Emily Says...

One of the authors I'm studying this year is Emily Dickinson. This is a mixed blessing, for while I fell in love with Emily's poems a couple of years ago—she is now one of my favourite poets—, studying them for the French "aggregation" feels like raping the text.
Below I've posted one of her poems that speaks to me the most, especially because of my current situation. The two last lines are interesting as they seem to encapsulate an idea central to postmodern/Emerging Christianity.

Some keep the Sabbath going to the Church –

I keep it, staying at Home –

With a Bobolink for a Chorister –

And an Orchard, for a Dome –

Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice –

I just wear my Wings –

And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,

Our little Sexton – sings.

God preaches, a noted Clergyman –

And the sermon is never long,

So instead of getting to Heaven, at last –

I'm going, all along.

Sexism, Strength and Dominance: Masculinity in Disney Films

This short video ties in with what I was talking about in my Fey Pride post. I don't want to pick on Disney in particular—it has become something of a cliché to say that Disney conveys right-wing values (racism, sexism, consumerism, etc). But it's nevertheless true that entertainment and the media have a huge influence on the development of children. Sometimes it's done in a deliberate way, (ads are used to make sure children become model consumers) sometimes not (for example depictions of violence are probably a reflection of society and are broadcast because, well, violence sells, more than being a conscious attempt at promoting violent lifestyles). It's certainly the same for gender roles, as this short video clearly demonstrates.

I'm working on my dissertation a lot these days—about evangelicals and their attitude to power—and I found out that the first American evangelicals were actually very progressive. In the 18th century, they were opposed to slavery, women could vote in church meetings and preach, they were pacifists and were in favour of social justice. This changed in the South of the USA when evangelicals grew in power, at the beginning of the 19th century. Evangelicalism became the religion of the elites, used as an opiate of the masses to keep the slaves and the poor in check and to support the slave-system. Evangelicalism was stripped of its more radical aspects. Women and young people were no longer allowed to preach. Blacks were set aside. Pacifism was ridiculed. A rhetoric of war began to be used : a real "Southern male" was to be manly, dominant, physically strong, and if possible own slaves. Because a century later the South of the US would have a tremendous influence on evangelicalism, both in America and worldwide, this conception of masculinity would prevail among many evangelicals. You still find it today. If only conservative evangelicals would reclaim their progressive roots, what a change it would make to the world!

The Jungle

I finished Upton Sinclair's The Jungle just a few days ago. It's about a family of Lithuanians that has immigrated to the USA in the early 1900s, lured by the American Dream's promises of wealth and happiness, only to end up working in the infamous factories of the Beef Trust in "Packingtown", Chicago.

I was looking forward to the novel as I expected it to be a bit like Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath : both authors were investigative journalists and Socialists. Unfortunately Sinclair isn't as skilled a novelist as Steinbeck is : his characters are rather flat, so when the book's working-class hero, Jurgis Rudkus, loses everything, it doesn't move you as much as when Tom Joad sees his family disintegrate. The plot isn't very solid, but it serves the author's purpose : to expose the gritty reality of life for the American underclass. And it's shocking : some of the things Sinclair describes are so horrible that he couldn't have made them up. He saw them during his investigations.

His muckraking novel shocked the nation, but not in the way Sinclair hoped for. Instead of striving to improve working people's conditions, all that the readers cared for were the parts in the books which dealt with the terrible lack of hygiene in the meat factories. (The public outcry actually led to a Pure Food Act)."I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach", Sinclair lamented.

But what interested me the most about the Jungle was the fact that it's a Socialist book, written by a dedicated Socialist in 1906, just a decade before the Russian Revolution. It's a socialism that hasn't yet discovered the excesses it would lead to under Soviet rule, and yet you can already detect some of the seeds of this future state-socialism. For example, the ''people" are always referred to in a very paternalistic, patronising manner.
Yet Sinclair isn't completely utopian either; he very honestly states that Socialism won't solve all of the world's problems, that there will still be conflict, but he argues that it would be a better alternative to capitalism.

