices are made for folx in which they have no say, oppression results.  As a poignant example for this, I offer you this brief video of a poem written by one of my new heroes, Lauren Zuniga.  It inspired me, and crying seemed like the right choice of response.  Have a look--it's well worth the 3 minutes.

   

I won't point at any more of the political, religious and medical hypocrisies that are practiced on the female body.  I'll get sick to my stomach again some more.  Instead, I offer you some art.

I don't believe in complaining about something without taking action to try and correct the thing being complained about.  When I saw this article on Jezebel, taken from this website about crafting uteri  & vulvae to send to male politicians so they'd have their own ladybits, I fell in love.  Laughing was definitely the right response to this, and I was happy to have a laugh in the midst of all my grrrrr and arrgggghhhh. Right after the big squee I went straight for my yarn stash.  Many of the example uteri I'd seen were in shades of pinks, roses, reds.  I decided that, since this uterus was going to go live with a male, it should be blue.  After all, in a pink/blue color binary, blue is for boys, right? 

Hence, the Bluterus was born!

It's modeled after how my own uterus feels in my body.  It may not be to scale, but it is 'correct'.

I have a pronounced os (I love that word--great for Scrabble, and it's the opening of the cervix--two little letters and such an important thing!), so I mad the os on the Bluterus pronounced as well.  The jewel as a drop of blood should be self explanatory, but just in case: it represents menstrual blood, and all the other things that can come out of a uterus.

Mind you, just because I'm going to send this to a politico doesn't mean it's a permission slip.  This uterus will not qualify a male to make decisions about women's health care.  What I hope it will do is highlight the notion that those who are being made decisions for should have a say in those decisions.

I'm not sure which politician I'm going to send it to.  I think Rick Santorum could use one, but I also suspect it might be lost on him.  I'm also thinking about sending it to the Oklahoma representative that Lauren Zuniga addresses in her poem, but I wonder how much affect that would have, since I'm not one of their constituents.  My 3 most direct representatives are women, so they already have a uterus; that leaves Governor Brown as my nearest male political relative.  I'd love to hear your thoughts--who do you think needs the Bluterus?
And just in case you want one for yourself, I'd be happy to make you one, to your specifications for $25.00.  Just drop me an email.

Whether this whole situation makes you laugh, cry, or both, I hope you'll keep in mind that a woman's body belongs to her and no one else.  Any legislation which counters that principle is, in my opinion. wrong.  Long live the uterus!

The Beauty of Grief and Scissors

When I went into mourning after Annie’s death, I went all black (except for the funeral, but that's a different story).  My goth days long behind me, I found myself with far less black clothing than I’ve ever had in my life.  I didn’t givva shit, really, how I looked anyway.  Didn’t matter much, with my heart in tatters.  Still, I can only wear the same pair of pants for so long; I realized that not only did I not have a huge selection of mourning wear, I didn’t even have a plain black scarf.  I set out to make one.  I started 3 or 4--different yarns, different designs; all of them failed.  Nothing worked.  I simply could not make it go. 

Neither could I give up.  I get cold easily, and even thought it's mostly black my honey badger scarf was not gonna cut it for mourning wear.  I kept trying.  Finally, buried deep in my stash I found some bamboo I bought a couple years ago, knowing the right project for it would come along.  This was it.   The pattern I chose was the Juliana Wrap by Rachel Lintern, on Ravelry. I figured I could just whip it up real quick, but the pattern itself taught me the value of reading instructions closely, even when you're numbish; failing to read an instruction, I put in 16 rows of a complex stitch that had to be pulled out.  That error alone cost me 8 days of work.  Compared to losing Annie, it was pretty easy to sigh, frog, and try again.

One of the ways in which I meet intensity in my life is by using intensity to creating beauty.  I need it, and the practice of creation gives me something to do with overwhelming energies.  There’s a word for it in Arabic: ihsan, which means ‘to do the beautiful.’  It’s good for the soul and helps my discipline practice.  I try to do the beautiful in the most mundane ways I can find.

  I’ve been working on it all month.  Everything else on deck—including commissions—got set aside.  I finished the piece on my last day of mourning.  I never did get to wear it while I was in mourning, but it will always remind me of Annie (it woulda looked great on her, she loved nifty scarves, and it can take many forms, just like Annie could).  Now I have a versatile, plain black scarf/shawlette made out of beautiful, soft, drapey material that I’m going to deeply and achingly enjoy wearing for a long, long time.  I especially like the tassels. They remind me of things.

