I am in Richmond for a two week intensive at ESR. I had a wonderful Christmas holiday and didn't want to leave Barnesville, but I no sooner arrived here than I was delighted to be back in my cozy little apartment with the old house smell. I am also very much looking forward to my class in conflict resolution.
I have completed a year of the Mdiv program, and so far it has exceeded expectations. It has been such a pleasure to be here. The classwork has kept me busy, and I have very much enjoyed the intellectual stimulation. As I have mentioned before, I love the balance between intellect and creativity that the school offers, not to mention the spiritual framework and the opportunity to do a writing as ministry emphasis.
There's almost too much to comment on from last semester. One of the highlights was the focus on reclaiming the female divine within what we (or I) tend to think of as the patriarchal "Father" God of the Bible. Of course, it would stand to reason that an omnipresent, all-knowing God would contain the female as well as the male, but we so often learn to think of YHWH as solely masculine that we can lose sight of the references in the Bible to the feminine attributes of the divine. Last semester, in both Hebrew class and Women in the Old Testament, we looked at explicitly female imagery used to describe Jehovah, such as womb, mother, breast, child bearer, or mother bear. It is easy to forget images of God giving birth or nursing the young. Also, as women are more than wombs and breasts, we wondered if images typically ascribed to men can also be female attributes--the warrior God could be female, for we saw in the Bible examples such as Deborah of women as military leaders, and the shepherd (ess) God could also be female, as women herded sheep in Biblical times. We found that in Jeremiah, women were condemned for worshiping the Queen of Heaven, but recast this to understand that perhaps a more overtly feminine side of Jehovah was once celebrated as a Queen, and that this side was later suppressed.
It made my heart leap to think of the Judeo-Christian God in inclusive ways that valued the feminine aspects of the godhead. As a Quaker, I appreciated how Biblical imagery, by being so inclusive, can support women's equality with men. I dearly wish we could talk about this more in the culture in general, as I believe many, especially women, turn away from what they (often rightly) perceive as the misogyny in Judaism and Christianity led by a judgmental man on a throne. And yet there is so much in the Bible that points to a richer and fuller God.
Showing posts with label ESR. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ESR. Show all posts
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
The hermeneutic of imagination
Recently, I finished my first semester at ESR, and my first semester as a full-time student in a very long time. It's been an interesting experience and there's so much to say about it that it becomes too long for a blog, so I will talk here about one piece of it.
The program merges an emphasis on scholarship with a push towards creativity. In both my Old and New Testament classes, despite the rigorous scholarly approaches, we were encouraged to be creative in our final projects. Since I am engaged by both scholarship and creativity, I did both, developing what I call a "hermeneutic of imagination."
The hermeneutic of imagination worked as follows: I first very deeply imagined myself into both the book of Revelation (for New Testament class) and the stories of Abigail and Bathsheba (for Old Testament class). For Revelation, I took to heart Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza's advice to approach the book imaginatively, and as I read, I lived beside John touring heaven with the angels as his guides. It pulled me into John's vision of heaven in a new way. I then took what I "saw" on that journey and used it as an entry point to a scholarly reading of Revelation. What I learned touring with John is that heaven is incomplete without The New Jerusalem: that heaven, a pallid, emotionless space (except for endless praises to God and the Lamb) needs the robust embodiment that earth offers as much as humans need the justice and mercy that heaven offers. It's a symbiosis. This surprised me, because I'd thought of heaven as perfect and complete--that which we aspire to. John's heaven is not. It needs the "juice" of earth and humanity--of God's worldly creation.
I also imagined my way into Abigail and Bathsheba, and soon realized that although they are kept separate in the narratives, they must have known each other, since both were David's wives. I imagined them together and what they might say to each other. I learned from this that both, despite the misunderstandings of the scholars, were empowered by silence, and I learned that you can't impose the same interpretive grid on both David and his wives, because David had a great deal of power and the wives didn't. For people with less power, the ability to operate silently--underneath the radar--is so important. For a person such as David--a king--public displays of power are all important.
