Leshem Shamayim: “For the sake of heaven.”

Lend me your chalice of hidden words, so that in interacting
It may be understood how calloused unclear is this world- the world of dream and shadows dark; belying every corner, pursing every thought to its completion
How simply to live, breast unbeaten, “Mea culpa” unspoken, but reverberating…
As lips move in silent syncretism to the confession of the heart.
A sip of Eucharistic blood to mend, the blood is flowing free, and dropping
Lightly from my tongue to open, penitent hand, stigmata blooms up from the dust
And ashes of soul’s desert sands; Yet returning from wilderness to exile I find
The fact of life evades my grasp, fleeting like a child’s carefree, naked self,
Exposing to all the world a glimmer of ignorance, innocence less retained.
How false, to cling to the edge, its always changing, why attempt to remain?
It’s a silence, and it reigns, a constant stopping, an absence of movement,
Until acted upon or volitionally aroused, I wait.
Arise, o moment of cognition and wake me from the sleep of unknowing.
Sweet to the lips, bitter to the tongue, to close of oneself to the personal?
What manner, my Jesus, in what manner shall I wait so as not to remove
From the train of your thought; hemmed in by cares both maddening and glorious,
For love is a care, what is there greater than love? And yet, who can know it?
My eyes turn above and the drink swims to my head and envelopes my heart,
Lost all in wonder lost at the God thou art, for here within the outline
Of sparking shards of grace, I imagine lofty image, and there depict Your face:
More radiant than the morning son, stepped upon a crushing head,
You vanquish death from serpent and buffer need for dread, where terror rules
The reason, and reason fails to care; where relationship is empty, for only sin dwells there
With You I fear to ponder, Jesus grace I need to reach, up outward from this darkest night
Of resolute disbelief; for embodied in this flesh of mine, an unperceived grace,
The tremor of your constant breath evokes the slightest quake, of wonder in my being,
Of myth imagined true; My God, my God how good thou art, can it possibly be true
That cloaked in shimmering mystery, You stand before, behold?
I stretch out to You masked face—for the longing of Your love—but dark
And treacherous is the being who now before me stands; Sit close, sweet Jesus,
As I sleep to me be near at hand, as into dreaming world I step and face the night of soul,
With terror, quaking radiant awe, in love with You alone.

Seeking an understanding of one’s being in the world has been the quest of the human soul since the beginning of existence. Within the context of society “biology and human sexual experience mirror(ed) the metaphysical reality on which, it was thought, the social order rested.” (Lacqueur 11) Such an understanding of sex as defined by the absolutist social order of modernism delegates sole political power to determine gender role and morality to the perpetrators of such a worldview, namely Caucasian heterosexual males. Postmodernity reacts to the heteronormative monopoly on politicizing gender and sexuality by reconfiguring social framework through Queer Theory (Sullivan vi). When referring to gender/sexuality “politics,” I refer to the social norm asserted by a particular group, which affects culture status and acceptance. Queer theory deviates from heteronormativity to create social acceptability for previously variant sexual identities. Utilizing the works of Bulter, Laqueur, Rubin, Sedgewick, and Sullivan, I will demonstrate the revolution of western heterosexism through postmodern deconstruction within the following concepts: the concept of moral/gender bias from essential self, followed by postmodernism’s response to male domination among gender roles within heterosexist political hierarchy, and concluding with queer theory’s biological devolution to androgynous.

The primary tenant of heterosexism upon which sexual bias is based is that of essential selfhood which is biological and psychological in nature. By discussing selfhood as “natural” and “essential,” I mean that identity is formed by an outside force acting without personal choice (for example God, evolution, etc.). Essential selfhood has two components, psychological (inner) self and biological (“outer”) self which agree to assign individual gender (male or female) to person. Psychological sexual identity, interacting with individual biological gender defines and expresses itself through contrast with an oppositely gendered sexual object (Sullivan 38). Implicit to the concept of an engendered self is the mode of sexual behavior allotted to each gender as natural and right. Heterosexist essential selfhood thus creates moral standards of sexual behavior, which is rendered right or natural if self acts opposite to gender of selected sex object (Sullivan 38). Within postmodern philosophy, essential concepts of gender and sexuality are revealed as “discursively constructed” identities, devised within specific historical cultures and constructions, rather than essential qualities of human beings (Sullivan 1).

Noting that heterosexism’s moral claim to normativity is based on the tenants that sexual identity is intrinsically present within every human being, male and female gender roles seem circumscribed by nature. Postmodern approach to self opposes the normalcy of gender morality, proposing a scale, which cannot be reckoned right or wrong because of an absence of absolute standard of behavior. While individuals are allotted psychic self, no substance is carried into being at birth, and all is formed through experimentation of the psychic self in discovering what is most comfortable. Standards of sexuality, the biological facts “are simply not there, any more than gender is.” (Laqueur 222) The ultimate equalization of heterosexual male-biased hierarchical political structure under which women are constantly oppressed as inferior or threatening is this very removal of the excuse of intrinsic gender: sex role based on interpretation of female physiology within cultural context. Queer Theory allows for exploration of equalizing politics between men and women through defiance of heterosexual power structure by refusing to erect dominant/submissive roles of nature on the basis of intrinsic biological and psychological gender.
These gender roles, founded on the belief of intrinsic sexuality within personhood, are crucial to the preservation of heterosexual social normativity. Since heteronormative identity is constituted by intrinsic biological and psychological sex, male-dominated social hierarchy derives moral justification from the naturality of gender roles. According to Laqueur, gender identities are derived from social bias towards male superiority, institutionalizing male privilege of sexual dominance, while compelling women to be sexually passive and receptive (12-13). Yet queer theory traces the origins of gender roles, not from an essential self, but as determined by societal concepts of sexuality “for the purposes of the regulation of sexuality within the obligatory framework of heterosexuality.” (Butler 314) Rather than recognizing essential sexuality within personhood, Butler suggests that gender and sexual selfhood are called into being through a repetitive performance of socially defined actions (317). Proposing no intrinsic nature, Queer Theory defines heteronormative gender as sex roles which contribute to a hierarchy of moral and political power.

