“A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” & The Image of God

The Image of God

The theology of the imago Dei, or image of God, holds that humans, being created by the divine, hold the image of their Creator within themselves.

Over the centuries, there has been quite a bit of discussion as to what exactly it means to be image-bearers. Perhaps the image is innate to every human; perhaps a human must first be in relationship with God before becoming an image-bearer. Perhaps the image is held fully in each person; each person carries a full image of God. Perhaps the image is a trait shared by all humanity (often this argument names that trait as capital-R Reason, though obviously people carry that trait to different extents; others have argued that the trait is relational, or the capacity for meaningful relationship). Perhaps the image is collective — all of humanity, together, is the image of God.

Francie Nolan: Fully Human, Fully Image-Bearing

In A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith quietly addresses the debates around imago Dei through her protagonist, Francie. After detailing the background and character of the Rommelys (Francie’s maternal family) and the Nolans (her paternal family), the section concludes with these paragraphs:

“And the child, Francie Nolan, was of all the Rommelys and all the Nolans. She had the violent weaknesses and passion for beauty of the shanty Nolans. She was a mosaic of her grandmother Rommely’s mysticism, her tale-telling, her great belief in everything and her compassion for the weak ones. She had a lot of her grandfather Rommely’s cruel will. She had some of her Aunt Evy’s talent for mimicking, some of Ruthie Nolan’s possessiveness. She had Aunt Sissy’s love for life and her love for children. She had Johnny’s sentimentality without his good looks. She had all of Katie’s soft ways and only half of the invisible steel of Katie. She was made up of all of these good and these bad things.

She was made up of more, too. She was the books she read in the library. She was the flower in the brown bowl. Part of her life was made from the tree growing rankly in the yard. She was the bitter quarrels she had with her brother whom she loved dearly. She was Katie’s secret, despairing weeping. She was the shame of her father staggering home drunk.

She was all of these things and of something more that did not come from the Rommelys nor the Nolans, the reading, the observing, the living from day to day. It was something that had been born into her and her only–the something different from anyone else in the two families. It was what God or whatever is His equivalent puts into each soul that is given life–the one different thing such as that which makes no two fingerprints on the face of the earth alike.” (p72-73)

Smith’s narrator asserts that there is a unique image that each person holds; each “something” is a gift of God.

One thing I love about this passage is that it doesn’t deny the “bad things” and the ways cruelty, brokenness, despair, and shame are handed down from generation to generation.

What I love even more is the way that this passage assumes God’s presence in a person. Smith nullifies the question of whether a person must be in relationship with God in order to carry the image of God.

Before birth or at birth, God put the “something” into Francie, so Francie is always already in relationship with God. She is in relationship as the receiver of this gift, as a bearer of the image. Even when she disavows God, she is still embodying that “something different,” still holding the lovingly wrapped package that God gave uniquely to her.

For discussion: If this narrator were writing about our life, what would be in the paragraph of what you inherited from your family? What would be in the paragraph about the “more,” the other influences in life?

Respond in the comments!

March 15, 2016March 24, 2016

Mad Max: Fury Road: Witness Nux

Witness Nux in Mad Max Fury Road - Literate Theology / Kate Rae Davis

SPOILER ALERT – In this post we witness Nux in the most significant 24 hours of his life. It pretty much opens with spoilers. So seriously, go watch the movie already! Then come back. I’ll be here.

Transformation

Nux may be the most drastically transformed character over the course of Mad Max: Fury Road.

We meet him as a happily indoctrinated war boy, but hours later he fully commits himself to the destruction of Immortan Joe’s empire and the overthrowing of the Citadel.

At the start of the film, his body is “battle fodder” (as the Splendid put it) in the service of the empire, but in the end he sacrifices his body in order to destroy the empirical forces.

And he’s the one character the audience sees progress through all the types of hope.

Kamakrazee War Boy

When we first meet Nux, he’s resting and connected to his “blood bag” — death is imminent. And yet, hearing of betrayal, he’s energized, determined to die for the purposes of the empire and to please Immortan Joe. He refuses to stay at the Citadel and “die soft.” “If I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die historic on the Fury Road.”

We see him cheer as a pierced war boy shouts “Witness!” and jumps to his death, taking out an enemy vehicle. When a war boy dies for the purposes of the Cult of the V8 (the religion of the empire), there seems to be a tradition of witnessing. Part of what makes the death worthwhile is the memory of the way in which the death occurred, the way it benefited the empire.

When Nux goes on his own kamakrazee drive, dumping gallons of gasoline into the car and riding into the apocalyptic desert storm, he shouts to Max, “Witness me, Blood Bag!” He’s thoroughly committed to the Cult, determined to “ride eternal on the highways of Valhalla” with Immortan Joe.

Nicholas Hoult, the actor who plays Nux, says, “He’s very hyped up and running on this enthusiasm and belief that he’s destined for something great.”

Despair to Hope

That enthusiasm dissipates when he fails to kill Furiosa on behalf of Joe.

Capable finds him at the back of the War Rig, hitting his head in punishment, “He [Joe] saw it all. My own blood bag driving the rig that killed her [Angharad the Splendid].” He laments that he “should be walking with the Immorta.” “I thought I was being spared for something great.”

At that point, he aligns himself with Furiosa and the wives — not because he thinks what they’re doing is right, but because he believes himself to be exiled from the empire and faith of Immortan Joe. His very survival is dependent on getting somewhere livable with the traitors.

It’s not until Max reveals the plan to take the Citadel that Nux fully recovers from his despair, acknowledging the opposite of despair: “Feels like hope.”

Eyes to See

When we first meet Nux, he’s in standard war boy makeup: blackened eyes and powder-whitened body.

By the time he claims hope, this layer has begun to fall away. The white powder has been sand-blown off; we can see that he is living flesh. The blackness around his eyes gradually clears; Nux develops clear-sightedness.

Which reminds me of another man dedicated to his religion and transformed through a shift in sight — the Apostle Paul. Saul (as he was then called) was on his own Fury Road in pursuit of traitors. The opening sentence of Acts 9 tells us that Saul was seeking permission to capture those who betrayed the religious establishment of his day. Perhaps Saul even understood himself to be anointed, shiny and chrome, for exactly the task of recovering the traitorous souls.

But Jesus appeared to Saul and struck him blind. Days later, he regains his sight, is renamed Paul, and begins championing the Christian cause. His mission began when he regained true sight.

Nux, like Paul, is an image of conversion — and, also like Paul, a martyr for the coming of the Kingdom.

