where do daisies grow?

as the fall draws to a close, i am always overwhelmed by what i've learned - over the course of a semester, a year or several, in a single day, a season, a collection of moments and sayings and kisses, actual and imaginary. i'm sure i learned many things this year worth remembering, but one refrain is stuck in my head, a call and response - 'where do daisies grow?' 'in the end zone.' [knowing that i am new to football, some of you may laugh to know that i wrote 'in-zone' here, thought it looked fishy and looked it up online; good thing i did because 'end' is so much more interesting from a theological perspective] so what does this refrain mean? in the grand narrative of football, i think it's pretty clear, but i wonder why it has tangled up my consciousness like a knot in wet hair.

several weeks ago, i was at a gathering at a colleague's home. i was chattering away about lesbian football to anyone who would listen. one of my dear friends said playfully, 'but j, what about church?' [this is probably funnier to us because we are theologians; church would seem like a required activity for sunday morning] knowing he was teasing, but always taking an opportunity to get serious [this is my way], i started gushing again about true, true community and exclaimed that daisy football was more like church for me a this moment than the sacramental table, where the food has been spoiled by centuries of patriarchy, violence, corruption, apathy and complacency, not to mention the fact that my invitation has been [officially] suspended on account of my sexuality. i was then struck by the audacity and absurdity of calling football church, especially since i grew up in a culture where sports, and especially football was religion, a religion i did not subscribe to. however, i think the difference between the diesel daisies and the throngs that gather in massive NFL and college stadiums, is analogous to the difference between the mega-churches popping up all over the US, with their own private starbucks, and the intentional eucharistic communities emerging on the margins and in the spaces in between.

The simplest and clearest notion of ecclesia given in Xian scripture is Jesus' statement that whenever two or more of you are gathered, i will be there. [ekklesia in ancient Greece referred to the democratic governing assembly, an assembly of equals; the early Xian writers adapted the word to refer to the early community, the church, also individual congregations; now, 'ecclesiastical', 'ecclesiological' and/or 'ecclesiological' refers to theories of what it means to be and what constitutes 'Church/church'] more and more i contemplate this idea of two or more, and at this juncture, i am more concerned with two or more queers than with two or more confessing Xians. i am also interested in the notion that two or more of the marginalized is better attuned to political and social liberation as the principle of the gospel and Jesus' preferential option for the oppressed. so where is it that i find ecclesia most authentically incarnated? it is among those whom the world has rejected.

another theological concept that occurs to me as i think about queer church is 'eschatology.' this term refers to Xian focus on the 'end time,' both the realized future of salvation and the not yet. for me, the 'end zone' could be symbolic of the desires and commitments that surface within this community of women called the diesel daisies. 'daisy love' represents the mutuality, respect, care and unconditional support we offer one another in play and in life. this love manifests in sexual and non-sexual relationships, in friendships and mentorships and families. it is inter-generational, inter-racial, inter-classed, inter-gendered love. as a community of queer and/or lesbian women we live and love OUT the future we crave, the future that is now. we love out our liberation.

i am not attempting to make a church or a religion out of daisy football. this, i think would be dangerous and inappropriate for many of our community. i am trying to honor this experience and the women who have made it possible through the language i know best. as a Xian [because i am one], i am also trying to learn what Xian identity should be/mean in the contemporary world, and i think daisy love as much to teach. i write also to challenge my Xian friends, particularly in the advent of another liturgical year - do you take seriously the fact that Jesus was born in a stable with shit and hay clinging to his skin and swaddling clothes [thank you Marcella Althaus-Reid], that he was born to an enslaved people? my question is, where are you worshiping this advent? is it in the palace of transnational corporate frenzy, the pew of a church where eschatological vision has lost its social and political dimensions [either theoretically, practically or both], the comfortable living room with heat and coffee and cookies, or will you worship in the stable, in the cold and lonely streets, in the company of an odd congregation?