Identity as defined by action versus nature as opposed to heterosexual normativity is crucial to the postmodern understanding of sex without moral or political implications. Admitting the unconscious affect of culture on a person, Queer Theory defines sexual identity as not only a series of sex-act choices one makes, but circumstances which lead one to such decisions of sexuality. This emphasis of movement upon an individual (versus entirely free-will decision making) recognizes the social direction of gender expression, apart from an intrinsic self. Laqueur finds “the ways in which sexual difference have been imagined in the past are largely unconstrained by what was actually known… and derive instead form the rhetorical exigencies of the moment” (243) in history. Since gender and sexuality as definitions of human identity have been rooted in a contextual male, heterosexual model of being, Queer Theorists reject conventional acceptance of such heterosexually-dominated male standard of essential being for a concept that recognizes self as the sum of action, becoming what one practices rather than acting out of an intrinsically situated position (Butler 316).

Rejecting the identity of personhood as practice and expression of inner self, Queer Theorists avoid political stigmatization by heterosexist society, which subjects deviation from culturally define sexual normalcy political of a value-laden sexual hierarchy. Stripping social power from heteronormativity, Queer Theory as a subset of postmodernity expresses belief that sexuality does not threaten social structure. Since personal sexual tastes do not pose moral threat to society, personhood should not be politically minimized “on the basis of erotic taste and behavior.” (Rubin 35) The political struggle over identity is at its core a struggle for power, embedded in the sexes through gender roles, crucial because of “the fact that pain and injustice are gendered and correspond to corporeal signs of sex” (Laqueur 16). Queer Theory’s insistence on deviating from heterosexist societal norms in the practice of sexual identity seeks to obtain equality of personal identity through dismantling the heterosexual hierarchical constructions of gender and sexuality. Sedgwick notes that the effect “of the impasse of gender definition must be seen first of all in the creation of a field of intractable, highly structured discursive incoherence at a crucial node of social organization” (59). In omitting the intrinsic sexual identity with corresponding expectation of the performance of that sex in gender, Queer Theory removes heterosexual cultural norms from their place of judgment in the ethics of sexual preference.

Eliminating an intrinsic concept of self and identifying gender roles at heterosexist political constructions, Queer Theory postulates the belief in the intrinsically androgynous personhood devoid of inherent gender role definition. Androgynous sexual identity challenges the core the dualistic concept of heterosexist self in opposition to an “other.” Queer Theory’s divorce from conventional male-heterosexuality seeks for the freedom from obligatory social practices of sexuality and gender because of the oppressive nature this monopolized standard poses to those who deviate in explorations of self-creation from heterosexual normativity. Rubin notes that male-heterosexual societal definitions of sex create a system of oppression that universally “cuts across other modes of social inequality, sorting out individuals and groups according to its own intrinsic dynamics.” (Rubin 22) Recognizing the political nature of sex, Queer Theory’s attempts to deconstruct normative concepts of gender aim to promote “basic freedoms in sexual action and expression” in forming identity (Rubin 23), devoid of the moral judgments that arise from a system of being which isolates the “other.”

Western society’s historical acceptance of heteronormativity as restrictive to any variation from imposed standards of gender performance, Butler asserts that the heterosexual norm of gender is a manufactured “kind of imitation for which there is no original” ( 313). Rejecting the identity of personhood as practice and expression of inner self, Queer Theorists postulate essential androgynous sexual identity as a moral basis for equality of personhood apart from sex choice. Without the presupposition of essence in being, Queer Theory dissolves the basis for heterosexist bias in formation of political hierarchy amongst human identity. This concept of no essential gender/sexuality identity revolutionizes the previous foundations of being in terms of rigid gender roles, which were integrated from heteronormative social construct into the nature human mode of being and existence.
Recognizing that the good of society is not dependant on heteronormative principle of essential sexual identity which contributes to the formation of a sexual hierarchy, postmodernism offers an alternative perspective through the androgynous relativity of Queer Theory. At its core, Queer Theory espouses no absolute truth or definitive good for humanity; rather each individual is given the task of creating his/her own identity within the context of society. Since human beings are considered in Queer Theory to be “essentially androgynous and erotic” in nature (Sullivan 31), it skirts the value-laden identity system of heterosexual normativity and allows society to act upon human nature, forming the self at each new action and experience. The Postmodernist view of a unity of former distinctions between subject and object retract Modernist attempt to control and manipulate fellow individuals, because there is no standard of comparison by which to determine the rightness or wrongness of one form of action over another. Queer Theory’s emphasis on personal experience allows the formation of individual sexual identity through sex acts, rather than finding oneself objectified into a gender role determined by a hierarchical system.