Witness

They’re on the road back to the Citadel when Immortan Joe is finally defeated. Cheedo shouts back to those in the War Rig: “He’s dead! He’s dead.” For just a moment, the camera lingers in a closeup on Nux’s face. The last scales fall from his eyes.

If Immortan Joe has died, then Nux is not in exile from the true faith of the Cult of the V8. Joe will not carry him into Valhalla. Joe was not an Immorta; perhaps there are no Immorta; perhaps there is no Valhalla. The entirety of that faith is proven false, even foolish, in light of Joe’s death.

Nux is free from his religious and empirical ties, free to choose his commitments, free to act for the interest of goodness for the world rather than simply for the best interests of Joe.

Nux is free to love.

And he loves greatly. Jesus claims that there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. Earlier, Nux had told Capable that he thought he was being spared for “something great,” and in this moment perhaps he realizes that he was, and that the moment of greatness has arrived, greatness for a cause he could never have imagined the day before.

Nux points to Capable, his beloved, and whispers (not shouts — no, there is no need to shout for glory when the very act contains all the glory of God) “Witness me.”

When Nux finally dies, he dies historic on the Fury Road. He was right from the very beginning. He dies historic — dies in such a way that a barrier is provided to protect his friends and to protect the hope that they will carry to the Citadel.

A day earlier, he was willing to die in hope of personal gain — glory in Valhalla, feasting with the heroes, perhaps being honored as a hero himself. Here, he dies for a hope in this world, hope for an abundance of green things and clean water for many. He dies for a hope that he knows he won’t get to participate in.

I can’t help but think that the entire film is a witness to Nux’s conversion and to his great love.

Saint Nux, who gave his life so that the world might be saved.

This post is part of a series on the theology of Mad Max: Fury Road. Find the rest of the series here.

For discussion: What other saints and martyrs do you notice in Mad Max: Fury Road? What do you think it means to witness to the life and death of another? What might need to die so that you are more free to love greatly? What are you willing to risk your life for, or to die for?

Respond in the comments below!

March 8, 2016June 8, 2019

The Book of Uncommon Prayer & How to Pray Without Ceasing

Brian Doyle's "A Book of Uncommon Prayer" & How to Pray Without Ceasing - on Literate Theology / Kate Rae Davis

The title first caught my eye: The Book of Uncommon Prayer. I’m a lover of the Book of Common Prayer, and I can’t resist a hint of irreverence. The table of contents promised prayers for “cashiers and checkout-counter folks” and for “muddy paw prints on the kitchen floor;” prayers for every layer of modern human life, from the mundane presence of port-a-potties to the heartbreaking reality of people whose dads left them as kids.

I had expected to find short blessings that could be spoken in strange places or at times when our own BCP feels a little stiff or distant. What I actually encountered was page after page of Doyle’s sincere, most-well-intentioned thought-rambles.

To name his prayers as ramblings may sound dismissive, but it’s meant in the holiest of senses. Doyle writes as though he’s the scribe of the voice that narrates the thoughts in our heads — that kind of focused run-on-sentence that deals with life as it comes, that helps us narrate our days and our identities, that talks us into wanting the best for others.

When reading his “Prayer for the Men & Women Who Huddle Inside Vast Rain Slickers All Day Holding Up STOP Signs at Construction Sites & Never Appear to Shriek in Despair & Exhaustion,” it felt as though I myself were behind the wheel of a car on a rainy day, idling past one of those workers, and that these are the thoughts that may go through my head. “I pray for warmth for you. Less rain. No idiot drivers whizzing past… I pray that you are getting paid decent wages.”

The real gift of Doyle’s work to us is not the words of the prayers themselves, which I doubt will ever be read over bowed heads at family gatherings. Rather, his gift is the recognition that all thought is prayer. And with that, the recognition that some thoughts are perhaps more worthy prayers than others.

St Paul reminds us to “pray without ceasing,” to pray “at all times with all kinds of prayers and requests.” I’ve heard people say that Paul was exaggerating, that he certainly didn’t mean to pray all the time, just to pray a lot.

But what if Paul did mean what he wrote?

What if the voice in my head could be nudged into giving up its criticisms and its concern for my schedule and its constant readying for the next thing, and instead became attuned to the people, animals, places, and items in its midst? What if my inner critic was re-formed into a silent chaplain?

Doyle’s work reminds readers how many opportunities we have to bless the world as beings and things come into our sight each day. We each have an unlimited abundance of blessing to offer.

From where I’m sitting, I can send blessings of gratitude on my dog for his (not entirely necessary) watchfulness; blessings on those who grew, picked, and dried the tea leaves in my cup; a prayer for good working conditions and fair wages for those who built my computer; a prayer of deep gratitude to anyone who takes the time to read my words; and of course, a prayer of appreciation that Brian Doyle reminded me of the power of my prayers.

These prayers may do nothing for their recipients, though we can hope alongside Doyle that they may feel a surge of joy for reasons they do not know. But the prayers will undoubtedly do something for us who mumble them, instilling us with gratitude, forming us to notice the whispered cries for justice, orienting us towards love.

So: a blessing on Brian Doyle, who didn’t at all punt it like he was afraid he would; who was transparent in his humanity for the sake of his readers; who not only gave us some lovely thoughts but more importantly showed us how it’s done. I pray the process of writing it was at least as formative as the process of reading it has been. I pray he’s proud of his work, and not too self-conscious about letting all us readers inside his head and his heart. And I pray he feels a surge of joy right now for reasons he does not know. And so: Amen.

Questions: What people, pets, or items call for your blessing in your immediate vicinity? Share in the comments below.

March 1, 2016March 24, 2016

Mad Max: Fury Road & Competing Hopes

Mad Max: Competing Hopes - read on Literate Theology / Kate Rae Davis

This post is part of a series on the theology of Mad Max: Fury Road. Find the rest of the series here.

Mad Max: Fury Road offers a post-apocalyptic image of the future in order to push audiences to ask questions about our present. The film seems to center around hope and its role in these character’s lives. The various factions offer a couple different ways of understanding hope, highlighting the problems of each, before providing an ultimate resolution through offering a framework for a healthy way to hope.

Tunnels and Directions

Eschatology is the aspect of theology that concerns the “four last things:” death, judgment, heaven, and hell. The eschaton is shorthand for the place where we hope all this — all our prayers, policies, and parenting — the place that we hope everything is headed.

Sometimes when talking about eschatology, theologians use the metaphor of the light at the end of the tunnel. In the tunnel metaphor, the eschaton is the light towards which we move. In Mad Max language, we could say the eschaton is the Green Place.

