Alice Oleson, prof of eng, univ of dubuque; responds to real talk bible posting - advent Week 1, Day 3

I was thinking about what you said on your blog about Romans 13,
about hedonism, where you define hedonism as rendering oneself
answerable to sometimes no other god than the body. And I really liked
the way you came around to discuss temperance (almost Templeance?),
really, so that the body is open to, ready for, receptive to miracles,
and as you say, “for the coming of the god in us.” I see this “god
in us” as a recurring theme in your writing on the blog which I really
admire.
Your interpretation in the recent hedonism blog helped me begin to
resolve something that’s always bothered me in my experience of
nearing Christmas and the celebration of Christ’s birth. For many
years now, I go to midnight mass at a Catholic church (my ex-husband and
family were Catholic and my father reclaimed his Catholicism after all
of us kids grew up (Mom wanted to raise us Protestant—Presbyterian of
all austere things).
At every midnight mass, tired and emotional, I always cry so hard
at the song Ave Maria. I have carried babies in my belly and cried atop
the bump to Ave Maria at midnight mass. I have mourned my
mother-in-law’s death crying to Ave Maria at midnight mass (in the
church she so loved to decorate for the occasion with wreaths and
ribbons while she lived). Now, either Cece or Estella, one or the other,
lies with her head on my lap as I sit by my dad and cry to Ave Maria at
Christmas. Even outside of Christmas, I literally cling to the beautiful
imagery of Mary, docile, bent-head Mary, especially every time I enter a
Catholic church and am so happy to see a woman vaunted, vaulted,
worshipped—plus, the decadent, Florentine blue of Mary in her robes
was winning any day over the barren, false-grained wood cross which hung
sterilely at the front of my Presbyterian home church.
Yet, from a feminist perspective, my tears and my Mary-love always
perplex me. Though I love my girls to no end, I find the self-sacrifice
associated with motherhood in Christian-Euro culture to be repressive as
well as the insistence on the virgin birth of Christ—well, I find it
downright damaging—to take the sexuality out of motherhood (turning
the ideal woman into the virgin and creating that awful Madonna/whore
split)—to erase the man from sex all together (turning him into some
sort of animalistic sexuality—taking, too, his godliness from the sex
act)—basically taking the sanctity out of human sex. And singing Ave
Maria sometimes seems like I’m on the side of taking the sanctity out
of the sex that humans have as what I think is our greatest gift, our
greatest access really, to seeing the face of God, capital G.
Roger, have you ever read Alice Walker’s book By The Light of My
Father’s Smile? To me that book is a Bible. It is about sexuality as a
source of light and healing. It is not about hedonism. But it sure loves
sex. And maybe that’s the point. To sure love sex truly would make sex
sacred and hedonism doesn’t make sex sacred, it makes it
powerful—dominant maybe? But powerful and sacred are so different.
And of course, so is sex, when it is sacred or not sacred in relation to
one’s partner, in relation to one’s self? I am sure you can think of
the times when sex/lust felt sacred vs. when sex felt or was honest to
the directives of hedonism alone?
So, just to get back to where I started…cause I know this is
getting to be too long (but that's what happens when you mention sex,
people wake up I guess)… When I read your blog posting today, Roger, and
when you wrote, “The provision is for something beyond that
[fulfilling lusts]; it is for taking care of the body as temple
(Jerusalem), the temple as body, so that the way for the entrance of the
Holy Ghost comes clearer, and the universe needs our bodies for its
miracles the Book keeps telling us. It needs our bodies to replenish
consistently for the coming of the god in us.”
Well, for the first time, I thought then about the Virgin Mary not
as a symbol of a non-sexual, self-sacrificing woman, but as a HUMAN
symbol of someone who is open to, receptive of, the coming of light, by
way of the body, of the god that can be/is in all of us humans.
Christmas Mary, then, as a symbol of just how very sacred sex can be,
and of course, regenerative not just of bodies, but of the HOPE that
must be in all of us, women and men, if we are to truly treat one
another and ourselves as temples of gods, as gods in the here and now
with bodies that like to move and to sweat.
And I thank you, Roger, for inspiring me to think about all of
this. I thank you for even the very little I know about the work and the
thoughts you carry on each day. I will still cry, but I will love Ave
Maria even more so this Christmas.