In an ideal sense, Queer Theory would create a sense of greater acceptance in the mystery, which continues to surround questions of being, gender, and identity. In noting class discussion on texts, the concept of self remains impossible to pin down and define because of the continued subjectivity of surrounding environment that constantly affects the formation of self. Further pursuit of the concept of self as developed within Queer Theory and post modernity might inquire as to the nature and affect of the force which is acted upon individuals to call us into being in contrast with the state of the psychic being. Learning about the complete social formation of previously considered aspects of being, gender and sexuality, I continue to question the essence of what seems intrinsic to humanity, the psychic self: where does it originate, how does it evolve?

Works Cited:

Bulter, Judith. “Imitation and Gender Insubordination,” Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories. Diana Fuss, 1991. As reprinted in The Lesbian & Gay Studies Reader, 1993, Routledge. 307-320.

Laqueur, Thomas. Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990.

Rubin, Gayle S. “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality,” from Pleasure & Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality. Carol Vance, Ed. Pandora Press: UK, 1993. As reprinted in The Lesbian & Gay Studies Reader, 1993, Routledge. 3-44.

Sedgewisk, Eve Kosofsky. Epistemology of the Closet. University of California Press, 1990. As reprinted in The Lesbian & Gay Studies Reader, 1993, Routledge. 45-61.

Sullivan, Nikki. A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory. New York University Press: Washington Square, 2007.

Same, shameless dance, how old you grow in my soul this night…
The winds are still the same, maybe just environment’s changed….
And I discovered I am not as lost as I thought;
Just even more bewildered in a land where faith is as verifiable as it gets.
Opinions , opinions, words and ceaseless clattering motion,
Tirades of mental and spiritual commotion?
Here is my spacious cloister, I shut the door, the world comes inside.
City of God, here amongst my own work instigated,
But I am neglectful, the mission distracts and is lost: why do we keep playing games
Yet I initiate them, the Gnostic dualism of self to soul—
It doesn’t need to be, I create it just the same…
The feeling of existence, a question or a name?
What really matters, can the compelling drive to the end?
So many distractions, so little can one really apprehend.

The chasm is increasing, a wreath of smoke encircles the sweaty crown
Of a brow once for halo bound, but now simply confined
By the substance of self; nothing unusual, no one to help.
A petrified world, one can walk the streets transcended,
Alleviated from the pain of reality apprehended—cornered,
Pinned, unable to move, compelled by an act, is once forced,
Did one choose to cast aside the dignity of this life?
So little the thought, so high the price—to pay for this state
A flame from hell to seer the very body of flesh, yet inevitably,
Fear prevents the greatest penance of all…
Starving oneself, cutting the soul, announcing a grief and childless loss
Of what might have been formed, one wonders what was sought.

So apart from that time, o wait the moment continues on,
Unresponsive to heat, nothing feels, yet its done,
Sin incased and deposited in flesh, the great divorce from God, from self—
Yet the rest of life continues, no one notices disconnect, for whom would it matter,
Now I’m just like the rest, of wandering souls, so cut off from themselves,
To live must seek pleasure, revival, or help, to be free and to run
To pay more than the cost, the debt’s been alleviated, why not
The host of the guilt, the immensity of grief, the mindless memory…
Jesus, relief? What waters to drink from, what hope out of shame,
What kingdom of heaven is there in your name, opening arms
And gates empty of scorn, to welcome this hapless sinner to home;
That concept of place indescribable with self, the only repayment offered
Is the stuff of myself, yet to great is the debt…
I owe it all to love.

As showered upon me from riches above, crowing compassion,
My soul is pledged relief from its ceaseless wanderings, from the achievement past
Grief, where love was uncertain, never performed well enough—
Yet it truth it was false, pleasure not love, distributed in attempts to
Earn some of what was given; every stand a commercial center that’s stricken
By the gaze of an empty crucifix, Christ lost, the Spirit departed, the body, it rots
But resurrection is promised for those who wrestle faith, who give all to the question
The mystery of belief; mundane in the repetitive of the everyday truth
The over-seeking intellect is abused and reproved by its self-Inquisitor,
Torturer most merciless; behind the bars of a prison cell, a fragile hand outstretched—
The newborn child of a soul prematurely pregnant… seeking the hope and ardor of giving; it seems all too relentless, the truth of this work in discarded belief.
Then dark night is breaking, from darkness into light… no hope in pain passing,
Lessons were worth the cost, seeing the wounds the Beloved one bore in my place.
Through lostness all people ensure. Traversing through world, time, space…
It comes back to the question, comes back to belief.

“In a world as cold as stone, must I walk this path alone? Be with me now, be with me” (Breath of Heaven, Mary’s Song). I am struck by a myriad of thoughts as I break from readings where my mind is constantly saturated by night air, cold coffee wafts, images of the crucifix intentionally lying by my computer, of the books piled around my desk, of all the ideas my mind has been ingesting through my hundreds of pages of reading per class. I am enjoying every moment… exploring my still new, though somewhat familiar environment now, engaging in conversations of personal and literary nature which propel me on my daily quests for understanding a concept and asking another question, of learning more about Jesus in order to love others, in learning of particular distinctions of others in order to love Jesus. In the end, though I am evolving into something of an interdisciplinary theologian, I realize its all about relationship… over a late salad dinner with a friend tonight, I wondered out loud the concepts that have been polishing in the rock tumbler of my mind ever since this summer: the Henry Nouwen “reaching out” concept. Here I am, in the middle of night in Berkeley, California, wondering about how relationship matters in every day life—how to create an end for which the relationships of everyday should work.