The program merges an emphasis on scholarship with a push towards creativity. In both my Old and New Testament classes, despite the rigorous scholarly approaches, we were encouraged to be creative in our final projects. Since I am engaged by both scholarship and creativity, I did both, developing what I call a "hermeneutic of imagination."
The hermeneutic of imagination worked as follows: I first very deeply imagined myself into both the book of Revelation (for New Testament class) and the stories of Abigail and Bathsheba (for Old Testament class). For Revelation, I took to heart Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza's advice to approach the book imaginatively, and as I read, I lived beside John touring heaven with the angels as his guides. It pulled me into John's vision of heaven in a new way. I then took what I "saw" on that journey and used it as an entry point to a scholarly reading of Revelation. What I learned touring with John is that heaven is incomplete without The New Jerusalem: that heaven, a pallid, emotionless space (except for endless praises to God and the Lamb) needs the robust embodiment that earth offers as much as humans need the justice and mercy that heaven offers. It's a symbiosis. This surprised me, because I'd thought of heaven as perfect and complete--that which we aspire to. John's heaven is not. It needs the "juice" of earth and humanity--of God's worldly creation.
I also imagined my way into Abigail and Bathsheba, and soon realized that although they are kept separate in the narratives, they must have known each other, since both were David's wives. I imagined them together and what they might say to each other. I learned from this that both, despite the misunderstandings of the scholars, were empowered by silence, and I learned that you can't impose the same interpretive grid on both David and his wives, because David had a great deal of power and the wives didn't. For people with less power, the ability to operate silently--underneath the radar--is so important. For a person such as David--a king--public displays of power are all important.
I made many interesting discoveries about Bonhoeffer, and somehow intuited that Shakespeare was a lens through which to understand him. This gets back to a subject that has been much on mind: the role of fiction in understanding fact.
Somehow, God is central to this: the God that wants all of us, body, mind, heart and soul, imagination and reason.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
In Richmond at ESR... with Jane Austen and literature
Here I am at Earlham School of Religion and ...
I'm fascinated and somewhat amazed--though not entirely surprised--at the extent to which literary approaches and literary theory are currently permeating religious studies. Given the view of Bible as narrative and all of us as part of a larger story or discourse, this makes sense--but I didn't fully realize the impact until I got here. For me, this merging of literary approach, literature and religion is more than a touch of miracle, as it connects my passions ... leaving me in a state of near swooning euphoria--and I can, in a sense, pick up my graduate studies in English from the 1980s where they left off.
Every Tuesday, the school has a community lunch with a speaker. This week, I had the good fortune to hear Emily Townes, who teaches at Yale Divinity school. She was questioned about evil and suffering--two subjects she's written about--and she talked about the relationship between imagination and evil. I was thrilled. She discussed how cultures can create fictions that become so widely repeated they are accepted as facts--and that these fictions can obscure evil. She used as her example "Aunt Jemima" and "Mammy," cultural icons of the fat, jolly slave woman. There was no real Aunt Jemima--I knew this--(she first emerged as a former slave hired by owners of a pancake mix to make pancakes during the Chicago World's Fair in the 1890s and became wildly popular). Also, while female slaves cared for white children, the Mammy figure is another fiction. Townes pointed out that slaves were underfed (thin), and that none were truly happy with their lots. In fact, most "house slaves," contrary to our pictures of them, were likely to be the products of interracial "pairings". From what Townes said, I picture the real slaves as skinny, light-skinned, harried, overworked and unhappy rather than brilliantly brown or black, fat, cheerful, jolly and laughingly contented.
Of course--and while Townes did not say this I can imagine--cultural icons or stereotypes such as the cheery Aunt Jemima flipping buckwheat cakes in the kitchen or Mammy happily bustling around organizing the children speak to our deep desire to believe that the people who do the dirty work in our culture actually enjoy the task. And I imagine it's probable that some slaves would pretend to cheerfulness, as we all need to survive.
I also have been pursuing--of course--Jane Austen at ESR. I mentioned being a Jane Austen fan in my introduction of myself to my on-line Old Testament class and am thrilled to have fellow fans among my classmates. Naturally, Townes's talk of imagination and evil immediately made me think of Jane Austen--Austen was a woman who didn't gloss over the everyday horrors of middle-class life, the petty cruelties which she understood were worse for defenseless lower class people. Also, a book I am reading introduced me to a British Quaker author--her name evades me right now-- who wrote a children's book about Jane Austen in 1977.
