God Sauce: a dialogue

My hope is that we can create a dialogue around God, Jesus, and belief.  Please join me by posting your responses to this blog post on your own blogs or as comments to this blog entry. 


How about we stop for a moment and really think hard about what it means to "believe."

For example, if I am to say that I believe that Jesus Christ is my Lord, from the outset, I might be doing a few things: 

1) Am I making it seem like I still live in the Middle Ages?  But the only two kinds of "Lord" that exist today are King Pins and Apartment Owners.  I don't buy illegal substances from Jesus nor do I pay rent to Jesus Christ.  So, that way of thinking of Jesus Christ as Lord just don't flow.  Although, I do get a kick out of imagining a bearded, tattooed Jew in Birkenstocks smoking cigarettes, while preaching abiding love to tax collectors and prostitutes. 

2) Am I making it seem like I'll do work for Jesus Christ, as long as he, in turn, protects me?  Although the structure of Feudalism no longer holds sway on this Earth, perhaps its function does?  Feudal Lords used to pledge to protect their surfs (and peasants) in exchange for manual labor.  So perhaps I could say that I do the work of Christ (his manual labor) and in exchange he protects me from things?  But here I encounter a rational problem, and a problem of suffering to boot.  How could a man who has no tangible existence—not one that I can grasp using my five senses—protect me from the material things I do sense?  And, then, wouldn’t I have never been called a f*g, nor beaten up, nor stolen from, nor had my heart broken, etc?  Wouldn’t I have been able to avoid suffering?  People might say that these material benefits only come when I do the work of Christ—perhaps I wasn’t Saintly enough.  I do curse, and I do possess a more liberal understanding of sexuality than my Evangelical friends would like me to have, I don’t give money to everyone who asks, I don’t do every possible good thing one could do.  So maybe I just don’t do enough of Christ’s work to reap the material benefits.  Or maybe by, “protect,” he doesn’t mean, “keep from suffering.”  Maybe he only means particular things—but, then, which particular things? And how would I know which they are, if they’ve never happened to me?  Much akin to Republicans who keep arguing that even with President Obama’s stimulus package, the economy has worsened; I (and they) have no counterfactual.  Obama would argue that the economy is not as bad as it could have been, and so might Jesus argue that my life is not as bad as it could have been.  Indeed, but isn’t that simply a matter of the good choices I’ve made?  After all, I am the one who decided to go to private high school, which is how I likely got into a better college and a better grad school.  So then, perhaps those good choices were guided by Jesus… but how can I tell that Jesus has communicated with me?  How do I determine whether the thoughts I came up with to make the decisions I made were not merely in my mind, but were also a product of Jesus Christ’s guidance?  And how do I tell that life would be worse, and not better, or the same?  It seems, calling Jesus Christ my Lord, is complicated.  

3) When I embed these abstract ideas, like “Jesus Christ,” and, “Lord,” into a discussion, I am either forgoing logic altogether in a stance of Faith, or constructing my own logic within a context of Faith.  The latter is what theology attempts to do, and which I would prefer to avoid doing.  (So, then, would somebody tell me why I am getting a Masters in Theological Studies?)  Faith does possess its own logic, a non-rational logic, and makes sense given its divergent axioms.  These axioms, however, make little sense in the context of science, of materialism, and of rationality.  Thus it is pointless to waste time attempting to justify something according to a logic, which has its foundation in faulty axioms.  Jesus cannot be my Lord, not if I accept the laws of physics (which are not made up, but discovered through a rigorous application of the scientific method).  But bless those who seem to make a living writing and studying theology!  Someone’s gotta do it—just not me.   

4) So then, to say that Jesus Christ is my Lord, is called a belief.  It can’t be scientifically demonstrated that Jesus is my Lord—it’s just what I believe.  I believe outside scientific systems of thought.  We simply separate questions of religion from the realm of science—we call them two different systems of thinking, two different structures of culture, and then we move on.  Or do we?

5) Making a claim that “Jesus Christ is my Lord” could be, simply, mystical.  Perhaps we are all talking about the same sort of experience to which I refer when I say that Jesus Christ is my Lord.  And so it is merely a matter of cultural framing, one born of the interplay between science (or rationality) and religion, which has informed the growth of the Western world sense the pre-industrial period.  See The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, by Ernst Cassirer.