All that because my life was reduced again before my eyes in conversation (emphasis, within relationship) over the phone about the effect of my intellectual discipline on the matter and mode of my living, and because of that dinner salad chat about the dispersion of resources… where should what be used and given… whom should I engage with, and how can I determine that right over imposition; is what I am doing with my life mattering as I do it or is it going to matter in the end. I want to teach philosophical theology… which I look at as the heart question of intellectual humanity… where all sciences break down to, the questions of why, how, where… and God being at our core, such questions about Him. But I noted to my New Hamshirian friend who challenged me in my questioning, my wonderings are not divorced from reality; I question abstractly most when physicality is thrown out of balance… when the corporeal life I am living does not fit within the expectations I have been developing or have composed of my own accord (so I think). That makes my questions seem entirely selfish.

I am moving towards a discipline and vocation which I believe are purely relational, that of teaching… where the emphasis is indeed the subject matter and its delivery to my students, but through that matter the sharing of life to conform into Jesus. I have been blessed by such relationships in my own life, and if Jesus can meet me that way, I want to be Jesus to others as well. The essence of my being is trained on this seemingly abstract goal of knowing Jesus through in part, becoming like Him. Yet what about the questions, how are they being asked? Am I dancing mental games around isolated ideas, or is somehow this intellectual exercise a step beyond the books, engaging more than the mind, but the whole being? I am investing the huge questions of my very soul in my academic career here at the Graduate Theological Union; but is the academic exploration enough? Is there something I am holding back on and don’t see yet? Is that what Jesus is calling me into being about through the clamoring voices of those I know calling for further engagement in life with others, further reaching out of self? Of course the discipline of academics depends on the community for formation, acceptance, and revision… but at times it can seem a very isolated and intellectual act.

The most fundamental needs came creeping in today… am I engaging people where Jesus is needed: as I sat with a full bowl of salad for dinner, what was I doing about the hundreds of people hungry probably in my very city tonight. Looking at my laundry and knowing I still have clothes, what about those who wear the same every day? Going back to my home and finding not only a bed but room and furnishings of my own, how rich am I! And a job to provide money for schooling? How many don’t even have the job, let alone educational opportunities I have wide open to me? And what am I doing about it? James 1.27 always rings in my mind with thoughts of reducing my life beyond, to a minimum: “Pure, unspoilt religion, in the eyes of God our Father, is this: coming to the help of orphans and widows in their hardships, and keeping oneself uncontaminated by the world.” How is my theologizing going to help those hurting orphans and ostracized widows who walk by me every day, hiding their dejection and loneliness, but returning to the secret hurt every time alone or when through earning a living through undesirable means. How does one practically apply a theology.

Meeting with my history prof today, we talked about my paper and how I need something specific enough to identify individuals, because there is no way she will allow me to make universal assumptions, but reinforces need for tying developments to specific names, geographies, etc. I guess that is how Jesus works, how He has worked… through the dispersion of the disciples to the distinguishing personalization of every day theological living. How does faith matter in the mundane. I am asking, please help me answer… I ask daily with Jesus, and He shows some… so consider this quote as we engage: “We are God’s presence for one another; we are God’s call to conversion for one another. Hence all humankind is temple, God’s dwelling. Relationship with God takes place through mysterious relationship between persons, in whom God’s own Spirit dwells.”

In the grace and peace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,
Hannah

Discerning to love like Jesus…to find identity in Jesus, does one need to know what one is? I must confess, in the myriad of Foucault and Nietzsche that I am immersed in, I am relieved by the voice of Martin Heidegger who, though omitting the quest of gender from his consideration of human being-ness, does admit to a state of being that is before one understands it. I whole-heartedly agree… God created man, then male and female He distinguished the human race. I am in a quest to know my Jesus, understand relationship to Him… He I know, and myself I am trying to figure out. I mean, of course, He is far beyond my knowing too… but I am acting in the inherent sense that one can know another far deeper than self. Maybe that was why God created two, to allow the full knowing of Himself, one another, and to each his own self in the loving… a fuller understanding of all the beauty made. It is an interesting question to ask, what it is about one that I would say I love, that I do in fact find to love. Thomas Lacquer suggests that in loving, “bodies do not seem to matter.” (Making Sex 24) I find this to be truth, and yet once love is established beyond body, body matters deeply.

I have “fallen in love” as it were with many people in the essence of who they are… not found them physically attractive or appealing, but drawn to them because of an expressed trait or essence, and from that knowing, have been drawn into an appreciation of their whole selves, in which I appreciate their physicality, yet if it were to change, as I watched the evolution, they would still be beloved as also their features. I have asked friends before “Why do you love me;” I have asked the very thing of God. From Heaven the resounding silence reverberates with the truth that “I AM all Love…” while the human tongue can merely chide me for me questioning… telling me whether or not it can be expressed or whether I can see, I am loved for me. I have been asked the same in return, why I love this person or that person… words escape my heart and I hold out my hands to all they are. I think each must be perfect in his own way.

As much as body becomes beloved, it is something which separates… I am always uncertain with it.

So I just finally finished reading Thomas Lacquer’s Making Sex: Gender and Sex from the Greeks to Freud, saying finally because I spent 2.5 hours reading yesterday and 1.5 today… got a bit distracted with some paper notes in between… but all in all, it felt long. Maybe because human biology, when encountering the sociological/anthropological approach Lacquer takes to sex, can get very awkward. Out of all the books I am reading for my Ethics, the Bible, and Sexuality class… this may have been the best and most versatile. Lacquer’s entire enterprise is to define sex as biology interpreted through culture… into the hierarchical system of politics gender becomes.