I'm settled into my apartment in Richmond as I deliberately travelled light--and Roger, of course, is a wonderful moving companion.
Internet access has been a problem all week, hence my "silence." I am now--at last-- part of the Earlham College system, so I can access the Internet on my laptop, a huge boon. I still can't pick up the wireless system in my apartment, however, although I am right across the street from the campus--Roger says an enhancer of some sort might help. It isn't ALL terrible to be denied 24/7 Internet access however--it forces me to do other things. But it does impede blogging.
Otherwise, all is fine. I had to switch my schedule so now I will be in Richmond Tuesday afternoon through Friday morning. I will taking Old Testament, New Testament, Quaker History and Literature, and a class on Bonhoeffer.
I ran into a genuinely cheerful Clare Gamble, an Olney graduate and now student at Earlham College.
I hope everyone is well.
I'm fascinated and somewhat amazed--though not entirely surprised--at the extent to which literary approaches and literary theory are currently permeating religious studies. Given the view of Bible as narrative and all of us as part of a larger story or discourse, this makes sense--but I didn't fully realize the impact until I got here. For me, this merging of literary approach, literature and religion is more than a touch of miracle, as it connects my passions ... leaving me in a state of near swooning euphoria--and I can, in a sense, pick up my graduate studies in English from the 1980s where they left off.
Every Tuesday, the school has a community lunch with a speaker. This week, I had the good fortune to hear Emily Townes, who teaches at Yale Divinity school. She was questioned about evil and suffering--two subjects she's written about--and she talked about the relationship between imagination and evil. I was thrilled. She discussed how cultures can create fictions that become so widely repeated they are accepted as facts--and that these fictions can obscure evil. She used as her example "Aunt Jemima" and "Mammy," cultural icons of the fat, jolly slave woman. There was no real Aunt Jemima--I knew this--(she first emerged as a former slave hired by owners of a pancake mix to make pancakes during the Chicago World's Fair in the 1890s and became wildly popular). Also, while female slaves cared for white children, the Mammy figure is another fiction. Townes pointed out that slaves were underfed (thin), and that none were truly happy with their lots. In fact, most "house slaves," contrary to our pictures of them, were likely to be the products of interracial "pairings". From what Townes said, I picture the real slaves as skinny, light-skinned, harried, overworked and unhappy rather than brilliantly brown or black, fat, cheerful, jolly and laughingly contented.
Of course--and while Townes did not say this I can imagine--cultural icons or stereotypes such as the cheery Aunt Jemima flipping buckwheat cakes in the kitchen or Mammy happily bustling around organizing the children speak to our deep desire to believe that the people who do the dirty work in our culture actually enjoy the task. And I imagine it's probable that some slaves would pretend to cheerfulness, as we all need to survive.
I also have been pursuing--of course--Jane Austen at ESR. I mentioned being a Jane Austen fan in my introduction of myself to my on-line Old Testament class and am thrilled to have fellow fans among my classmates. Naturally, Townes's talk of imagination and evil immediately made me think of Jane Austen--Austen was a woman who didn't gloss over the everyday horrors of middle-class life, the petty cruelties which she understood were worse for defenseless lower class people. Also, a book I am reading introduced me to a British Quaker author--her name evades me right now-- who wrote a children's book about Jane Austen in 1977.
I'm settled into my apartment in Richmond as I deliberately travelled light--and Roger, of course, is a wonderful moving companion.
Internet access has been a problem all week, hence my "silence." I am now--at last-- part of the Earlham College system, so I can access the Internet on my laptop, a huge boon. I still can't pick up the wireless system in my apartment, however, although I am right across the street from the campus--Roger says an enhancer of some sort might help. It isn't ALL terrible to be denied 24/7 Internet access however--it forces me to do other things. But it does impede blogging.