Advent Week 2 Day 1

To understand this day’s reading; Isaiah 11: 1-10, is to understand J.C.’s mandate, as expressed in the stories told in Matthew, John and elsewhere in the New Testament. What stands out most here is the long exposition of how many different animals will just be cold chilling with animals which normally are their predators. In addition to this, the reading suggests, that dude coming will make really great judgments, “…and he will not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears: But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth.”

What’s happening here is that what we expect as law shall no longer be law. J.C. is not going to be judging the way the rest of the world judges things. All we think of as natural law shall be subverted, “…the wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid;” Jesus, as we’ll see in Matthew and John, does not care about what laws exist already when he makes judgments on stuff. When the Pharisees try to ride him about how his disciples aren’t washing their hands before they eat, he reminds them that the problem is not what’s going into his disciples’ mouths, but what is coming out of theirs (the Pharisees’). When they bring him the adulteress to comment on her stoning (testing him really), according to Moses’ law, he suggests that whomever amongst them is without sin, should commence with the pelting. When no one does, he simply tells her to ride out, and try not to fuck around anymore. All these laws are just dust to J.C.

This particular reading of the advent also concludes with the idea that the Gentiles will seek this sign. Again, it is a sign for all people and with everything that J.C. is concerned, there is that warning, both overt and subtle that rich people ain’t have shit to get. He’s going to “…reprove with equity the meek” and big it up for poor people.

Again, if we’re to understand that the Advent is for the preparation of this great opportunity, the coming of the Lord or for the possibility of God in your heart, then it is astonishing how often the message is about relinquishing what you already believe to be true, including what you think about those who are lesser than you. Understand, that this is not just about material wealth either. This is also about what we think of intellectual usefulness, how we value different kinds of intelligence; and ideas about class. Jesus’ we are being reminded does not give a fuck about any of that. He’s about his people, other people, any people willing to open their hearts to that God that is due them.

So what about this “rod out of the stem of Jesse?” I’m about to be on my research horse to figure out what Jesse’s deal is. Meanwhile, dig this; you want to be ready for God, then you have to start throwing away what you think you already know about this world’s hierarchies. Who is smarter? Better? More worthy based on class, color, intelligence, piety, lawfulness, education? Don’t matter brotherman. All of it – dust.

Advent – Week 1, Day 4

This past Sunday, my good friend and sometime mentor and erstwhile Chicago poet/elder, Kent Foreman passed away. He has been a fixture here for some time now in the underground poetry scene and had indeed, been writing and performing poems since long before most of us were born, including on the road with such jazz greats as Max Roach and Oscar Peterson. His life was a rich one, a full one. Once, in a visit to NYC he stayed with me in Brooklyn, and on one memorable, sweltering, summer, night, us both in our BVD tank tops seated in the kitchen with the windows open, we smoked and talked. This was the kind of talk we writers crave with old dudes – stories of crazy shit that happened with remarkable people, sparkle-eyed tales of caution, that are less caution than ‘go-out-and-make-your-own-stories’ kind of stories. Everything about that night stands out starkly to me. I remember hearing some gunshots from the projects, the noise from Los Primos Dominican restaurant below us, our own laughter.

Kent was diagnosed with lung cancer just this summer, and it moved quickly from there to chemo, to refusal of more chemo, to hospice. When I first moved to Chicago, I looked forward to what I thought would be several nights at jazz and blues clubs with Kent; further seminars in my continued education towards music, Chicago and grown-man shit. Instead, what happened was what happens. We were both too busy for our own good. I was traveling too much and before you knew it, he was house-bound. I got back into town and his daughter, Gabrielle, was telling me that it was day to day. I went out to see Kent and with him vaguely in and out, I sat for an hour or so telling Kent how appreciative I was of everything he had been and been to me, his sharing his family with me, and how regretful I was of the things we didn’t get to do. I sang him calypsos and spirituals. I got up and went home.

I have never been so acutely aware of my mortality as when I got a text from his daughter later that night saying that Dad, in her words, managed to avoid the coming indignities, has gone to where the chill winds don’t blow.