this advent, i am a daisy, and i am growing in the end zone. sunday was the day after my colleague's party. i remember sitting on the sideline watching the yellow leaves swirl down from a tree on the edge of the far end zone, like a sheet blowing on a clothes line. i remember the exhilaration of the moment before the pitch, of running as fast as i can, the thrust of bodies colliding, the weight of being rolled over on the cold ground. I remember breaking bread together, sharing stories, toasts, and plays drawn on napkins. I remember the crushing intensity of my love for these women and how different attractions over and again affirm my queerness and instill joy in being a woman loving woman.

something ordinary

a couple of weeks ago, i was preparing to give a paper at a conference. i was working on chicana feminist writer, Gloria Anzaldúa, exploring the potential for her work to offer a queer symbolic language. it was getting down to the wire, and i was feeling that core-tingling anxiety begin to get denser, like a balloon full of gravel and lava in my chest, bumping into my bones, threatening to burst at any moment. and desperation was the weight tethering it to the inside of my secret part. just begin, whispers the little girl who sits with me sometimes and keeps my loneliness company. just begin.

i opened the library book that has been on my shelf for nine months, an index card fell out, presumably a page marker. rather than look at the page it was holding (opening the book is a beginning; let's not get ahead of ourselves), i was drawn to what was written on the card - a shopping list. i read the list.

can a grocery list be a poem, a prayer even? it seemed so beautiful to me. as i read i tasted and smelled and imagined the labor, the tools, discerning what these ingredients would come together to be - lemon pound cake, tortellini salad, guacamole. yes, a prayer i think, preparations. but what for? a dinner party i think. i tried to think of when i had made lemon pound cake. and i remembered who it was for, the evening shared with friends, opening our home, the moist, soft heat of pound cake on my tongue, mingled with the cold wetness of ice cream and the throbbing sensations of joy and love and energy in sugar and conversation. two things spring to mind when i remember this meal and this moment when i needed to be reminded - eucharist and, well, perhaps you can decipher the other.

Gloria Anzaldúa describes dormancy and emergence as an important process for the human being, the writer, the queer woman, la mestiza. she describes this as the Coatlicue [Coat-li-qwe] state. this is an internal, psychic struggle to reconcile (but not resolve) contradictions. for Anzaldúa, this is characterized by a visit from Coatlicue, the Aztec goddess of birth and death. 'serpent skirt' represents for Anzaldúa the fusion of opposites that plague the psyche. she appears at the crossroads of life and plunges the soul into darkness and stasis, the space of germination, where death and new life meet, the threshold of transformation. interestingly, Anzaldúa describes the emergence from this state or the crossing as a claiming of her sexual agency. It is orgasmic. she writes, “And someone in me takes matters into our own hands, and eventually, takes dominion over serpents – over my own body, my sexual activity, my soul, my mind, my weaknesses and strengths. Mine. Ours. Not the heterosexual white man’s or the colored man’s or the state’s or the culture’s or the religion’s or the parents’ – just ours, mine.”

doing and writing theology are erotic acts, just as making a pound cake or preparing and receiving communion can be. all of these acts also require a claiming of self and desires to give and receive love. they require imagination and creativity, which requires action. this shopping list was a love note from God, a reminder of my hybrid identity as committed to both theory and practice. i am not just an academic. i am a partner, a friend, a sister, a daughter. i was able to see the other commitments in my life, the other things i do. and i was able to move beyond the thinking and the worrying and the fear that academics and writers, really all human beings struggle with constantly, and see the task before me as another labor of love, another instantiation of eucharist. i was, once again, as i always am, able to embrace my insatiable lust for language and ideas. i popped the balloon in my chest and let the grit and heat drip down to the tips of my toes, and i feasted on the entrails of the serpent.

beginning with an apology - embarrassing?

i have been thinking of writing a blog for some time now, so i am going to overload with a few back issues, moments i can't help but share. i was watching a movie last night with my partner and her little sister. it was a terrible movie. don't see it. we only watched 15 minutes of it because it was pretty graphic and we felt uncomfortable watching it with a 15 year old. really, everything is uncomfortable with a fifteen year old. but two sex scenes in 15 minutes, well i'm sure you catch my drift. anyway, the movie is awful. i know this without having really seen it. a friend gave away some of the plot decisions (you know, basically the femmy lesbian decides to hook up with the sperm donor). and in the first fifteen minutes, I could already see typical, hetero dynamics playing out in the relationship between these two women, the committed lesbian couple. so don't see it. i'm going to finish it sometime in the next couple of days.