By chapter 6, the final chapter, Lacquer is repeatedly articulating through example of historical evidence he construes, that the “distinction between sign and substance is untenable in dealing with the history of the body” (232) noting that the body is the foundation of social practices, as well as the sign of those practices. In other words, I am going to crudely think that sexuality is Lacquer’s emphasis for understanding cultural identity. When I initially encountered all my readings for this course, I was obstinately opposed to sex being defined by culture. Sex, in my world, is equivalent with biological structure. I think what could be more obvious than biology… but apparently not biology itself, for Lacquer recounts the sensitive discovery of the female anatomy… that is, in the male world at least. I am curious at how it is men the fields that have had to come to realizations before they are “known.”

To this, Lacquer addresses, what he feels should be obvious by the end of his book, “that imperatives of culture or the unconscious dictated language of sex, of how the female body was defined and differentiated from the male’s.” (222) The male was the standard, and I am still trying to comprehend how man got himself there in the first place. Another paper I am working on will try and explore that subject of overwhelming maleness in the theology of the early church. Lacquer himself, while addressing comments and assumptions about sexuality as coming from a male unconscious assumption of normalcy, continues to use male assumptive thought when saying “it was known” or making universal statements consistent with scientific discoveries made by major individuals of their days… all of whom were male. I find it hard not to think some woman somewhere was a little more familiar with her own biology than were the men around her. Yet Lacquer’s purpose in writing to show the effect of culture on assumptions about sex, leading to social gender roles, demonstrates how the men tell a woman how she is to be; and somehow it all comes back to sex.

“Whatever one thought about woman and their rightful place in the world could, it seemed, be understood in terms of bodies endlessly open to the interpretive demands of culture,” Lacquer says (217). I wonder who made men the god of sex… no disrespect to men, I enjoy male companionship… I am not a feminist to the degree of despising men and saying women should find understanding of our being wholly apart from men; no I believe God created two genders and they understand what they are in and out of interaction with one another. But beyond the point, women are the subjective to man objective in social history it seems… and our political value and roles determined by that sex. I find it tragically amusing that something so sacred and private should be so exposed… why must sex be so divisive a factor? I wonder why similar characteristics of gender threaten so much, why men seemed to historically have such a need to deem women inferior in ways that could be dominated… it seems like unnecessary pride to me. Lacquer says that how facts about sex “or what were taken to be facts, became the building blocks of social vision” (207); why? Of course, the societal context of the West has predominantly been male-defined… even.

The two saints, Catherine of Siena and Therese of Avila, two young women who lived in 1380 and 1515 respectively, lived during the height of Medieval oppression of womanhood as natural. Both were young girls with particularly devoted to the church… and stubbornly remained virgin, believing in this way they could be most devoted to God. I am currently reading a book that suggests they maintained this ‘un-womanly’ form of existence along with devotions as drastic as eating disorders (which could have ceased female biological functions) as a result of cultural depiction of woman: either passionless and passive, or wholly lustful and therefore to be restrained and married so young she may not yet have reached puberty, that by the time she biologically functioned as a woman, she would be ‘safe’ and able to bear children. Yet the woman was not a true person… I think part of the motivating factor for these two women in their virgin devotion was a refusal to submit to social definition of women.

It just makes me cringe to think of a whole person’s being defined by biological functions: a woman can have babies, a man cannot; their individual biologies in the process of that happening differ. So is one better than the other? Does biology determine authority, as societies have constantly been claiming? Lacquer notes, “when power did not matter or when a utopian sharing of political responsibility between men and women is being imagined, their respective sexual and reproductive behavior is stripped of meaning as well.” (53-4) What if my biology doesn’t function as made? Does that change my gender (political position, not sex)? Why does that need to be a factor? I think I believe in natural order, but I don’t think man is to dominate woman… lead, but not dominate. Convoluded thoughts, far too many from this book. Graphic, informative read. I believe Lacquer’s thesis is that however a society comprehends sex, that determines sex’s interpretation into gender… which often includes the stifling of women. I find that what is man and male seems to be more consistent than woman… can you imagine times when so little was know about female anatomy that ovaries were cut out of the body as unnecessary?

We humans are so fragile… the anatomy factors into the chemical/psychological make-up… we alter at our own risk. So what are women to define ourselves against now? To do so against men seems to get us demeaned… otherwise it might go too far… lesbianism? Where would God put us in relation to Himself in creation?