I sat there for several moments stunned, as though I wasn’t perfectly aware I had been sitting with a dying man just minutes earlier. Suddenly, I knew nothing of the value of my own living. In a ten minute span, I questioned everything – my poems, my friends, my choices, my loves. I wondered if anything was worth anything…

Here’s how God works. You get what you need, when you need it – plain and simple. The Advent, as I’ve said in previous posts is about preparing the self for the coming of something larger, for the possibility of something more. The Advent suggests the most wondrous and amazing of ideas – that at the lowest hour, we can reboot and restart from a place further along than we’d ever been before. Matthew 24, 36-44 repeats what is a familiar Christian dogma; that we will not know when the Father is come, and that if we’re not prepared, we’ll be left behind while others attain heaven. Most of Christianity likes to talk about this literally, and we are regaled with pictures of a descending Christ who lifts the godly up into the sky, while the sinful are left behind to something vaguely purgatorical or worse. But there is something way more practical and useful at play here. We have an opportunity to empty ourselves, and refill it with larger more meaningful possibilities “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only…” Jesus has been telling us how much the Father is in us, how much we are in Him/It. There is something inexorable in each of us that plots the timing of his own upliftment. There is something to be gained, a lesson for each despair that if one prepare oneself, one might be able to glean. A fellow blogger, in speaking of Simeon’s coming to the temple to see Christ and recognizing that Christ was the savior, says (and I’m half-quoting, half parsing) that Simeon recognized a most important truth, that it wasn’t necessarily that this guy, Jesus was the way we were going to be saved, but that hope lay in the fact of this re-birth as it were, was possible. He held a baby in his arms, a being utterly new and without flaw or sin.

Of course, this specific baby, turned out pretty fly. He did some amazing things with water when people wanted to get their buzz on, and when the object lesson needed to be greater, he told dead people “Yo dawg, you wint really dead is the thing” (even after being reminded that the dead man ought to be decomposing by now – there is no coincidence that the Book points that out). And then he kept telling those around him that they should come to the Father through him, while saying that the Father was in him AND in all of them. “wash folks’ feet like I do. Love people like I do” he said “and you can holler at these miracles yourself. This shit aint special!” And then he peaced out.
Verse 42 of Day 4’s reading says “Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come”, and the ‘your’ before the ‘Lord’ here is important too, because the manner of recognition of that opportunity is going to be peculiar to each of us. “watch…” it says. Be aware. Turn inward and find that God that’s coming.

The birth of Christ as celebrated in Christmas is an interesting phenomenon. Like the coming of the messiah itself, it is a renewable wait. As soon as the holiday leave, we resume waiting for its return, just as Jesus, predicted for forever, came lived 33 years, left and then we immediately started waiting for his return again. The allegory is simple. It retains its parallels in just about every religion in the world. It is the principle behind all of life; the idea of renewal and none of us can take advantage of this life cycle, if we aren’t ready to renew, ready to plant when the time comes, ready to reap when the time comes. We gotta watch so we don’t get swept up in the flood like when Noah was here (Matthew 24: 37-39). If we do and pay attention, we might find we survive the flood in all our spirits and emerge on a mountaintop.

Kent’s daughter wrote to say that Kent was excited for the approaching death. He was practically giddy about it, she said, even joking that the waiting was so good, that the other side was going to be anti-climactic. I needed to hear that. Kent was so ready, he was going looking good! How self-absorbed I was to make Kent’s death be about my petty failings, without recognizing that this was another chance to build toward a life that made me ready for renewal at any moment; whatever form it might take. So many beautiful things and people take place daily in my life. So many moments are opportunities to make things right, and make them right again, and here I was, a simpering, ball of despair, ready to throw in the towel because I recognized all of a sudden that I was mortal.

Less about being mortal is the fact that here again was the chance to experience something and come out with more understanding, to be taken up, to have my ark perch itself a little higher. The Christ is coming and he stays coming, no matter how often we stone him and tie him to the crosses we make ourselves bear.

Advent Week 1 Day 3

I have for some years now accepted the term ‘hedonist’, as an accurate descriptor of who I am. I have called myself such unapologetically and sometimes even proudly. A hedonist pursues the outer limits of his/her own pleasure with such fervor as to render himself or herself sometimes answerable to no other god, but the body. Anyone who knows me even semi-well will probably concur that this is true of me.

