i cannot hear a word of it

once again i find myself at the convergence of conundra that is catholicism. dbr and i attended mass on ash wednesday, and via her anxiety about being queer and being in that space, i again felt the tug of the abyss. at a retreat several years ago, i did a trust building exercise. one was blindfolded and had to trust the other to lead them around. i remember that i was not undone by the blindness and the interdependency of it all. what was unsettling was the experience of feeling like i was walking on a ledge, that at any moment i might step off the edge or fall over and off. more and more i feel the horizon dimming and the gnawing hole where belief used to be.

[i should note that i just read Terry Eagleton's recent essay "An Unbelieving Age" in Commonweal Magazine. he really is a gifted writer - beautiful intelligibility. however, i am not as optimistic as Terry about the possibility of a) faith being "released from the burden of furnishing social orders with a set of rationales for its existence," or, therefore, b) faith's rediscovery of "its true purpose as a critique of all such politics." for one, these two goals seem contradictory. if one discourse or worldview seeks to critique another, it should be mutually accountable to the other. for this reason, faith does owe a coherent rationale to society. second, it seems to me, that there have been plenty of occasions when politics has had a better sense of justice and other various goods than faith. faith can be quite the arbitrary lover. in any case, both systems of faith and systems of politics are social orders and therefore fallible, so, again, i think it is important that these orders continue to justify their relevance.]

if i am really honest with myself, i do not believe a word of it. there. i wrote it. i cannot bend myself into postures of obedience, and i cannot abide how so many keep sitting their, just listening. and if the dissonance isn't loud enough, then there is the profession of faith. *silence* i see lips moving, but my heart is still. i cannot hear a word of it.

lent is usually the time of year when i revisit the scene of the crime taking both pleasure and pain in the liturgy that ruined me for any other ritual. however, this year, i realize that all affective connection to this ancient rite is slipping away. the only emotive utterance my body speaks is rage.

yes, rage, beyond lava melted veins, I am talking about the kind of rage that is a rock hard knot behind one's eyes and the declensions that make the eyes contract. i have this unrelenting throb.

the day after ash wednesday, i watched the recent FRONTLINE documentary Secrets of the Vatican. Catholics, especially those who spend their hours studying their tradition, know these things are happening. we know that the hierarchy has gone unchecked for two-thousand years. we know that clergy have preyed on the most vulnerable since inventing their vestments. we know that knowledge of and complicity in these abuses reaches all the way up to the see. we know that they are stealing money from the collection plates to pay the state, f-ing their sheep twice and three times over. we know that they veil their treasuries and those of other criminals behind their doilies and other finery. we know that they have yet to apologize. This neo-f[r]anciscan refrain of focusing on the things we can all agree on is just another call to silence.

why-t-f do people keep putting money in the basket? yes, i know. a lot of people work for the church. withholding resources would only do them harm. i would ask, then why-t-h are you working for the church?

all of this wears me down to a stone. this lent, i am trying to figure out how to teach Introduction to Christian Ethics at a Catholic university. this lent, i am lamenting all of the money and time i have given to this tradition via tuition and anger and thought. this lent, i lament my vocation.

spectacular humility

i joined Twitter for Lent. i am fasting from that other (in)famous social media site. i call this filling the freed space with meaning, since Lent is not just an exercise in abstention. it is about new, old, and/or neo* forms of reflection. tweeting as fasting? reflecting? praying out loud? dbr thinks this is ridiculous. whatever, it's all stardust.

really, i/you/ze/we/it/they are all stardust blown off Hir palm. how is that for inclusive language?

i've recently been contemplating what Neil DeGrasse calls "cosmic perspective." this is the idea that consciousness of the vastness of it all - the expanding web of matter - rather than make one feel small, actually, in tethering one to something infinite, grows one's sense of significance. we are just stardust, and yet, this is why we are spectacular.

spectacular humility - this is an aspiration that i am exploring this Lent.

i+alia a to z :: in - intimis[sea][me]

i left this unfinished, as i often do things. finishing seems too close to death. i am afraid of it - things ending, things beginning. i haven't written into this space since the trip ended. i haven't wanted to grieve leaving that salty place. when i think back to the summer, the first thing i taste is the Med. we had an epic tryst and now exchange love notes from time to time, but those first days of heart-racing inertia are passed. *sigh*

i envy my sweet friend who is only a train ride away. she took me there to say goodbye. we spent the weekend baptizing ourselves and admiring stones, gathering them into our pockets for G. we ate warm fruit. i bought a beach towel from Egypt with stars on it. it left blue fuzz all over me. i remembered i am a mermaid.