Thus, what I have over-simplistically demonstrated is that, culture frames the way we think about experience, and it even constructs for us how we experience experience.  I don’t think it would be far-fetched, even to imagine that ways of relating to thoughts (like meditation) change brain-patterns, the organization of our synapses.  See this article from NPR and this from the Harvard Gazette.  And for more technical articles see this website off of Harvard University’s main webpage.

Belief itself is an artifact of Western culture.  To believe in something suggests doubt, because it brings its own counterfactual.  When I believe, I believe because there is a possibility that what I believe could be un-believed.  That it is 100 degrees outside with high humidity, is a matter of fact, which doesn’t involve belief.  Would not it seem a little strange if I were to say that I believe that it is 100 degrees outside, in the same sense that I would say that I believe in God?  Similarly, if I were to say that it is way too hot and way too humid outside right now, someone might counter me and say: “Well then you should experience Miami humidity; then this weather would be nothing.”  It might make more sense for me to say that I believe this humidity is too high.  I would be referring to the same experience of humidity.  Yet I would be painting it, with words and thoughts, in a different shade of green (a putrid chartreuse).

What if we were, instead, to define religion as a culturally-bound iteration of the same mystical experiences we all have had.  Experiences of one-ness, of deep connection, deep gratitude, deep humility…  Have you ever experienced that experience of witnessing another being (human or not) and noticing with great awe how it seems to move of its own accord, how it has its own beauty, and its own relevance that is altogether separate from your own?  And what else is there to do, in the utter appreciation we feel, than to call this witnessing a sacred event.  At the least, it is an event altogether separate from our everyday states of experiencing.  And could not we call this God, or mystical appreciation, or seeing the oneness in another, etc?  Some might be dissatisfied with the reduction inherent in this way of understanding the intersection between religion and rationality.  Probably atheists and evangelicals alike would be dissatisfied with this reduction, for different reasons.  Perhaps I am merely constructing another useless theology (and quite unsophisticatedly at that).  But there is something to be said for these bouts of knowing, which if cultivated, can span much (if not all) of our experience.  What cultural frames would emerge if we were to focus our attention on these experiences, calling them what they are?  Likely, a myriad of different ones.  Likely, we’d get exactly what we have.  But if we could accept that, in the end, we are all talking about the same thing with different words and different thought patterns and differently arranged synapsis, we might get along much more easily. 

Right now, I’m asking people to think a little more deeply, and to really see if, differences in thought given, we might actually have been living in the very same temperature and the very same humidity—the difference being that I’m from Philly and you’re from Miami.  What if belief were just a social position, a moment in time, a thing that directs us, rather than a notion reified into existence?  I invite conversation around this question. 

Dear God

Dear God, 

I was walking in my backyard yesterday when I thought I saw you, washing your son in the bathtub-pool-thing you set up the day before, for hot days like these.  He was smiling as all get-out and loving you.

Earlier, I was walking in Harvard Yard, and I thought I saw you pushing at your companion's shoulders as you argued with him vigorously.  Some visceral joy you got, as you weighed him down with question after question. 

And then, I was pretty much weeping when you called me and wished me well, and wanted to connect (and when you called me again, and when you called me another time after that).  So funny how your laughter can have infinite timbres, but the same loud love. 

I was walking into the subway when I thought I saw YOU weeping, and I was overcome with wanting to give you some of my own love.

I thought I saw you incredulous and afraid as I gave you some leftover ham to eat—panting from your mouth and obviously parched, I gave you some water, which you lapped.  Then you pranced away.

It was so nice to see you yesterday.

Love,

Zachary

Marriage is About Community

Dean Obeidallah characterizes marriage as an antiquated, death dealing institution—something quite outdated and useless.  See his article.   His premise is that, today, postmodern, liberal people seem to have arrived at an understanding of marriage that approaches mere nonchalance.  It is perhaps much less a matter of fulfilling your social destiny, and more a matter of preference, something relegated to one's inimical thirties (a.k.a. the mysterious fog demarcating life after your twenties).  There is nothing sinister about marriage itself, it’s just that marriage, supposedly, doesn’t make a lot of sense anymore—especially given that nowadays most liberals move-in together, have sex, and can get palimonies without ever skipping and hopping over to the Justice of the Peace. 