In the last chapters, once Jurgis has seen the light (Socialism is clearly described as a new "dispensation", a new "revelation"), he witnesses several discussions between Socialists with very different ideas : for example a debate about religion between a Swedish professor and anarchist and an American ex-minister. The latter argues, in Tolstoyan fashion, that Christianity has been distorted by the institutional church and that Christ's message of peace, love and social justice has been forgotten. (It is worth noting that Upton Sinclair was himself some sort of a Christian socialist.) Something which was true in Sinclair's time, and which is equally true in Western christianity today, where the Church-body has become the church-institution, where spiritual and material salvation are seperated and where man-made rules become more important than compassion and love.

I'll finish with a quotation from the novel. Referring to a bunch of rich christians trying to evangelise the starving poor, the narrator exclaims:

"They were trying to save their souls- and who but a fool could fail to see that all that was the matter with their souls was that they had not been able to get a decent existence for their bodies?"

The Great Beyond

Sometimes, just sometimes, pictures speak more eloquently than words. This is certainly the case with these photographs of the Marseilles skyline, taken by D, my bro-in-law.
Nature is so beautiful that on rare occasions, it leaves you wordless, breathless and reaching for the ineffable. I'm not trying to get all metaphysical on your arse, but it does make you think.

When I lived in the country, I used to spend more time in nature, in the woods, in the fields, or watching the starry sky; and it's true that it would make me slow down, enjoy what was around me, and wonder where such beauty could come from. It's something I miss in the urban bustle of Rheims, but such pictures show that even when you live in the city, you can catch glimpses of the Great Beyond.

Check out the pics here.

Dark Night of the Soul

It's been over a year and a half that we haven't been part of any church or community. L works every Sunday so it's not even possible for her to attend anywhere, and I've long given up looking for a place of worship where I feel I can belong.

Yet I don't see my churchlessness as an entirely negative thing. After all, I had become tired of the fundamentalists and the crackpots ; tired of hearing the same old moralising sermons or congregation-pleasing rethoric over and over again ; tired of the criticism of anyone different or the promises of health and prosperity. Tired of church in general, at least the way it is done in this city. The only thing I really miss is the sense of community, the fellowship. But even that was never very profound. Superficiality is something we Christians major in.

Still, I don't see my churchlessness as an entirely negative thing. I have learnt more in these past two years than I have in all the previous years of my existence. I don't know if I've grown : I haven't started putting all these things into practise yet. But I've learnt.

But this process of discovery has come with a price. The more I search for the truth, the more I realise I have to leave my old mindset behind, like a dark - but warm - cocoon. I have never felt so liberated as I do now, yet at the same time, I have never felt as scared and doubt-ridden. In fact, sometimes the only thing I am sure of is Christ. Yet He has never felt as far away. I just can't feel his presence the way I used to. I have never felt as abandoned.

I think this might be my dark night of the soul.

The dark night of the soul is a period in one's spiritual life when one feels lonely and abandoned by God ; it can last for a few days or for most of one's lifetime. I wanted to look into the subject more. St John of the Cross, the 16th century Spanish Christian mystic, counter-reformer and poet, first coined the term, in a poem and later a commentary of the same name.
According to St John of the Cross, some of the symptoms are a feeling of abandonment, a fear of losing oneself on the road, of backsliding or of losing one's salvation ; an intense yearning for God while being unable to feel His presence ; a difficult and unsatisfying prayer life.

To explain the reasons why God puts us through this, the poet uses the analogy of a child nurtured by his mother. A day comes when the child, used to the sweetness of his mother's milk, has to let go of her breast, separate from her and learn to walk. The child's weaning is a very distressing period of its life, it loses all sense of security, yet it is essential if it is to grow. In the same way, when someone gets to know God, there is at first a sweetness and a sense of satisfaction when he or she prays or talks to Him. But this is sometimes taken away so that the believer may learn to rely on God without the pleasure of his senses, be it peace of mind or intellectual satisfaction ; so that he or she may learn to grow spiritually, and not to go to God simply to get something from Him, but to seek to serve Him and follow His will.

According to the mystic, it is something that happens to a large number of followers. The book reassured me a lot because it seems to correspond, more or less, to the period I've been going through. John tries to give an explanation for it, which, to me at least, seems rather satisfying. During the dark night of the soul, God tries to make us realise how lowly we are, and teach us to rely on Him even when our senses seem to indicate that we are alone and abandoned.

I just hope it doesn't last too long.

On a dark night, Kindled in love with yearnings—oh, happy chance!—
I went forth without being observed, My house being now at rest.