The metaphor we use matters — deeply — to the way we understand the world. The metaphor we us shapes our actions in the world.

The tunnel metaphor is an enclosed line, and the confines of the tunnel mean that it’s impossible to get off track. As long as we keep moving, we’ll end up at the destination. There are only two options: (1) going back to where we first came from; in scriptural language we’d say “back to Eden,” to the garden in Genesis 2, or (2) going forward to the light at the other end of the tunnel; we might say heaven or the city described in the Book of Revelations.

What’s problematic is that the tunnel metaphor allows us to believe that absolutely anything that happens — fossil fuel consumption, nuclear weaponry, murder — is all part of a linear history that God has laid down. It’s all part of the tunnel line that will eventually bring us to the light.

The metaphor offered in Mad Max: Fury Road for the eschaton is the Green Place, and they get there by “a long night’s run, headed east.” The image retains the darkness/light metaphor of the tunnel (the Green Place will be on the other side of darkness; it is associated with the coming light of dawn), and adds greenness — the color associated with vibrant life, from vegetation.

This driving metaphor solves the issue of the linear history of the tunnel metaphor. On the drive, it’s possible to get off track — they could begin to head too far north or south and miss the Green Place. They could find themselves going the wrong direction entirely, a direction that’s neither “back to Eden” nor “ahead to the City.” The driving metaphor preserves potential for missing the mark, the potential of human error.

Where is Hope Located?

The film asks us to consider where we place our hope by juxtaposing two eschatons, two places that hope can reside.

Hoping for Death

The first form of hope we see epitomized in the War Boys, especially Nux. For the first portion of the movie, Nux represents disembodied hope, meaning that arriving at this eschaton requires the loss of one’s body. The eschaton, called Valhalla (sometimes written Walhalla), is reached only through death. Early in the film, we see Nux screaming “I live. I die. I live again!” Death is the gateway to the paradisiacal afterlife.

In this theology, the individual’s arrival will be more honorable if the death happens in combat that furthers the cause of the empire. Immortan Joe tells the war boy Nux, “Return my treasures to me and I myself will carry you to the gates of Valhalla.” He anoints Nux with chrome spray and the blessing that he will “ride eternal, shiny, and chrome.”

I’ve read some commentators who were quick to interpret Nux’s disembodied hope as a parallel for Islamic extremists. Which, sure, and those similarities don’t need yet another summary. What I haven’t read much of is the parallel that Nux also represents the disembodied hope found in many religions, including some forms of Christianity.

The belief that death is more honorable if done to further the religious cause is as much a Christian belief as an Islamic one. Many early Christians died to uphold the Christian cause; we refer to them as the martyrs. And when we tell the story of martyrs, we witness to the importance of their lives and deaths.

Both religions (the Cult of the V8 and some forms of Christianity) are headed by men believed to be immortal (Immortan Joe; Jesus) who will deliver their followers to a paradisiacal afterlife (Valhalla; Heaven). Death for the sake of the leader’s teachings will lead to glory and honor after death — it is this glorious death that Nux desperately seeks.

So what’s the alternative to hoping for life after death?

Hoping for Life

The Green Place — spoilers abound from here on

We see the alternative to the War Boys’ disembodied hope in the located hope of the protagonists, and especially of the escaped breeders/wives. The wives’ eschaton is the Green Place — a located place that they can physically access in this life.

The wives have never been to the Green Place. Their hope rests on what they have been told about the place, presumably from Furiosa. Furiosa believes on the faith of a distant memory; the wives believe without seeing. And the belief is a great comfort to them; it’s in the moments they are most stressed and uncertain that one of them will repeat, “We are going to the Green Place.”

They are willing to risk everything to reach this place — even death. They are willing to die as a result of their hope, but their hope does not necessitate their death. When we locate the eschaton in this world, it instills us with a hope so compelling that we are willing to die to get there, yet death is not required to get there. That relationship between hope and death is a far cry from the War Boys, who are willing to die because they must die in order to reach their eschaton.

This is why the War Boys cheer when they watch one of their own go to his death — early in the chase, an injured man anoints himself with chrome spray, shouts “Witness me!” and jumps to his death while taking out an enemy vehicle. The War Boys shout victoriously.

But when Angharad the Splendid falls, those present are tearful. It’s not only because they were close to her — the War Boys have also lived together; they’ve probably grown up together; they are close. Their grief is a result of their hope. They know the Green Place, no matter how good it will be, will be somehow lacking without Angharad present. They grieve because she will never get to arrive at the place she had put her hope.

What the seekers of the Green Place share with other forms of Christianity is that they follow a real, flesh-and-blood person: Furiosa for the wives; Jesus for the disciples, who had no idea, when they started following him, that he would resurrect. They both look for the already existing presence of the eschaton, with their own vocabularies: the Green Place; the Kingdom of God that is within us or among us.

Repentance

When the group discovers that the Green Place has become a swamp of poisoned water, we would expect their hope to die or to shift to hope in an afterlife. And for a moment, that despairing moment when Furiosa takes off her metal hand — hands are a symbol of agency; perhaps she feels she is nothing left to be done — and she kneels in the expanse of the barren desert and she silently wails her lament — for that moment the audience and Furiosa alike are swallowed by despair. All hope is deferred.

Max tells Furiosa that “hope is a mistake.” But I think what he’s actually saying is that the headstrong hoping for something out there is a mistake. To hope that someone else has solved what their society wasn’t able to solve is a mistake.

It seems that they gather themselves in a hope-against-hope, rouse themselves to keep going east, continuing to do what they’ve been doing for the last day. Max rides after them and calls them to repent — a word that literally means to turn back.

When Max had claimed that “hope is a mistake” he added: “If you can’t fix what’s broken, you’ll go insane.” Which actually points the audience to a new sort of hope.

Hope that is not somewhere out there; that is the kind of hope that is a mistake. True hope relies on “fixing what’s broken,” mending what is fractured, fighting to restore goodness with what we have. Hope is in redeeming (“regaining possession”) of what has been used for evil. Hope must be found within us and among us.

When Max calls them to repentance, the response to the plan is clear: “Feels like hope.”

It’s Nux, newly converted, who names it so.

(Post concludes after image)

True Hope: The Green Place is Within You

This is the turning point of their journey and of the film’s eschatology. In this moment, Nux — previously a subscriber to disembodied hope — converts to hope in a real place. And the women — subscribers to a hope located outside of themselves — find a resilient hope that exists in and among their own selves.

Far from the despairing lament, this type of hope is stronger than any hope they had experienced before.