Like my mother has always said, it probably was never a very good idea to get married just for the sex. 

It seems increasingly feasible that 1) life wouldn't fall apart if not everyone on the planet got married, and 2) many people just are not hardwired for strict monogamy much the same way that ten percent of the population is homosexual, bisexual or transgender (not counting the other thirty percent who won't admit it, including my mother).  More and more of the couples I meet (married or not) run open relationships, it seems, without a hitch.  See Mark Oppenheimer’s article about Dan Savage. 

If all that ever constituted marriage was sharing bank-accounts, then, hell, my apartment mate and I could get that arranged right now!  So, then, what would be the point of wasting a bunch of money, and inviting a lot of people I barely know, to celebrate a relationship I already have, and in a suit I’ll probably never be skinny enough to wear again?

I ask this question while bracketing a discussion of legal privileges—as if this were the only tangible explanation for why people get married anymore.

The value and the beauty of community have been neglected in much of the discussion I see floating around town—especially in liberal circles.  For a second I’d like to imagine that the individual is not the most important entity in the universe.  For a second I’d like to imagine that robust, supportive and vital community is just as important as individuality (if not more so) for a person’s life.  To rephrase an earlier iteration—I hope that when I get married I can invite everyone in my life who is important to me; everyone who constitutes my family.  For now, I define family broadly. 

Imagine, additionally, that “wedding” is just a word for the celebration of a commitment between two people to meet each other’s needs for intimacy, sex, family, love and purpose (however these needs manifest for the couple).  And imagine that “marriage” is just a word for this commitment.  Much akin to why we celebrate people’s lives with birthdays, and love with anniversaries, it seems just good fun to throw a party to celebrate commitment.  So, then, we could call it a commitment ceremony, or a life-partner party, and not merely a wedding.  Happiness and good things deserve ritual celebration in my opinion, and as a lover of parties, I support weddings and marriage simply for this reason. 

What is marriage, then?  What is the difference between calling my life-partner my husband, as opposed to my committed lover, as opposed to my alpha-guy, etc?  I suppose some of it pertains to individual preference; some of it pertains to religious tradition; and some of it depends on whether you want to be committed for life or just for the foreseeable future (although I was never sure of the difference when I was growing up).  Certainly, I want to be committed to someone, and I want that commitment to be and to remain life-giving.  We have somehow come to think of marriage as inherently death-dealing (as seen with Dean Obeidallah).  But that’s just stupid.  You should not be getting married, or committing yourself at all to someone with whom you do not feel enhanced life.  And this applies to all types of relationships (romantic and otherwise).    

I’d like to get married and to have a nice Quaker wedding.  And I’d like to do this because marriage is about commitment in the context of a community, which pledges to support, nurture, and shepherd it (along with any of its fruits).  Marriage is about affirming family, and it is about growing family (connecting two different people and their communities).  When people celebrate a commitment and pledge to support it, they also pledge to support the additional members of the family the couple might introduce.   They pledge to engage in relationship with everyone “on the other side of aisle.”  This is about the villages we all carry around with us (in our cell phone contact book and on Google+ now, instead of in the surrounding huts).  For me, getting married will be just as much about affirming my commitment with my fiancé, as it will be about re-affirming the beauty and the deep bonds of the community, which provide me with (more than any thing else) a sense of home on this earth.

skinny dipping

He left all of his clothes behind and went swimming; he ran deftly, barefoot and all, through the trees and the grass, skipping over all the sharp stones, his body rejoicing.

The light danced between him and the shimmering water once he reached the lake, and his face was pure and paltry—like two-bit memory or shaking hands with someone you’ll certainly forget and then never remember. 

One day, he knows, he’ll grow old or not, and die too.  But the freedom of this moment: as he jumped into the cold liquid, which embraced him, and he laughed like he doesn’t remember doing, but which again he craves every day without knowing.  His heart pumping to the beat of the ripples against his face, he splashes and dreams of things.  Summer sings in his lungs, and breath is his seat.  He swims out into the open expanse of water, examining his liminal fate, and stunned, he has, for this moment, forgotten and surrendered and returned. 