All things must come to an end, including mourning.  As I've mentioned previously, I'm not sure a month of mourning is enough, but by the same token I have no idea how much 'enough' could possibly be.

I exited mourning with a day of silence, and a walk around my block.  The next day, 3.13, I was terribly starved for color, and happy, happy, happy to wear some.  I wore Annie’s scarf, too.  Yeah, it’s black, but somehow that black was a vibrant, happy color.

I may be done with formal mourning, but not with grief (nor it with me).  It’ll take what it takes to fade--like ugly shoes that become comfortable with wear--though I’ve gained a new angel and a new shadow with this death.  Angels and shadows can change you for life, if you let them.  Hell, they’ll do it anyway, but resistance makes it more painful than it needs to be, so I’m choosing not to resist.  Welcome, change.

My rite of mourning worked for me.  It gave me space to be all of the things that come with a death.  It gave me the freedom to be wherever I was in any given moment, even if that meant bursting into tears in the middle of a lecture (that did happen; someone who didn’t know what happened with Annie casually mentioned “brain aneurism” and I went to pieces).  Mourning set me apart from the whirl of daily life while allowing me to be near it, gave my heart and my consciousness a place to be safe.  It highlighted the importance of ritual in my life.  It showed me that almost everyone I know has had a loss like this one.  That, in turn, showed me that with all this loss around, we’re even culturally dumber than I thought, in our suppression and ignorance of Death and ways of being with it.  It gave me room to flat out not givvashit about what other people might be thinking of me.  It helped me tap a strength that kept me doing my work, even when it seemed like a better idea to curl up under the covers and sob (don’t worry—I did plenty of that, too).  It made my grief and other feelings stand out, gave them focus and a prime spot in my awareness: it’s hard to ignore or “forget” where you are when the simple act of dressing forces you to remember.  It creates confrontation and comfort.  It gave me an anchor in timespace for this experience, and reminds me that life is still lifing, all around me.

I’m done with mourning, now.  According to Jewish tradition (from which I borrowed heavily when building my mourning ritual), allowing the hair to grow is an indication of the mourner’s withdrawal from society. It’s part of the general pattern of forsaking personal appearance and grooming, at a time of great personal loss. It is, in a sense, an abandonment of, and withdrawal from, society.  This is particularly amusing to me, as I had not cut, colored, or done a damned thing to my hair since I left Humboldt in August ’10.  A different type of mourning, I guess you could say.  I’m done with that one, now, too.  While the mourner is never asked to become a recluse--religious or social—they are nevertheless in a state of social withdrawal.   They cannot endure the politesse of social amenities like, “How are you?” or of "hellos" and "goodbyes;" they are disheartened by life's tragic twists and turns.  Hair, beards and nails are allowed to grow in a spirit of abandonment.  Only on emerging from deep despair does the mourner begin to groom again.

I think I’m clear of full-immersion despair.  The despair and wailing ache still ninjas up on me and takes my breath, knocks me down, but it’s not as paralytic as it was.  All life is change, and I needed one after spending a month in black, despair and silence.

I asked only that it be as much wash-n-go as possible and requested, whatever was done, that Lo find it aesthetically pleasant (I only hafta see it in the mirror).  Everything was fair game; I think some of my inner extremists were hoping for bald, or maybe a purple mullet, but they don't get a vote on hairstyles, for what should be obvious reasons.

As I sat in the chair, cape fastened & draped, Lo began to heft and shift my hair.  After a minnit, Lo said, “Okay, now, deep breath in…” I inhaled.  My exhale was joined by a *snick* of scissors and a draft on the back of my neck.  Like death, haircuts make change happen all at once.  Like death, haircuts remove.  Like death, a haircut can transform you into something that feels brand new, and there can be joy in that—once one gets used to it.

On the left, witness the result of  just under 2 years of not doing anything other than washing/conditioning my hair.

<------------------------

And here’s what a release from mourning, a deliberate re-entry into the world of people from the world of spirit and despair looks like (it's much cuter than this, but I take crappy pix and this one does Lo's artistry no favors at all).            ------------------------>

My hair hasn’t been black in at least 6 years.  I haven't had bangs since I regularly used a curling iron (I'll letcha guess how long that's been) and it  hasn’t been short in over 25 years, since I had a poodlehawk in '86. 