This is the hope that Jesus tried to instill in his followers. Jesus repeatedly proclaimed the Kingdom of God as a present reality. Jesus proclaimed that this Kingdom is “within us” and “among us.” Hope exists within an individual and among a community. Hope likely requires real work to effect changes in the way a community structures itself — fixing what’s broken will not be easy. But we must have this resilient internal hope that the broken can be mended in order to act faithfully and step into the Kingdom of God that is both already present and not yet fully manifest.

The Green Place still exists; they carry it within them. They carry it in their imaginations and their desires. They carry it into reality in the Citadel.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is the tree of life.

This post is part of a series on the theology of Mad Max: Fury Road. Find the rest of the series here.

Questions: How do you speak about your hope? Where do you locate hope? How do you tap into the Green Place within your own self?

February 26, 2016March 24, 2016

Christian Values Voters

Today, I’d like to add to the definition of “Christian values” Voters. Yes, this is religion and politics — our culture’s sacred taboos in polite conversation — brought together.

The Meaning of Wealth

First, some words from G.K. Chesterton on a Christian understanding of the trustworthiness of the rich. The presidential candidates’ net worth differs depending on who you ask, as does the meaning of their worth. Most often, I seem to hear candidates’ wealth discussed as a sign of respectability, responsibility, and trustworthiness. Our culture equates the accumulation of wealth with responsible citizenry, achievement, and moral goodness. For the record, both parties have candidates with considerable wealth. On the Dem side: Clinton is worth something between $15-45 million; Sanders around half a million. On the Rep side: the estimated worth of Drumpf is over $4,000 million (I find it helpful to remember that a billion is a thousand million); Bush around $22 million; Carson somewhere between $10-26 million; Kasich around $10 million; Cruz around $3 million; Rubio something under half a million.

G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Dover, 2004), p111-112:

Only the Christian Church can offer any rational objection to a complete confidence in the rich. For she has maintained from the beginning that the danger was not in man’s environment, but in man. […] If we assume the words of Christ [on the impossibility of a camel going through the eye of a needle] to have meant the very least that they could mean, His words must at he very least mean this–that rich men are not very likely to be morally trustworthy. Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil all modern society to rags. The mere minimum of the Church would be a deadly ultimatum to the world. For the whole modern world is absolutely based on the assumption, not that the rich are necessary (which is tenable), but that the rich are trustworthy, which (for a Christian) is not tenable. You will hear everlastingly, in all discussions about newspapers, companies, aristocracies, or party politics, this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man. The whole case of Christianity is that a man who is dependent upon the luxuries of this life is a corrupt man, spiritually corrupt, politically corrupt, financially corrupt. There is one thing that Christ and all the Christian saints have said with a sort of savage monotony. They have said simply that to be rich is to be in peculiar danger of moral wreck. It is not demonstrably un-Christian to kill the rich as violators of definable justice. It is not demonstrably un-Christian to crown the rich as convenient rulers of society. It is not certainly un-Christian to rebel against the rich or to submit to the rich. But it is quite certainly un-Christian to trust the rich, to regard the rich as more morally safe than the poor. [,,,] In the best Utopia, I must be prepared for the moral fall of any man in any position at any moment; especially for my fall from my position at this moment.

Everyone is, to some degree, inclined to immorality, even if they have millions in the bank. Chesterton’s point is that we are all human, and any of us may morally fail and fall.

So then a better question than “how much wealth do candidates have?” is often suggested to be “how much do candidates donate?” But I’d propose an even more relevant question as: “What do candidates spend their wealth on: personally, professionally, and through donations?” Spending a small fortune on a private jet is not the same as spending a small fortune on a child’s college education. And I’m less impressed with someone’s million dollar donation if it went to renovating an opera house when there are people starving in our own country.

Fear and Love

Below is a portion from Shane Hipps’s Selling Water By the River on love (which I think all Christians can agree is pretty highly ranked as a Christian value) and fear. I won’t add to the plethora of opinion pieces on the use of fear in this presidential debate, or the ways a certain candidate (ahem) is exploiting fear responses for votes.

Shane Hipps, Selling Water by the River (Jericho Books, 2012), p 86-87:

Darkness and light do not exist together. They have never met.

Darkness is always at the mercy of light. If you want to be rid of darkness, light a lamp.

In 1 John 4:18, he writes, ‘There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear. What John writes here is deeply insightful for two reasons. First, he does not use the expected dualism between love and hate; instead he sets fear at odds with Love. This is truly revealing, as it shows us that behind all hate is really a deeper problem of fear.

Second, we are shown that the relationship between love and fear is the same as that of light and darkness. Love and fear cannot occupy the same space. Moreover, Love and fear are not equal and opposite forces. Fear is always at the mercy of Love. One way to see it is that fear is actually the absence of Love, not the opposite. The lesson here is an important one. Love has no opposite. No force in the universe rivals it.

A candidate’s courage/bravado is artificial if the candidate is the one instilling the fear in the populace. It’s easy to fight an enemy when you know the enemy is a phantom you have created. Perhaps we should collectively take a few deep breaths to evaluate the legitimacy and source of a fear. Perhaps we should quiet the surging adrenaline we all experience in shouting matches, in order to listen for gentler whispers of love.

Christian Values

These certainly aren’t the only criteria that Christians will — or should — use when completing their ballots. But we should certainly evaluate the culture’s equation of wealth with respectability. And the capacity for Love is certainly worthy of our attention and consideration. When we claim to vote with Christian values, we shouldn’t mean that we’re looking at candidates stances on one or two select issues (however important those two are, they are only two in a much wider, global picture). We should examine the wide array of Christian values that frame an entire person and their way of being in the world. And I do mean the world: it’s too easy to forget that the majority of the President’s job description is about foreign affairs, not domestic issues.

For discussion: If you’re Christian, what stances on issues do you look for in candidates? What life-values do you look for?

February 18, 2016March 24, 2016

Gender & God in the Hunger Games

Gender and God in the Hunger Games - Literate Theology / Kate Rae Davis

Questions of Gender Identity

Our society struggles with how to understand gender identity.

Some people have concrete ideas of what it means to be a man or a woman while others question if there are any traits essential to gender. Each group seems to be attempting to bend society to their preferences, whether for stricter gender conformity or for a move towards androgyny or multiplicity.

In Christian theology, questions of gender are taking place not only horizontally in society, but also vertically: is God masculine or feminine? Is it acceptable to use both feminine and masculine pronouns when referring to God? Might it even be preferable to do so?