In Time

Rhythm is fingers against the pavement
waving false sentiment into the sun
and forwarding emails,

farewell movie stars,
trailers that live inside populous
falsehood and watery forgiveness,
where I wept inside my jeans
and forgot to make the bed.

Lonely mastery of ourselves,
only makes the landing quieter
and the stemmed borrowing
from this earth that much lighter.

If I were
to weave in and out
enough butchered English
would you love me again?
Would the sun rise just so as
it once had, once more,
once upon a time.
Marry Poppins lost her suitcase again,
and I forwarded an email.

Men are so clean,
so dashing, and so mean,
and I flail like a small child in pajamas,
pretending my cell phone is a space ship,
and waiting for when what have you
is enough.

Well, as long as I wait,
it won't.

To All Vanilla People: Our Time Has Come

Preface:

To identify as gay, or to have any sort of sexual identity, ostensibly implicates a discourse on sex.  And in the West we are particularly ambivalent about sex and sexuality.  Add to this, that "claiming" is only necessary when one's sexual identity is not given (for gays, lesbians, bisexuals, poly-amorous, transgender people, etc).  We claim our identities, and give them a position, because the mainstream discourse does not inherently provide a position for GLBT people (admittedly less so in the past).  And where a position does exist, it is often comparably asymmetrical--that is, our positions are endowed with less influence or power than those of our white, male, straight counterparts.  By "position" I mean social position--the stance we must take with its moral and cultural scripts that loosely limits how we relate and interact with others.  These moral and cultural scripts are complicated--from the pre- or post-marital sex debate, to debates about monogamy and polyamory, to debates about the actual terms we use to claim a position (Dyke, Queer, Butch, Lesbian, Gay, Homosexual, Trans, Boi, Kinky, Vanilla, etc), and to the strategies we use to stake claims (gay marriage vs. no marriage).  I am no expert on this topic, but in introducing my blog in this way, I hope to demonstrate that what I say next is locked within a foray of flying discursive moments, none of which should be underestimated.  Nothing I say retains a simple, uniform meaning.  And what I write has implications within and without the GLBT community--and such implications often differ depending on the perspective of the community in question.   

...

I am vanilla!  I claim my vanilla status, and I, right here right now, intend to stake a discursive space (a social position) for vanilla people.  Here I am--ramming a big wafer-colored flag into the discursive mound of Queer-eality.  Vanilla will no longer simply mean the absence of interesting sexual activity.  It will no longer be equated with lifeless monogamy or repetitive, redundant sexual activity.  For example, the sex-lives within marriage and monogamy, to remain alive, do not also necessitate menage a' trois, sex toys, role-play, fore-play, and the like.  However, these are not out of the question for vanilla people.  Like a straight man who might cross-dress, or a lesbian who might, for a second, consider wearing lipstick, vanilla people do not by definition reject complicated sex.  

What you do during sex is much less important than the substance underlying the sexual experience, anyway.  By substance I mean the meaning of the sexual experience—the feeling of the sex, the connection derived and enhanced in the context of the sex, the intimacy established and reinforced.  I place kinky on one side of a wide spectrum where vanilla is the opposite bookend.  Both kinky and vanilla are about more than the activity—they are about what the activity does for the people involved.  Kinky focuses on power-play where one person is dominant and the other is subordinate.  Kinky may involve intimacy, sensuality, connection, monogamy, etc, but Kinky does not necessitate these for its focus.  Vanilla focuses on "intimacy-play" where one person is revealing a part of their self while the other discovers it.  Vanilla is about opening oneself to mutual vulnerability in sexual interaction.  Vanilla may involve power-play (vulnerabilities often do), sensuality, connection, monogamy, etc, but vanilla does not necessitate these for its focus.  Vanilla sex may even involve some of the same props as Kinky sex or other types of sex, but vanilla sex manages such props in much different ways and with much different intentions. 

The most liberating thing about defining a positive space for the term “vanilla” is that we can now feel okay if we don’t like to fist, to flog, to use an abundance of toys, etc.  The focus in vanilla sex is on intimacy itself, which does not require complicated activity.  And even if vanilla were to involve complicated activity, such activity is much more likely to be connected to sensuality and to pleasure rather than to pain and to power.   