Clearly, I have some new [ahem] "styling" techniques to learn, but hey.  It’s an adventure, right?  It's almost as if my hair itself is celebrating a release from a heavy, tangly burden; I don't think it quite knows what to do, either.  I still have hair, but it feels lighter--like my grief.  There’s a nifty little parallel in this for me: as I learn how to live in a world without Annie, I must also learn what to make of this new 'do, what to make of this new person shaped by grief, beauty and scissors.  I can hear Annie laughing at that, and feel running her fingers through my now-bouncy curls.  What sweet music to have as I begin my stumble back into the world.

Thoughts on Mourning & Light

On 2.12.12, my little sister Annie died.  I've lost all four grandparents, friends and acquaintances, but this death is my first encounter with the kind of grief I've only read and heard about--the ninja waves of sorrow, the paralysis of the absurdity of life going on when my world has shifted forever.  I cry more than I ever guessed I could, and wonder when things--if they ever do--will start to make sense again.  I am a shredded, tattered heart, a sorrowed soul awash in ache and loss in a skinsuit that seems to look just like it always has, doing just what it's always done.  I seem to look totally "normal" and feel anything but.

In our not very distant cultural past, we had other rituals around death and mourning.  Bodies were tended at home.  One sat shiva. One perhaps covered mirrors, and stopped ticking clocks (which in itself was interesting, as we had no cocks in the house that could be stopped--it's all digital).  One wore black for a specified period of time, depending on one's family and spiritual tradition.  These signs of grief allowed space for mourning and mourners to be held gently as they moved through a life-quaking change.

We've lost touch with Death.  It's been medicalized and for a complex of reasons, put at a remove. I believe that if we had a better relationship with Death, we'd be more inclined to be fully engaged with life.  We all need to memento mori, as it were, and one way we can do that is to witness each other in mourning.


Without a set ritual for mourning, I made my own.

I chose to actively mourn for a month (though now I'm wondering if that's long enough, but I can't even imagine what 'long enough' might look like).  Mourning is my light, a candle in this profound darkness of soul.

My guidelines for mourning:

All and only black clothing in public.
No jewelry or accessories (other than the embedded stuff that I never take out anyway).
No social/recreational engagements.
No preparing food or drink for groups or outside the home.
Permission to cry when and where ever the tears emerge.
Regular recitation of the mourner's kaddish and salat zhikr.
An altar, a daily visual reminder.
Silence.

The points:

Black clothing is a visible symbol of being in a different social state.  It has been challenging, as I long ago left the realm of all-black-all-the-time.  I miss color.  Black clothing is visible evidence of manifest loss, and  a way to embed remembrance and honoring of my loved one.

No accessories/jewelery: No extras.  No fancies, no surplus.  Light has left my world.  I am raw.  Screw vanity & keeping up appearances--I don't care how I look; my heart hurts.  I'm lucky to have managed getting dressed and leaving the house at all.

I don't choose to run the risk of using social encounters to mask my feelings from myself, or of inflicting my unpredictable tears on unsuspecting folks trying to have a good time.

My being is saturated with shadow.  I choose not to risk mixing that in with consumable sustenance for others.

Crying?  I believe that if I suppress this stuff, I'll bury it somewhere it doesn't belong, where it will reappear later and bite me in the ass.  I'd just as soon be fully present to where I am right now, thanks.  I'm sad.  My sister died.  Crying is normal and appropriate. This has made some uncomfortable, and has offered some an opportunity to see a need for comfort or even simple courtesy.

The prayers and the alter are to keep me mindful, and to keep gratitude strong in the front of my mind, thanking the Divine for Annie being in my life at all. 

The silence I'll be in on 3.12.12 is my way of intentfully evaluating and savoring my experience, marking a deliberate transition back into the world, even though I am nowhere near being "done" with this grief. 

In a place where nothing helps, ritual offers comfort and context for my feelings.  Right now, I feel like I could wear black forever, but Annie would hate that.  So a month of mourning it is.

I haven't touched my hair since I moved to Berkeley from Humboldt in August of 2010.  I have fierce calico patchwork head and an abundance of split, scraggly ends.  Not cutting my hair for so long was a ritual, too, but that one is just about over.  On 3.13, the day after I come out of active, visible mourning, I've told Lo to do something with my hair & I don't care what.  Something different.  Something changed.  Hopefully, something in its own way beautiful (fear not--Lo's licenced.  :))

The only constant in life is change.  Death comes for everyone.  Life moves on, and so will I.  This death has cracked me.  If the cracks in us are where light has a chance to enter, then I should be having lots of light wander in, light I will someday perhaps be privileged to share with others.  I hope I see it soon.