In the first novel of her Hunger Games trilogy, Suzanne Collins presents an image of a post-gender society that helps us imagine the Kingdom of God as a reality. In this dystopian society, individuals live out of true identity without pressure to conform to a predetermined concept of gender identity.

Gender Identity in Katniss & Peeta

The main characters of The Hunger Games, Katniss and Peeta, give a glimpse of gender within the Kingdom of God. They do not conform the gender norms that exist in of our current society, and thus question the existence of such societal norms.

Peeta, an artistically gifted baker, values connection over hierarchy and bonds through shared feelings at least as much as shared experiences — qualities considered feminine by contemporary USAmerican society. Because of his traditionally feminine qualities, many are interested in Peeta’s portrayal of feminized masculinity; some reviewers have even criticized Collins for having unfavorably over-feminized a lead character.

Katniss is a hunter. She is stoic and emotionally distant, at times out-of-touch with her own emotions and those of others.

It is easy to view the relationship between Katniss and Peeta as a gender-role reversal. In their vocations, they go against the norms. In their emotional awareness and capacity, they defy our expectations. However, such statements assume that the culturally constructed norms of gender we hold today are in some way intrinsic to males and females.

Reviewers attempting to place our current understanding of gender onto Peeta and Katniss have a hard time of it. Writing for Bitch Media, Kelsey Wallace concludes her character evaluation of Peeta: “If Gale is the bad boy, Peeta is, well, something else. Not the good boy exactly, but maybe the nice boy.” In some way, Peeta resists categorization.

Gender Identity in Panem

Indeed, the entire society of Panem seems to resist categorization to the extent that it could be described as post-gender. In District Twelve, survival matters more than conformity so much so that no one seems surprised by a girl who ventures outside the protection of the fence to hunt and gather. The other spectrum of society, in the Capitol, also defies our current gender norms, as both men and women seem to be equally concerned with fashion and makeup.

Rather than imposing our society onto Panem and its inhabitants, we would be wise to allow the text to question our internalized understanding of gender roles. Why are we, the readers, surprised by a female archer, or a man in makeup? Why are some of us angered by Peeta’s vulnerability, or by Katniss’s inability to intuit Peeta’s emotions? We have been so indoctrinated by the gender norms of our culture that we can’t even see past them when another society, another way of being, is presented.

Identity Beyond Gender

Collins offers her readers a new way of looking at gender. While Katniss is preparing for the pre-Games interview, she is trying to figure out how best to present herself: “charming? Aloof? Fierce? … I’m too ‘vulnerable’ for ferocity. I’m not witty. Funny. Sexy. Or mysterious.” Unable to categorize herself in either (from today’s standpoint) feminine or masculine roles, she vents to her stylist: “I just can’t be one of those people [my coach] wants me to be.” Like many individuals in today’s world, Katniss just can’t force herself to fit into a culturally-dictated cookie-cutter role, regardless of its femininity or masculinity.

Cinna offers a solution to both Katniss and the reader that is at once obvious and beautiful:

“Why don’t you just be yourself?”

Amidst the questions of Katniss’s combination of masculine and feminine traits and Peeta’s feminized depiction, critics have missed Cinna’s prophecy. Is Katniss a masculine woman? Is Peeta a feminine man? Within the world of the novel, the questions don’t apply: Katniss is Katniss; Peeta is Peeta. The characters are fully themselves, in the full complexity of their gender.

The Identity of God

Personification

The God of the Bible includes both feminine and masculine traits. In the beginning, God creates “male and female” in the image of God’s self. Scripture describes God with masculine images such as father (e.g., Hosea 11:1) and king (e.g., Psalm 29:10), as well as feminine depictions such as mother (e.g., Isaiah 66:13).

Surely, this is a God whose identity is reflected by both men and women. God’s gender is carried by the diversity of masculine and feminine individuals; it feels safe to imagine that the Kingdom of God will not only tolerate masculine and feminine genders but will accept and celebrate such diversity.

And yet, such a view, as hopeful as it sounds, is too limited, too unimaginative. The God of scripture includes and transcends gender. From the anthropomorphic images of God as father, king, and mother, we could easily picture God as a male or female figure. However, to do so would be to misconstrue the characteristic being invoked.

As Hebrew scholar David Stein notes, “Personification was employed as a vehicle to convey a statement about deity—and especially about one’s relationship with deity.” What is being invoked in the image of father or mother is an aspect of relationship, a situational similarity, rather than the full, embodied, engendered being.

Such an understanding of the text gives a clearer understanding of what the scriptural author wants to invoke in the audience. It also clarifies seemingly paradoxical images, such as “suck at the breast of kings”, in which a female biological function of nursing is ascribed to male rulers. To understand the personifications of God too literally means to deny the grand all-ness of a Divinity that transcends all human boundaries and definition, including gender.

Beyond Every Human Category

Genesis 1 not only sets the stage for the entire story, it introduces the character and event of God with a powerful first impression of a being who is beyond every human category. This God creates and orders the universe with a word; it is part of this deity’s identity to surpass all traits of humans, meaning that this being is almost nothing like a human. Such a God is so other that “the audience not only receives no warrant to ascribe social gender, but would be hard pressed to do so,” writes Stein.

Just as Collins’s created society of Panem does not ask questions of Katniss’s nor Peeta’s gender, the audience of scripture receives no warrant to ascribe social gender to God. Those who do have an equally hard time, as demonstrated above. Stein, emphasizing the importance of first impressions, summarizes the rule for understanding the transcendent inclusiveness of God with regards to gender: “What is inappropriate to the opening, do not do what’s joined to it—that is, the whole Torah.”

How, then, should gender be understood in a Kingdom that lives under a God who is introduced to be beyond human understanding?

Why Don’t You Just Be Yourself?

Christian theologians have been easily sidetracked by our own understandings of gender and identity in the debate over God’s masculine and feminine descriptions. Some attempt to equally disperse masculine and feminine pronouns, others try to discern which parts of the Trinity are which gender. As a solution, to paraphrase Cinna, why don’t we just let God be God?

If Christians are to read Scripture to understand the character of God, as the people of ancient Israel did, we must not allow vision to be clouded by the predominant culture’s misunderstandings and false truths. Doing so would be to superimpose our paradigm onto God, effectively killing the living God and creating an idol in humanity’s image. Just as readers of The Hunger Games can fully appreciate the narrative by allowing Katniss and Peeta to live out of their truest selves, so should even the most critical reader of scripture allow God to be the true God, without attempts to superimpose a gendered box onto ~~Her/Him~~ God.

A Kingdom Understanding of Gender

A Kingdom understanding of gender must reflect a God who acts uniquely and creates humanity in God’s image.