Otherwise, all is fine. I had to switch my schedule so now I will be in Richmond Tuesday afternoon through Friday morning. I will taking Old Testament, New Testament, Quaker History and Literature, and a class on Bonhoeffer.
I ran into a genuinely cheerful Clare Gamble, an Olney graduate and now student at Earlham College.
I hope everyone is well.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Leaving for Earlham
Roger and I leave tomorrow for Richmond, Indiana. I will start ESR classes next week.
I have gotten sick with a cold--I am feeling somewhat better but the timing is not good.
I hope to pick up on some "better" blogging as I feel in better health.
Take care everybody.
I have gotten sick with a cold--I am feeling somewhat better but the timing is not good.
I hope to pick up on some "better" blogging as I feel in better health.
Take care everybody.
Friday, January 8, 2010
Public Transportation?
A few months ago, a thought crossed my mind and made my heart leap. Instead of driving back and forth every week from Barnesville to Richmond to attend ESR, I could take the bus! It would lower my carbon footprint, save wear and tear on my car, and better yet, offer me that all-important *multitasking* opportunity to get my reading done for my classes whilst in transit!
Well, no.
A multitude of web searches and phone calls revealed to me that you can get to Richmond anyway you want--as long as it's by car. There is no bus to Richmond. No train. No nothing.
Dreams die hard. The closest Greyhound stop to Richmond is Dayton, about 25(?) miles from that golden city on the plains. Maybe I could bus to Dayton... rent a car ... OK, this is getting too complicated ...maybe I could take the bus there and bike ... that's it ... that region is flat. I could do it. In the middle of winter? In the dark? In the cold? Yes, I could ... well, OK, maybe not.
I kept thinking I MUST have missed the key ... that there must be a way to get to Richmond without a car.
Dream on.
I understand Greyhound not stopping in Richmond. Why waste all that gas for a couple of people?
I may be able to car pool now and again and ... you never know what will happen. My whole life I've dreamed of living in a world laden with public transportation--buses, streetcars, trains, boats...maybe it has to do with early visits to relatives in New York City. Or dim memories of the very last streetcars in Baltimore. Or stories of relatives taking trains from the New York City to weekends in the Catskills. Or reading about Nancy Drew and her chums boarding the train to Phoenix. And let's not forget Huck Finn. (Why DO they let us read? It puts too many ideas into our heads.)
We're supposedly at or near peak oil now, meaning, as I understand it, "we" are producing worldwide as many barrels as we ever will. The supply will go down. The demand is already up, with the Chinese, for instance, buying more cars than we in the U.S. did last year. And we're still buying.
When gas prices truly go sky high, maybe it will pay for Greyhound to run the bus to Richmond. Or for the railroad "heritage trails" everywhere to be converted back to rail lines. As long as we can do this gracefully, I look forward to that time.
In the meantime, to paraphrase Joan Crawford in The Women: It's back to the perfume counter ... I mean ...car for me. Any other ideas?
Well, no.
A multitude of web searches and phone calls revealed to me that you can get to Richmond anyway you want--as long as it's by car. There is no bus to Richmond. No train. No nothing.
Dreams die hard. The closest Greyhound stop to Richmond is Dayton, about 25(?) miles from that golden city on the plains. Maybe I could bus to Dayton... rent a car ... OK, this is getting too complicated ...maybe I could take the bus there and bike ... that's it ... that region is flat. I could do it. In the middle of winter? In the dark? In the cold? Yes, I could ... well, OK, maybe not.
I kept thinking I MUST have missed the key ... that there must be a way to get to Richmond without a car.
Dream on.
I understand Greyhound not stopping in Richmond. Why waste all that gas for a couple of people?
I may be able to car pool now and again and ... you never know what will happen. My whole life I've dreamed of living in a world laden with public transportation--buses, streetcars, trains, boats...maybe it has to do with early visits to relatives in New York City. Or dim memories of the very last streetcars in Baltimore. Or stories of relatives taking trains from the New York City to weekends in the Catskills. Or reading about Nancy Drew and her chums boarding the train to Phoenix. And let's not forget Huck Finn. (Why DO they let us read? It puts too many ideas into our heads.)