So the day’s reading, Romans 13, 11-14 specifically calls me out. Targeted, it would seem, to those all too willing to consume themselves in the flesh, these passages are about the body’s limits; the body’s need to pay attention to the soul. But is it simply that? The Judeo-Christian tradition often offers an analysis of the scripture that values pursuit of the spiritual over any pursuit that is carnal. More accurately, that which is carnal is relegated to the profane, as opposite of what is sacred.

But if the Advent is about preparing for something to approach, preparing oneself for the possibility of goodness and God, then shouldn’t the entire person be considered? “Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness…” says a section of the reading. We’re to (as a commentator to a previous post opined) make of ourselves an empty vessel, a new vessel which can now be filled with an understanding that makes of all our transactions, a truth. Further, the sorts of carnal activities that unbalance us by having us awake nocturnally, will definitely not leave us rested enough, clear-headed enough to make the sort of judgment we need to make, to “put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ”.

As I’ve tried to be more clear about the practice of my ‘vices’ and under which conditions, I’m actually making the most ‘honest’ use of my body, I’m sometimes tempted to see honesty as solely a matter of truth-telling, about what I do, rather than answering the honesty of what the body really needs / wants. Sometimes, the Roger who cannot live with his own skin is answering something he thinks is honest when he goes out to the bar, when in fact, the body would rather be still; when in fact the body will make more patient decisions if it gives itself (and of course its liver) a rest. The same obtains for the decision to have sex, and lots of I,. “make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof.” The provision is for something beyond that; it is for the taking care of the body as temple (Jerusalem), the temple as body, so that the way for the entrance of the Holy Ghost comes clearer, and the universe needs our bodies for its miracles the Book keeps telling us. It needs our bodies to replenish consistently for the coming of the god in us.

The Advent – Week 1, Day 2

The reading for day 2 is Psalm 122, A song of degrees of David, which quite frankly sounds like a 5 percenter hip-hop album.

I am beginning to wonder about the symbolism of the city of Jerusalem in the Bible. Of course the Bible is rife with symbols posing for meaning that we often get ourselves in a lather over by reading literally. Jerusalem I think, is one of those. It should be noted that all the Psalms in the 120s are songs of degrees, all the way up to Psalm 134. So what are these degrees? Are they very literal degrees, as in directions for physical movement? The Psalm in question here is primarily concerned with the prosperity and peace of Jerusalem, about Jerusalem as the centerpiece or symbol of God’s love for us. “For my brethren and companions’ sakes, I will now say, Peace be within thee (Jerusalem). Because of the house of the Lord our God I will seek thy good” If we are to be preparing for the miracle of the birth and preparing for the miracle of Jesus’ coming works, then it would appear that Jerusalem, the site of Jesus’ establishment must be prepared too. And so, Jerusalem is to world that existed then as the heart (soul maybe?) is to the body. There is a chance each year to use this time, to open ourselves to the possibility of miracle within us, to the possibility of God come into our midst and us into the midst of God. Jesus spoke that over and over until damn near the moment he died. Prepare yourself. Live as I do, so that you might be the site of miracle and wonder yourself. Psalm 122 suggests that the prophesies of the “coming” that all such prophesies are less about being ready to be taken up into some physical heaven per se, but about the fact that one has to be open to the possibility of goodness of God-ness (if we’re to push the etymological foundation here) if we are to achieve that heaven that oneness with the Father, that J.C. stayed trying to hip the Pharisees to.

Chicago is enjoying a bleak mid-western winter’s day today. I’ve got to prepare for the advent of these Westside youfs at Campos, is what I have to do. There is much madness to wade through to get to the goodness, the God in these youth. But clearly this is a topic for a different essay / different post.

Real Talk Bible - The Advent - Week 1, Day 1

The season of the advent has come and with it a time for contemplation and preparation. What does it mean that we’re to prepare ourselves for Christ’s birth? Frankly, I dunno. I’m not of seasons and rules mostly, but I’m moving away from my self-styled reading of the Bible for the Real Talk Bible series to write on the passages specifically dedicated t word of Jesus’ coming. My friend, Tamie Harkins is an ordained Episcopalian minister and she has assigned me the necessary passages. Day 1 of the first week is Isaih 2, 1-5 and it’s kinda simple. Isaiah’s vision is that folks will take other folks up to the “Lord’s House” which is “established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills…” And mad folks are gonna holler apparently, but here’s the real business that his birth supposedly is going to mean “And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.”