When I claim my vanilla status, I claim it because I like sex that is soft, sensual, playful, intimate, connected and sweet.  I also like sex constituted within a committed relationship.  It has been my experience that usually (but not always) commitment leads to enhanced trust and safety.  When trust and safety are present and enhanced, a much greater degree of intimacy and connection follows. 


The way we have codified and thereby related to the term "vanilla" indicates the twisted way our society relates to sex.  Vanilla is what you do if you follow the mainstream, and if you don't realize how freeing nontraditional ways of sex (and of being sexual) can be!  Vanilla people are somehow the bad gays, or like those still trapped unawares in The Matrix who, in their ignorance, are more a threat than an ally.  The regulative effect that Christianity has had on the West, has twisted our relationship to sex into a paradox.  We accept that it happens, that it is necessary, but we deny its accompanying pleasure, its utter beauty, and the significance it has (without a doubt) in how we manage and produce meaning.  Still in many liberal communities, there are no terms for relating to sex directly and openly, no ways of managing its pervasive influence in all hearts and minds.  We thus put ourselves in a bind—we hate ourselves for doing the very thing we know we must.  In the meantime, we never develop the proper tools to manage our sexuality safely and with balance.  We thus are forced into exploring alternative ways of being sexual, which are then pushed under the rug.  And although these alternatives are in themselves viable, they are part of a twisted system.  A way that we can dismantle this system is by claiming, as Queers, the oppressive side of sex as well.  We can accept "vanilla" into the fold.  A wonderful program with which I resonate, and which has applications for all ages is Our Whole Lives:  http://www.uua.org/religiouseducation/curricula/ourwhole/

I found myself caught in this twisted system, and thereby torn by the examples set before me.  It seemed that I must either become monogamous and bored, or uncommitted and exhilarated. But these options are false dichotomies.  They do not even approach the full spectrum of sexual vitality and its idiosyncratic wonder.  At the very least, good sex and monogamy are not mutually exclusive.  And whether you are poly, bi, homo, straight or just plain queer, you need also to know that you can be vanilla.  It no longer needs to be a shameful word--a word we use to describe mainstream folk who apparently don't understand the value of sexual freedom.  One can be free, perfectly free, and vanilla simultaneously!  Praise vanilla people! Our time has come.

The Crying Man

My thoughts carried me, I think, more than my feet last night, as I walked to the T-Station to grab a train (and then on to Jamaica Plain).  My hope is that one day I will get sick of hearing myself think, and then I'll just sit and be a stone.  Perhaps this is reserved for death, so.  

I have a fifteen minute commute from my new apartment to the station, and on the way I pass a bridge, and behind, there is Boston's skyline.  That looming machine--a trap, and a blessing.  When my spiritual grandmother died, she told me, her very last words to me were: "I hope you find things you never expected."  Well, Pat, I certainly have!  I miss you, too. 

I wore my shiny, renewed clothes and my cheap, red shoes.  I have torn apart much of my wardrobe--given clothes away, made pants into shorts.  I missed my ex-boyfriend in that moment.  While Boston's skyline diminished from increased distance--closer to the station I became, and more deeply into sadness there I also became.  

You gave me sweetness and now I have this: 

sadness breaths through my breast. 

A far off country 

and the way that we were, 

like sailing for the horizon.

This was some poem I wrote as I walked.  And as I turned into the station, I came upon an important scene.  Seated on the floor against his army-patterned duffel bag and the wall, a man sobbed.  He sobbed into his hand, as the other hand rested palm-down on his head (his fingers tangled into his black, matted hair).  In this moment my sadness was with him, his weeping so touched my own weeping soul. 

The next day I recited the story to a friend who, it turns out, had noticed the same man, also crying, in the same station a few hours before I discovered him.  

What did this mean?  That a person could have stayed in the same spot for three or more hours just sobbing and sobbing?  Perhaps he was an angel--who appeared for the sake of showing us grief, of giving it to us, of inviting us into it.  

I want to make sure that I weep--that I weep for the immense change that represents my existence, that I weep for loss and for tragedy that cannot be undone nor explained.  I want to make sure that I weep, and weep and weep--and in the weeping welcome myself anew. 

With love, 

ZAC