We're supposedly at or near peak oil now, meaning, as I understand it, "we" are producing worldwide as many barrels as we ever will. The supply will go down. The demand is already up, with the Chinese, for instance, buying more cars than we in the U.S. did last year. And we're still buying.
When gas prices truly go sky high, maybe it will pay for Greyhound to run the bus to Richmond. Or for the railroad "heritage trails" everywhere to be converted back to rail lines. As long as we can do this gracefully, I look forward to that time.
In the meantime, to paraphrase Joan Crawford in The Women: It's back to the perfume counter ... I mean ...car for me. Any other ideas?
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Stretching the Rubberband
We put a deposit on a small apartment in Richmond the Saturday after Christmas, so the last step in my attending Earlham School of Religion for the Spring term (so called) has fallen into place, except for buying furniture. As it happens we have a spare futon, a spare kitchen table and two space kitchen chairs, a spare wicker "armchair," some spare standing lamps ... and the place comes with a built-in bookcase, so what more do I need? And my friend Jane just received a pickup truck as a gift from her father ... everything has, as I mentioned, fallen into place.
I do love Barnesville, I love Stillwater meeting, I love the stillness and the lack of traffic here, the rolling hills and how easy day-to-day life is and how cordial people are. I like no longer measuring my life in stop lights. I like Olney Friends School. I really was having a problem with uprooting again, after having just moved to Barnesville, ( and what an upheaval that was) to now "up and" go 3 and half hours away. But then I realized I will still be in Barnesville four days a week. I'll be home most Sundays for Stillwater meeting; I will still meet Sophie once a week for lunch. I will be sleeping in my bed here five nights out of seven. I'm not uprooting. I'm simply stretching my rubber band. That's my new metaphor ... stretching the rubber band. I hope it doesn't snap.
I think this must be a species of leading, as I've felt, in a way, as if I've floated through all of this. Having said that, it's my will--my volition--that has done all the acting. I, not an angel, filled out the applications, wrote the essays, solicited the recommendations, mailed the forms, made the phone calls, registered for the classes and found the apartment, but all along it has felt oddly out of body, as if some force were propelling me. Pushing and pulling. It doesn't altogether make sense to me to do this, but I'm trying to flow with it. If it's not a leading, it's demonic possession ... but it doesn't feel that way.
But how would I know? (Anybody with a good exorcist up their sleeve?) Actually, I do think demonic possession would feel ... less peaceful, more anxious, more frenzied. But that's just from watching horror movies ... and, oh yeah, reading the Bible. So it's probably a leading. Time will tell.
As for me going to divinity school, I know God uses cracked vessels.
Any thoughts?
I do love Barnesville, I love Stillwater meeting, I love the stillness and the lack of traffic here, the rolling hills and how easy day-to-day life is and how cordial people are. I like no longer measuring my life in stop lights. I like Olney Friends School. I really was having a problem with uprooting again, after having just moved to Barnesville, ( and what an upheaval that was) to now "up and" go 3 and half hours away. But then I realized I will still be in Barnesville four days a week. I'll be home most Sundays for Stillwater meeting; I will still meet Sophie once a week for lunch. I will be sleeping in my bed here five nights out of seven. I'm not uprooting. I'm simply stretching my rubber band. That's my new metaphor ... stretching the rubber band. I hope it doesn't snap.
I think this must be a species of leading, as I've felt, in a way, as if I've floated through all of this. Having said that, it's my will--my volition--that has done all the acting. I, not an angel, filled out the applications, wrote the essays, solicited the recommendations, mailed the forms, made the phone calls, registered for the classes and found the apartment, but all along it has felt oddly out of body, as if some force were propelling me. Pushing and pulling. It doesn't altogether make sense to me to do this, but I'm trying to flow with it. If it's not a leading, it's demonic possession ... but it doesn't feel that way.
But how would I know? (Anybody with a good exorcist up their sleeve?) Actually, I do think demonic possession would feel ... less peaceful, more anxious, more frenzied. But that's just from watching horror movies ... and, oh yeah, reading the Bible. So it's probably a leading. Time will tell.
As for me going to divinity school, I know God uses cracked vessels.
Any thoughts?
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