According to Isaiah (and keep in mind much of Isaiah is dedicated to how hard God is gonna go in smoting some niggas), this Lord business should mean that the tools of war must become tools of growth and nourishment, not just peace. He’s not talking about beating them into guitars and shit, but ploughshares, pruning hooks. We need to figure out how to nourish and feed one another rather than kill is what Isaiah’s word on the advent here is. The last Chapter of the section wraps up with “O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the Lord.”

This section sings. Much of Isaiah does, but the music of this particular book changes when the call is toward nurture and love rather than smoting and making folks’ lands barren, and getting women raped and what not. The meter turns dactylic with the line “walk in the light of the Lord” which is in apposition to some of the other more uhm… masculine shit happening in Isaiah. But in the meter issue I’m reaching a little. Point is the first thing to consider in order to prepare for the advent, is that fools need to chill with they noise and gun bucking in general and figure out how to get fools into some shelter and fed. Figure out how to get these kids of ours educated, not so they can get out and get jobs to make other folks who don’t give a fuck, rich, but for real nourished and expanded and capable of analysis and others’ point of view and some real fucking empathy for a change.

So that’s my sermon for right now, though my general idea is not to sermonize, but it blows me (Chicago street right dere), how hard you have to go in to convince motherfuckers to show love rather than show steel, so word. I’ma have more to say tomorrow about Psalm 122.

Nov 16, 2010.

Through Chapter 8 of the Gospel according to St. John, Jesus' exploits are related in even more easy, plainspoken, real talk prose than the book of Matthew - which is itself quite straightforward. Jesus shows up at a wedding. His mom hollers at him that the wine is done and he tells them fill up the jugs with water and all of a sudden it's wine and that's his first miracle. The Pharisees, come at him talking shit. He tells them that his Father sent him so they can't tell him shit and they go away mumbling. The prose is so easy and plain spoken that it even says on a few occasions; The Jews came to kill him. Like... there is, for much of the Gospel according to St. John, little by way of extraneous description to bog down the action or by which one can infer anything that isn't coming either directly from the mouth of Jesus or from the actions he takes. Why then when the Pharisees bring the adulteress to him, is there this show of writing in the sand as he talks to them. The book doesn't tell us what he's writing or drawing but he's at the beach, chillaxing, when they bring him the adulteress, tell him that according to Moses' law she should be stoned and so 'whatchu gonna do now Jesus?'

The book reminds us that Jesus continues writing in the sand, practically never looking up when he utters the now famous challenge, that he who is without sin should cast the first stone. He returns to his writing, engrossed in it, until it dawns on him that no-one is left. He lifts his head to speak to the woman it would appear almost in that comical facetious way, "where they at? nobody here? where all them niggas who was talkin shit? they aint here, is they? that's what i thought. aight den, keep it pushin. don't fuck around on your husband no more and you good..."

Here's the thing, the Pharisees continue to beseech Jesus with evidence of his breaking of traditional law and Jesus continues to break these laws. Jesus continues to pay no attention to any law that he feels unjust. He stays revolutionary, and on a strictly common sense tip. Indeed, the symbology seems to suggest that even his own edicts are dust. Even what he suggests might need someday to be re-thought. Why else the continued engraving in sand that will not hold. He builds his church on Peter, the rock. It is principle to which Jesus holds, but not law. Jesus knows law is temporal and will not sacrifice that principle for the expediency that is law (to bite from a speech of my high school principal's).

Of course you know where i'm going with this. We could stand to learn quite a bit from it. Though like the disciples we're often looking at the trappings, trying to see through the intricacies, pull apart nuts and bolts, when the obvious truths are large and right in front us. It is part of the lesson Peter must learn when he starts walking on the water, and then takes his eyes off Jesus to look down at his feet, and so, begins to sink. Thing is, as a Western Judeo-Christian society, we've long since took our eyes off Jesus and looked down at our feet, even as we swear to our mothers we're following Him. We hold fast to things of men, when even Jesus knows those things must come and go; even when Jesus acknowledges that his own ideas might be so much dust.