Apparently, my resolve is week, pain never matters enough to teach not to touch,
Maybe the flame should have seared me deeper.
I’m sitting here, without a care in the world, because to me,
There is no world; I’m sitting above it, poised on its edge.
What a lie, no I’m not…
I’m lounging, sassily, slouching… one foot dangles to each side, a different pool beneath.
My big toes lazily trace circles in the water… two pools of decisions:
I used to call them Heaven and Hell, flesh and reason, thought and feeling.
Maybe the kingdom of heaven and hand, and the kingdom yet to come… they both glow;
Sparkling tendrils of light betray themselves from murky depths. Light of heaven.
And I have the choice; which can I live more without? Body or soul?
I find my heart sitting on the brink; seated in body, acting in spirit…
How can I deny one or the other, immersed too long, I dissolve,
Absent too long, and I evaporate: I am amphibious in existence.
I am perilously perched, the time to choose is soon—
What am I choosing?
Inside myself, I am running, chasing, playing, avoiding the soon…
Pounding, driving, pushing, straining… joy and my limbs are invigorated.
Life coursing, its not just a feeling, there’s something more in me that’s moved.
I keep running, You I know, how I don’t.
Something about You driving at me, getting closer, I don’t understand it.
I don’t really know who You are.
I was sassy, unsurity gets the better of one the longer one lives.
The pressure to decide, but how can I make the choice, here I am,
Running still, harder, faster now, as if to loosen something lodged within..
Is it You, are You stuck in me, or are You sticking—
Like the holiest haunting imaginable… my own demon, tag-along-spirit,
Something more divine, Holiest Ghost, maybe?
I can’t shake You off, brush You away, I thought this choice was simple:
One pool or another, living drives my being too hard for both.
Or is that my choice in the intensity of running…
I am running from You now, because I can; You aren’t going away.
Something within me surges, is that bile, is that hope, is it understanding?
More than a thought, more than a sense, almost a conception,
My being is pregnant with the knowing, almost sick with it,
Because I don’t understand how to make the decision You have placed before me.
I don’t ever know Who You are… tell me Your name;
“I Am” that’s the best You can do?
Maybe I should look somewhere else, someone who can tell me a real name,
But know, there are no other pools, here am I,
The demons are already flocked around like carrion to devour me—
And yet I find myself eating alongside them. You must be near.
Running, still, pushing the edge as far as I can get it… nothing more comes out.
I am emptied, there’s nothing left to purge—
From ecstasy to the verge of exhaustion, You pursue me,
Relentlessly. I wonder why You love me.
Did I say that out loud? Love me? I don’t even know what love is…
But maybe I love You.
What to do with these pools.
It’s the question of a life.

I spoke more to You while the feet ran… the insides don’t always articulate as well.

We wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities… for it is not against human enemies that we have to struggle  (Eph. 6.11, NJB)… the Word of God is something alive and active… it can seek out the place where soul is divided from spirit, or joints from marrow; it can pass judgment on secret thoughts and emotions.” (Heb 4.12 NJB) It isn’t about the body as much as I try and make the whole issue of salvation. It is the body with which I work out my salvation, and it is the body that is me outside of my inner self, which lies hidden from all but Your deepest probing. If it were reachable inside this body, I would give all of this body to each person I could, so they could touch You. But such mysticism would be indecent because it isn’t true. Yes, with the body I give away my soul… but in the form You, O Spirit of my Dearest Father and Sweetest Saviour Jesus take, the spoken Word… that which my Jesus is, as He lives in me, Word incarnated into Flesh. May Your Word be the live and passion in me. Never cease to beam when my eyes need light, when a heart needs embrace of encouragement, when I see a need and can give You unto it. Dearest Jesus, I have closed off part of myself in the past, this body confuses me, I am singular and communal… connected through relationship, yet in that relationship, I both grasp Your hands tightest and misconstrue You the most. Take my childish confusion, my adolescent wondering… the naïveté of the heart I immortalized as girlish and make more of all of me. You are more, I can even begin to imagine that, and You love me, You want to be more in me, then I ever let You. Be near, be here. I am so unsure of what I ask, but more than a feeling yearns for You. I know You, let me know You deeper still… and take Your knowing encased in me, to be the broken vase that leaks You wherever I step. Your blood, my flesh.  Here am I, the Hannah You made, stretching up my hands as if I can touch You, and maybe I am.

I think today is a contemplation on the glowing transcendence of Jesus…from the morning when I rose in the dark, waiting a few hours of reading to go run in the brilliance of the sun. I began to think about the living out of heaven a few days ago, realizing just how useless speaking into being is if the action is not taken to enact the reality of what is spoken. The kingdom of Heaven is at hand, yes? How true is the coming and presence of Jesus? A few days ago as well, I determined that I was going to live Jesus, and not keep falling back to trying, but record the progress of Heaven in my everyday life. My mind is a birthing grounds for unity amongst different disciplines, since my own interests are still varied and scattered, but tied together by the common thread of love, love for Jesus which is still just beginning to spill out of my heart in expression for others. I mentioned that to create a space in the context of Jesus to speak about Martin Heidegger’s philosophy, who has been attractive in the mystery of human existentialism since I first uncovered and began interaction with His work in 2004. I mention Heidegger because in Being and Time, we have uncovered the belief that human existence is in a large way discovered in the mundane and ordinary.

My thrill-seeking nature perpetually rebels against the ordinary and mundane… I push edges constantly with Jesus. So I want to find a beauty and extraordinary in each moment, each “mundane” experience. For me the whole picture of that brilliance is the glory of Jesus that can radiate out of a life given over to Him. My interests to range to topics like obtaining the stigmata, a visible remembrance of Jesus, a way of actually knowing of His life… and along with the being like Jesus, all the struggles my woman-soul has fought to be like Him. I look at all the women saints who are extolled in the church and find a common aesthetic attempt on their womanhood… like a suicide of the soul… and aren’t we called to deny self for Jesus? For me, and I am going to speak for women since I am woman, any woman may write differently so we may dialog, the self is what drives us to Jesus. In a book I am reading called Holy Anorexia, I was struck by the truth (personal resonance) in the author’s statement: “For women evil was internal and the Devil a domestic, parasitic force, where as for men, sin was an impure response to external stimulus, one that left the body inviolate.”