Although a dystopia, Panem presents a society that appears to be largely beyond concerns of gender roles, whether such nonchalance is the result of desperate survival, as it is in District Twelve, or boredom and body decoration, as it is in the Capitol. In Panem, people are intrigued and impressed by the full identity of Katniss, not only that she is at once strong and female. Even more so, the audience of the Games is captivated by Peeta’s emotional vulnerability and intuitive ability to connect, and not only because he is a man doing so. Rather than praising individuals for breaking gender boundaries, Panem is a society that allows individuals to live out of their truest identity and understanding of self.

May we anticipate a Kingdom in which we are accepted and celebrated for living out of our true self rather than a societal expectation, in which the complexity of an individual’s gender-sex alignment is secondary to the fullness and flourishing of individual identity.

Questions: Did you have any reactions to the gender of Peeta or Katniss while reading/viewing The Hunger Games? What did that reaction tell you about yourself and how you understand gender? What would you do with your life if it didn’t make you a “bad woman/man”?

February 1, 2016March 24, 2016

A Prayer for Women’s Equality

Below is a prayer for women’s equality, written in the Celtic style. Celtic prayers heavily utilize repetition and rhyme, and in both content and form these prayers emphasize the Trinity.

I wrote it at a time when I was attempting to understand my pastoral giftings and my womanhood. Too often, I have felt that USAmerican culture values a woman’s role as mother more highly than any other contribution she may make to society. Having come from a church with all male pastors and being a Divinity program, at the time, in which all the other students were men, I had very little imagination for being both female and pastoral. Those themes are heavy in this prayer; I hope it serves you well in whatever your struggles are today.

A Prayer for Women’s Equality

“By a woman and a tree the world first perished.”

I wish, O Son of the living God,
eternal, ancient King,
for reconciliation between the sexes,
that I might answer your calling.

I pray, O Son of the living God,
eternal, ancient King,
for –

I wish –
that –

Mother, Child,
Goose of the Wild,
Keep me from despair,
Hear my prayer.

I pray, O Child of the living God,
eternal, ancient Queen,
for compassion in men’s hearts
that they could view women as clean.

I strive, O Child of the living God,
eternal, ancient Queen,
for a new paradigm, not princess or bitch,
that views women as strong and not mean.

I hope, O Child of the living God,
eternal, ancient Queen,
for society to know women have worth
after their children are weaned,
or at least after the age of eighteen.

I long, O Child of the living God,
eternal, ancient Queen,
for rest within the body that is me,
that I may be serene.

Questions for You

What are your hopes and prayers for women in 2016? What are your concerns?

January 26, 2016March 24, 2016

The Prophetic Works of Lady Gaga

Pop star Lady Gaga is more than an entertainer, she is a prophetic voice. Through fashion and performance art, she functions as prophet for secular USAmerica.

Israel had many prophets, but today the church isn’t adding anyone’s words to the Biblical canon. When did we begin to refuse to see the prophets in our midst?

Prophets Seek Justice

The primary role of a prophet is to work for justice. Prophets actively stand outside of society in order to critique the injustices within society, with the hope of bringing about change and reconciliation. The prophet simultaneously exposes the present reality while developing a vision for the future.

Prophets have traditionally used a variety of tools, including, as Dan Allender writes, “piercing narrative, powerful images, prescient poetry” and a willingness to “bear the consequence of being viewed as an enemy of the status quo.” The prophet employs such artistry and suffering to create a compelling vision of what reality could be if justice were enacted, if love and mercy were lived.

Reconciliation & the LGBTQ Community

Perhaps most notable is Lady Gaga’s prophetic work against injustice against the LGBTQ community. She came out as bisexual to both acceptance and criticism from the queer community: she was accused of not being “gay enough” to claim bisexuality nor to be a representative voice. Regardless of the level of her bisexuality, claiming it to a national audience was a prophetic move: Gaga chose to align herself with the marginalized in a hetero-normative culture. As many prophets before her, she actively stood outside of the cultural norm in order to engage and critique culture’s treatment of a marginalized people.

Lady Gaga worked for reconciliation between LGBTQ and heterosexual persons, who often have been viewed as oppositional. “Born This Way,” was became an anthem for the community. It was significant for its overt shout-out to the LGBTQ community; equally significant is that she included heterosexuals:

“No matter gay, straight, or bi,
lesbian, transgendered life,
I’m on the right track, baby,
I was born to survive.”

These lyrics were an effort to highlight LGBTQ rights, but they were also a way to unite LGBTQ and heterosexual communities. Live performances of the piece end with Gaga and her dance company bending towards one another in a circular, all-embracing hug (see title image). The performance offers an image that speaks to a vision of what our reality could be, one in which gay individuals are not only equal, but lovingly included. Her image calls us toward the possible reality in which we are one, united humanity that includes multiple sexualities and sexual orientations.

Prophets must bear the consequence of provoking controversy and disrupting the status quo. As a result of Lady Gaga’s involvement with the LGBTQ community, rumors circulated in an attempt to shame her. One of the most direct attacks on her sexual identity was the rumor that she has a penis. Rather than retaliating (and effectively proving that she would be ashamed to be part of the transgendered community), Gaga claims to love the rumor. She stated: “‘This has been the greatest accomplishment of my life: to get young people to throw away what society has taught them is wrong.’” If fans believe her to be transgendered and still come to her performances, listen to her music, and support her work, Gaga takes it as a hopeful sign for future inclusion of transgendered individuals in society. Rather than suffer, Gaga reframes the consequence into a cause for celebration.

Another consequence has been the protestors who gather outside of Monster Balls, Lady Gaga’s stadium concerts. One writer recalled a concert in Nashville in which picketers held signs “urging ‘homosexuals’ and other ‘sinners’ to ‘repent’.” During the show, Gaga shouted from stage, “Jesus loves every fucking one of you!” before launching into a raucous performance, “as if to say, the only proper theological response to bigotry and hatred is to dance in its face.” Prophet Gaga practices a living theology; rather than discussing abstractions, she moves into actions.

Reconciliation between the Sexes

In realm of sex, Gaga prophetically exposed the present reality by reflecting back to her audience what the present really looks like, and the reflection is startling. One of the most notable examples is the ‘meat dress’, which Gaga wore at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards. Feminist Kate Durbin notes that “masculinists see but a piece of meat, so Gaga gives them exactly what they ‘see’ – a piece of meat. In order, of course, that the Male Gaze might ‘see’ itself.” The powerful fashion image of a woman wearing raw beef exposed the hardness of the heart of USAmerican society.