but anyway, one of the lesbian mommies (the bread-winning but not butch mommy, who scolds her partner for taking steps to start her own business, steps taken without the bread-winning, shots calling mama's knowledge) is hounding her teenage daughter to write thank you cards for her birthday presents. About five times she says - now, you wouldn't want to start off the notes with an apology; that's embarrassing; better to knock 'em out.

thinking about this, it seems like i am the teenage girl who is always starting off with an apology (my little sister, on the other hand, preferred to 'knock 'em out'). but i wonder if it is so embarrassing to begin with an apology, particularly in a thank you note? what is it about our cultural psychosis that is obsessed with personal image and etiquette, but is unconcerned with how we treat people as a society? this is not to rail the movie scene. it actually struck me as fairly honest about the values of the 'American family.'

lately i have been noticing how everyone in films seem to conform to this mold: 'modestly' (or not so modestly) well off; having successful and creative careers; the parents of good looking and/or particularly intelligent  or witty children; homes with rooms like they materialized from the pages of a glossy and expensive home decor magazine (this is especially the case in family/holiday focused films). this is spoon fed to us as the model of a 'good' life, the minimum requirements. as in this (d)illusion, we are each issued a perfectly unique stack of stationary, perfectly matching each unique personality (i personally take great pleasure in this part of writing thank you notes) on which to write thank you notes to each other, on time mind you, so as not to seem ungrateful for the many [blessings?] in our lives.

what are the consequences of this notion of the 'good' life? is it truly a product of our good intentions, hard work, and appropriately, formally expressed gratitude? should we really be writing thank you letters to each other, or should we be directing our thanks to the people of this world, this nation who carry heavy loads, who end up being the stacks of backs that we (White middle and upper class American families) stand on to reach the highest fruit of the tree. and then we refuse to share, claiming that our hard work earned ownership of this fruit. we comb the trees of all the fruit, and we store it away in big red, white and blue barns, while those who plant and nurture and witness the earth bearing fruit are forced to watch as their lives and dreams are snatched away.

it seems to me that an apology is quite an appropriate beginning to the huge note of gratitude long overdue to continents, nations, and communities of people who have given their lives unwillingly in the service of the American dream. but that would be embarrassing. and a true apology might require that we humiliate ourselves further by bringing ourselves low. this, i think, is the trouble: a deep fear of humility in personal and public life. we would rather save face, shirking the difficult call to amend social, political, economic, racial, sexual, and gendered injustice. even in personal thank you notes, what is wrong with showing our humanity a little, the imperfections that make us truly, truly who we are - imperfect memories, imperfect words, imperfect gratitude? perhaps we should begin every note with an apology.

it saddens me to see this fear replicated in a film that endeavors to represent the world and values of a lesbian family. perhaps this is the truth for many gay and lesbian families in America, unfortunately. i guess i just wish that we could develop a queerer perspective as we present our values to the world. when i say queer, i mean a vision of the good life that seeks solidarity with and liberation for all who are oppressed and socially marginalized. if these are not our values, authentically practiced, then our struggle for liberation is vacant, as is our gratitude.

i am not advocating for an abandonment of thank you notes. i actually cherish and celebrate this practice. i just think we could use a little apology without humiliation, with humility. i think we could also use some personal and communal self-reflection about what constitutes the good life, and express gratitude in accordance with more just values, values that celebrate mutuality, intimacy, and life. so i am beginning this blog with an apology for not starting sooner because my ego and fear of rejection was in the way. i also apologize (and this is related to the first apology) that my identity as a privileged, White, Western, academic albeit queer female presents limitations to the work of justice doing and writing. i hope you will forgive my limitations and lovingly correct any ignorances and obstinancies that surface in my reflections here. as a beginning, i hope you will accept this note of gratitude for your part in shaping my imagination, my sense of the divine, my queerness. thank you.