We women struggle with our bodies, the very vehicles we were given to meet God in, fighting against them in trying to unite to God. At its heart, I think that is the struggle of every woman in every society who has struggled with not only physical body image, but the more profound lies of self-contradiction. Society has always lent the sensitive female nature some diminutive lie,  tempting her to forfeit herself and thus lose or weaken the very salvation she is offered. Perhaps that is why often I cling to words from Paul regarding the end of self, “In fact, through the Law I am dead to the Law so that I can be alive to God. I have been crucified with Christ and yet I am alive; yet it is no longer I, but Christ living in me. The life that I am now living, subject to the limitation of human nature, I am living in faith, faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Gal 2.20) I have this great wristband which I am going to add to the collection of “make poverty history” and “true love” on my arm when I get home… Dead but Alive, based on Romans 6.11-14, “In the same way, you must see yourselves as being dead to sin but alive for God in Christ Jesus. That is why you must not allow sin to reign over your mortal bodies and make you obey their desires; or give any parts of your bodies over to sin to be used as instruments of evil. Instead, give yourselves to God, as people brought to life from the dead, and give every part of your bodies to God to be instruments of uprightness; and then sin will no longer have any power over you — you are living not under law, but under grace.”

I guess I am a bit of a radical in thinking we have enough grace in Jesus, with that full measure of His Spirit, to be those beacons of light, that city on a Hill, and radiate His glory. Can we be transfigured? Well, I think we women try and believe that even when it seems impossible. We try and change ourselves, to conquer the demons within us… that we find coming out of our own desires. I know I have been afraid to let myself feel and desire, because I am never sure what that will bring out in me. On that breath-taking morning run today, I wondered if I were not wrong in doing so, in letting the salvation work out. If my spirit is saved, but I have no life to let it live, what is the good of the salvation? Jesus was not spirit devoid of body. Yet I as a woman have felt an incredible ache sometimes to be free of this body and just BE before Jesus. I can only describe it as having a disembodied dream, where one feels as if one has left and can look down upon one’s own body, and in the doing so can also go where the body cannot… and yet there is still a substance about one, because coming into the presence of Jesus, one can kiss His feet, touch His hands to be raised up, embraced in His arms, and kissed by Him. Then one realizes, suddenly waking from the dream, that the purity and spirituality of that love, deeper than the words than can describe it (potentially not even justified in the glimpse of feeling), is not fully experienced yet. The being of you that was embraced by Jesus aches for His touch again… if you could just always stand in the glow of His presence even, it would be enough. To look into those purely, fully loving eyes and to be known. Imagine it. Its happening now, and we can’t sense it. So I think we must show it to each other, as brothers and sisters… not playing Jesus, but letting Him move in us, letting His pure and perfect love come through us, as un-full vessels as we are, giving what we can of what He lavishes on us.

And yet, so often, like that disembodied dream, we deny the incarnation of Jesus in self… as least I do, longing for an other-sense of Him. He refuses that to me at times; I look down at my own two hands, and they are mine, I know what I feel in them. The body is me. And then other times, I look down at these same two hands, and they have become those of a lover of Jesus, His Beloved, or His very own to give to another. Such tensions… such a struggle to balance between and allow the glow in the balance. Holy Anorexia points out the historical struggle of women who have tried for the holiness in their bodies, denying their bodies: “a historically significant group of women exhibited an anorexic behavior pattern in response to the patriarchal society in which they were trapped.” Just before this remark, the author says sorting out women in church history is tricky because “apart from a dew queens and some noble courtesans, societal restrictions on women’s roles made it unlikely that they could generate historical documents appropriate to an in-depth psychological study, unless they entered a religious order or found themselves accused of witchcraft or heresy.” Bell, the author, examines the lives of saints, virgin women who dedicated themselves to Jesus and under pressure, he says, starved themselves to fit the salvation picture they envisioned—interestingly enough, a male salvation. Is there truth to male-ness of salvation, though it is so natural for women to more easily slip into Jesus-like roles? What merit did holy women becoming men through starvation, become holy women?

Bell talks about the attempt to rid self of potential for desires by starvation…yet some women got the euphoric mystical experience of feeling, in an approved context. I can find myself as a woman seeking the very same end as these saints, and believing it impossible in womanly flesh. Yet I want to imagine more, beyond all the reasons Bell offers for women starving themselves towards a spiritual goal… though I can relate to the enticing allure of aestheticism… and a need for it. Because Jesus came as a man with flesh, I think there must be an inherent connection of body and spirituality… of gender defining that body, allowing for certain spirituality. I always wonder why self-inflicted pain feels so rewarding, why the more drastic the penance and more edgy the flesh because of it, the more mystical and closer one can feel… and at the same time, a dualism of guilt arises in the feelings, driving farther away.

The flesh and blood Jesus glowed, and that is the one I see, the one I want.
The aesthetic Jesus has a beauty of the forms, and cannot be divorced from that same flesh…
And yet I find the cravings to do so, the cruel attempt in self to cut of self, yet to remain close.
Is it a womanly temptation, a human one?
Is it good? Does it keep Jesus in every moment or is it too fantastical?
I can change my physiology to be more male if I pursue such drastic attempts to be close to Jesus… chemical make-up and body do change with extreme measures.
To what extent will the glow cease if I cut off the life God put in me; sometimes quenching the Spirit could seem to be a very real event in the body… I can watch life cease in me and I wonder how it affects my spirit. But of course, I am still resisting questions…. The closer it drives the more demons within. How much do I welcome them in to watch them closely or deny in attempt to be free of them? Should I try for that? So much Jesus… I just want to be the moon for Your sun.