Some of her other fashion pieces have been similarly tied to society’s treatment of women. Lady Gaga has worn many weapon-inspired bras — a flame-thrower bra in the “Bad Romance” video; a gun bra in the “Alejandro” video; a fire bra on the cover of GQ magazine. Durbin states that, like many women, Gaga’s “breasts were seen as a weapon, therefore she was going to literally turn them into that.” Gaga hears the narrative society tells women and exposes the flaws and pain in the narrative through constructing a powerful fashion image.

Another statement on sex and gender was the introduction of Gaga’s alter-ego, Jo Calderone, at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards. The opening monologue made it clear that this performer was not Lady Gaga as Jo Calderone: “Gaga? Yeah, her,” Jo says while pointing to some vague distance; Gaga is not here. To further emphasize the opposition between Gaga and Jo, he informs the audience, “She [Gaga] left me [Jo].” Gaga, according to Jo, groups him in with other men: “She said I’m just like the last one.” Jo, for his part, dances in a company comprised entirely of men; the audience does not see a single woman on stage during the performance.

Gaga here uses her one body to portray a woman and a man who are in opposition to one another. Similarly, the viewers are one humanity in opposition to one another as a result of the gender divide. The audience knows it to be absurd for Gaga to critique Jo, just as it is equally absurd for Jo to feel left out from Gaga’s life, since they are one and the same. The audience can then look back on themselves and see that they create divides within the one humanity, divides where there should be unity. Gaga-versus-Jo is a picture of humanity, a mirror for how we relate across the sexes.

Prophets Expose Idolatry

An additional role of the prophet is to expose idolatry. James Danaher wrote that in USAmerican culture “what we recognize and revere about a person is their celebrity status.” Celebrity is the new idolatry. Most of us join the game, attempting to construct an identity using various social media to gain some amount of fame. At the same time, we hate celebrities for their status and for having the resources to continually re-create their identities, so eventually we demand their destruction.

Gaga undermined the system of celebrity to show that it leads to death and destruction. In her performance of “Paparazzi” at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, Gaga opens by naming the idol USAmericans have come to worship, and recognizes her potential position as sacrifice: “I pray the fame won’t take my life.” The fame is the god that this society has made, and it demands ritual sacrifice. By the end of the show, Gaga is covered in blood and hanging from a rope, enacting her own death.

By walking, willingly, to her own enacted death, she showed the audience what we do to celebrities: we demand violent destruction. The image does what prophetic images are meant to do: disrupt denial and expose idolatry of the heart.

Having shown the audience her destruction, Gaga is then free of the audience’s demands on identity because she has fulfilled that identity and shown that it leads to death. After that moment, all her work is free to be performed without inhibition because it is enacted in the shadow of her own death. The audience are no longer able to impose an identity on her; it is she who identifies herself with true identity/ies.

What The Church Can Learn

Lady Gaga’s work as a prophet within the secular community questions and critiques the church, inviting its members to recognize good news with fresh sight and to return to worship. Gaga, in acting as a secular prophet, aligns herself with the marginalized people of the LGBTQ community. The church should be convicted: we are called to stand with the oppressed and marginalized, and instead are the ones excluding and condemning. As Gaga reconciles and unifies queer and straight peoples, the church creates divides with hateful language on picket signs. Gaga’s work asks the church: what is a loving response to individuals, regardless of sexual orientation? Her scream of Jesus’s love followed by dance questions: what would action look like on your part? Can you ever stop the debates over scripture long enough to act?

Gaga’s use of fashion and performance art raise questions of communication. Gaga confronts the culture through symbols that it fluently understands: music, performance, and fashion. The church insists on using scripture and sermons as its primary forms of engagement, but for many people in USAmerica, the text does not carry authority over their lives. How could the church better engage culture on its own terms? What would happen if we ceased to articulate and defend every position, and made room for a conversation through image and action that made sense to today’s culture, within and outside of the church?

Finally, Gaga’s enacted death that exposed the idolatry of celebrity questions the way the church teaches the narrative of Jesus crucified. We often have sermons trying to explain what Jesus did, but her bloody performance and empty stare ask: how would the church enact the narrative? Pastors try to educate congregants by explaining the historical context of the cross, but what if they moved the narrative into the context of today’s culture? What would we critique? What idols would we expose?

The prophet known as Lady Gaga is doing God’s work in USAmerica. Rather than fight her, the church would be wise to allow itself to be critiqued by her exposures and educated by her forms of communication. After all, God has often provided prophets who have worked outside the church to invite the church itself to repentance; we should not be surprised that the Living God is still speaking, should not be startled to see a prophet in our midst. The proper response might be gratitude and worship: perhaps a dance would be appropriate.

This piece was one of my first that developed theology from culture. Who do you see as currently working as a prophet in the world? How would you like to see the church perform the Christian narrative?

January 19, 2016March 24, 2016

Drinking from the Font

Sermon: Holy Hospitality, on the Miracle of Water into Wine at the Wedding at Cana - follow blog Literate Theology / Kate Rae Davis

Reflections on John 2:1-11, delivered at St Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle.

“You give your people drink from the river of your delights.”

Imagine you’re on your way into church and feeling just a little parched — would you pause for a sip of water … from the baptismal font?

Let’s make it a little more appealing. Let’s say, one day, that the font was emptied of its usual water and filled with — whatever brings you joy: apple juice, Diet Coke with Lime, pinot noir, whatever — then would you drink from it?

This may seem like a strange hypothetical with which to begin a sermon, but today’s gospel is a strange miracle that begins Christ’s ministry. At a wedding, Jesus takes water, the sustaining elixir of life, and transforms that water into wine, a substance associated with rare celebrations of joy; the psalmist notes that wine makes glad the heart. Weddings were one of the rare times that people would have the opportunity to drink wine, where it is offered as a display of the new couple’s hospitality, and this must have been some wedding, because they ran out early. Jesus, being made aware of the problem, tells the servants to fill the nearby jars with water, which becomes wine — that the steward, not knowing where the wine had come from, says is good, and the celebration continues on.

What a strange miracle. Strange, certainly, because the creator of all that is, the creator of oceans and rain and grapes, the divine force behind growth and fermentation and metabolization, makes his first ever in-human-form display of power … in the corner of a wedding … where the only people who notice are the disciples who were already following him, and a small number of servants … and all for the seemingly insignificant cause of a party’s continuation.

Not only is this miracle strange, but there’s something strange in the narration of the miracle, because John makes sure the audience knows this detail: that nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used for Jewish purification rites, the kind used for ceremonial washing.