To mention physiology, consider the women Jesus enjoyed particularly… those who were not normal in basic functions… who had sexual issues, whose bodies were not as “they should be.” Rabbi mentioned that to me a couple days ago… I wonder what about that drew them to Him, Him to them.

Jesus, we talk to rarely this way anymore. Forgive the quenching I do of imagining with You. Plenty of times I could always come up with more to do. Thank you for that opportunity to, to be wrapping everything and anything together into a cohesive train of exploration… or I am confidant it is being refined to that point, but of course, it is scattered now, I am just picking up the pieces.

Sometimes, Jesus, especially lately, in the fragmented interactions I am having with people all over the place all the time, I feel like no time to know people… is once a week chat about mass, enough, is it enough to talk about things in a classroom? Maybe we have to force the real questions out there. Maybe that is part of the life you want me living out right now. Maybe it is a corner I have forced You into. I looked down at my hand with this Hebrew wedding ring several times today… at the sexual ethics class, I moved it to my left hand to feel safer; so silly of me. I didn’t leave it there, it would have fallen off. And then, reading books about others… Catherine of Siena who believed she mystically married You–fascinating.

Whatever I have done or am doing that puts distance between You and me, we are “married,” I say, so You work in ways of forcing issues. I beleive I asked You too. You know my good and You give me choice for it. And just watching life unfold and getting caught up in the day-to-day, anything-but-mundane existence, there can still be distance. I love you. I don’t tell You that enough, maybe I don’t live it enough. Jesus, what would it be like for me to show You love? Some suggest to me that the most loving way to live in Your steps is to passionately fall in love with someone. Jesus, that isn’t a kind of love I let You bring up very often, because I don’t know how to determine if its You talking. So many scenarios in life, does one live stringently to avoid possibility of accidental indulgence, or right in the thick of this fleshy existence, transubstantiating You in me every day.

I am thinking of that scene from “The Last Temptation of Christ” we saw in history class… is that what I am doing every day as I step out and think about being You? Do I use time well enough? Always dancing in and out of one idea or interaction to the next. Do I have Your peace in me, driving me, or is that what I am always dancing away from? I am resistent and controlling, Jesus. And getting quite undisciplined, sometimes dissatisfied. You see the unkemptness of my soul when so many look outward and say ‘thats not so bad.’ Its not as if I want to stigmatize myself… Your stigmata are enough of a wound to desire; to be marked and branded like You.

I am driving myself, towards what… I hope You, this oil at midnight is burning. And You inspire, though differently than before. Will You help me give myself wholly to You? Focus and priority… I am working on it. Working out salvation, work… where is that tension between work and allowance.

I almost bid You to sleep well, my Jesus…I go to the place You have prepared me to rest.

<!– @page { size: 8.27in 11.69in; margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } –>Rabbi, I will write to you as Abraham, maybe I will be that angel who told you to stop or the ram that got killed… since a silent observer until after the fact, we will see what happens. Standing before you as if He weren’t God reminds me of a few centuries in the future from now when that word that was mystically uttered so as to convince you to obey embodied Himself in man… this Jesus you might someday meet, when you have proved your love to Yhwh. Is that the point?

We spoke last semester, and I told you, Abraham, that this was not a sacrifice of Isaac… this was Yhwh wanting all of you, wanting to see if you loved Him enough to put Him under the gun. Who is God if you cannot test His metal? Do you think He’s real enough and able enough to embed yourself in, to take a step over a gap which no man has crossed before… being faithful to an Invisible God when alll around you have their idols? Its taking a step at the edge of a cliff, and rather than falling, do you believe you will fly on His wings?

You confessed with your mouth that you have faith… before Yhwh asked for the Laughter in your heart, wondering if you might mourn His praises for all eternity.. but do you believe it? How can you be certain? He hands you a knife and with it a potential grace for faith. Of course hate… its just part of the love, isn’t it? Maybe He needed you to experience that, so you could give Him more. You must ask yourself, drawing nearer the rock, what compells if everything within reviles, rejects, your very flesh aches more with each step… your heart is breaking. Why are you doing it, coming to the place where you will cut out your very heart?

Maybe death is the road to awe… maybe this is the only way to take what you think is faith, the words you spoke, and make them real.. in the murder of Isaac, you must commit a suicide, because you love. Cowardice is an aspect of faith, I could say to you… would you believe me? in the valley approaching the mountain, you walk through everything you never wanted to be, in fact, what you have rejected most. And Yhwh wills it… facing your demons in the desert… what is the love you have for Isaac? Is it a hope in Yhwh’s promise, or is it more? Do you love him enough to hill him unto Yhwh?

Delusionality might be the only way to obey… who can remember the mechanics. That knife in your hands, there’s blood on it now… whose is it, is the boy dead, is it your own? I call out to you, Yhwh has seen you take the grace and pierce your own soul in order to love Him. Your blood in the ram’s… in that broken animal body, you have consecrated youself, now He knows how you love Him. Would you really cut God’s throat. Maybe He wanted to see if you would. But you didn’t take your own life, that would have been killing God. Isaac’s spirit held your own. And maybe for an instant, the knife slipped and in him you killed yourself… and you blink, the boy’s alive; a resurrection. Because He loves you more than you know, and you are learning to love back.

Signed, the angel who watched.