Now, when the text says “ceremonial washing” here — this is not simply a matter of washing one’s hands before getting in line for the buffet. Purification, for the Jewish people, for the guests at this wedding, was a highly spiritual matter, tied to holiness and sanctity. So while the stone jars are acceptable vessels for holy water and wine is acceptable at a celebration, you just wouldn’t put wine in the jars meant for ceremonial washing. It would be impure, unholy. Sacrilegious.

So when Jesus tells the servants to draw from the jars and bring it to the steward — I have to imagine that in their minds, it’s still water. Because you just wouldn’t give a man wine from a stone jar. I imagine their shock … when the steward puts it in his mouth, “not knowing where it had come from” and names it the best wine of the celebration.

It is shocking that Jesus seems to prank the steward into drinking unclean wine — worse, pranks him into enjoying unclean wine. Equally unnerving is the realization that he seems to violate his community’s ritual norms and customs on purpose. At a celebration of this size, wine would be stored in long clay jars with handles for easy pouring. Presumably, since there had been wine, there would have been some empty containers around, ready to be refilled.

But Jesus chooses the container for ceremonial washing, large jars with thick stone walls — actually, picture a slightly taller version of our baptismal font, remove the polish, and you’re pretty much there. Jesus chooses these vessels, these jars for ceremonial washing, knowing that the steward wouldn’t drink it if he knew where it came from.

We don’t hear about the rest of the party, but because the jars were basically immovable, the servants wouldn’t be able to circle with them to fill people’s cups. I imagine the guests, dressed in their best, faithful observers their religious customs, their cups running low, coming in pairs and small groups in search of more wine only to find themselves standing before the ceremonial washing jars … debating … would they accept this hospitality, would they imbibe of the wine that makes glad the heart, would they continue their joyful celebration —- or would they maintain their sanctity and purity?

Would you drink wine from a font in order to participate in celebration?

Because there is always freedom. It’s a choice. Jesus provides the wine in the ceremonial vessel, but we are always free to not drink it, we are free to prioritize our sanctity above it. But, at least as seems to be implied by the symbols of this miracle — ceremonial jar as sanctity and holiness, the wine inside as hospitality that leads to joy– to prioritize sanctity requires the rejection of the hospitality and subsequent joy that are being offered.

On the other hand, to drink the wine from the ceremonial container does not abolish sanctity. Jesus does not smash the ceremonial jars, does not condemn their use. Rather, he combines their symbolism with the symbol of wine in an unexpected way. You might say: Jesus does not abolish the law by breaking the jars, but rather fulfills the law — by filing the sacred with the joyful, by connecting holiness and hospitality.

By serving good wine from the stone jars for ceremonial washing, Jesus mixes symbols in a way that shows how the separation of the holy vessel from the liquid of celebration tempts us to privilege the spiritual, the clean, the holy — over and against the worldly, the bodily, the everyday joys that make glad the heart. By choosing to serve good wine from ceremonial jars, Jesus seems to suggest that it is not separation that is sacred, but what is sacred is participation in hospitality. What is holy is accepting hospitality. It seems to be right where our sensibilities and values want us to maintain separation that Jesus’s values invite us to hospitality as part of a larger celebration. We might even interpret the mixing of these symbols to mean that hospitality is holy.

Some decades ago, this parish chose to extend holy hospitality when others chose sanctity. The city was in the midst of the HIV/AIDS crisis, and many churches refused to bury those who had died from the disease, choosing the safety of sanctity above such potentially risky hospitality. By offering services to those in need, this parish participated in Christ’s holy hospitality.

We continue to participate in hospitality when we share food and drink each Sunday at coffee hour and each month at the Fatted Calf Cafe, carrying food and conversations across social and economic lines, across generational and political barriers, across football team loyalties.

And momentarily, we will be invited to share bread and wine with one another. While there is no one way to understand the Eucharist, today we might contemplate what it means to participate in sharing the cup, to participate in the holy hospitality to which Christ invites us.

Here, we are all guests at the celebration. Jesus has provided the bread as well as the wine. And it is good. Will you drink?

Sermon: Holy Hospitality, on the Miracle of Water into Wine - Literate Theology / Kate Rae Davis — The Baptismal Font at St Paul’s, by Julie Speidel: http://juliespeidel.com/public-installations/st-pauls-episcopal-church/

Questions: What hospitality is Christ offering that the Church not participating in? Where have we placed sanctity above hospitality — as a community or individually?

December 24, 2015June 8, 2019

Conjuring the Spirit of the Season

The absence of Christmas spirit is a presence in my home. I skipped out on the normal mantel decorations. I didn’t even take the stockings out of storage. My gift wrapping is minimal and sloppy. I just haven’t been able to tap into the spirit of the season. In a world celebrating a season of merriment, music, and memory-making, my internal experience has not been able to align.

My first response was to “fake it til I make it” — to go through the motions of Christmas cheer and observe the rituals in order to make the warm fuzzy feelings follow. That did not work.

A few voices in my life have suggested prayer practices. I’ve sat in my office and settled into the quietness of prayer, only to find that my prayers are laments. My prayers are calling God to do better, to intervene more strongly. A wonderful woman gifted me a gratitude journal, nudging me to acknowledge the goodnesses, no matter how small, that my daily life holds. And while it does keep away full blown depression and does orient me toward gratitude, the practice also highlights that there are many who do not have what I do: a loving spouse, stable housing, warm meals.

It strikes me that my concern has been my inability to tap into the spirit of the season, but perhaps I’ve been overwhelmed by advent: a season in which we hope for light while surrounded by darkness.

The darkness is literal in a solstice sense, in a lack of daylight hours, but darkness is also metaphorical and spiritual.

In advent, Christ — the light of the world — has not yet begun to shine. All we have to guide our steps is faint, distant starlight, traveling lightyears to get to us.

In advent, we remember that Mary carried in her self something divine that was growing and waiting to enter the world. We remember that carrying and birthing the divine is a marathon labor: it can feel like walking miles on swollen ankles only to find there is no rest to be had at the end of the journey.

This is Mary’s story, and the Christmas story, and it’s also our story, it’s a creation story. The work of allowing a message to cultivate inside one’s self, the labor of bringing it forth, the frail hope that it will be received by others. We each have a gift that is waiting to be birthed.

So perhaps my sorrow and failure of Christmas spirit are right where I am meant to be this advent season in which darkness has many manifestations.

And tomorrow is Christmas, and I have the starting place of hope: not that tomorrow the world will be different, but that tomorrow I may feel differently, which could alter the world.