penitential chimp Weblog

so i was halfway done with this letter and the browser crashed on me. you turned two today baby, and i wanted to write something. i know it is just as likely that these internetz and blogs will have gone away by the time you are really reading as that any scrap of paper that i write on will fail to survive our adventures, but maybe?

you probably know that we really belive that you chose us twice. concieved in the same moon tweo years in a row. thank you, of course choosing mama was just plain smart.

i love living and traveling with you. it’s amazing all the things yopu have changed, and the things you haven’t that everyone was sure you would. we didn’t settle down and settle in, you made travelling better. we didn’t get respectable and stable, we got a little pirate to adventure with.

and i am amused and pissed when folks tell me in the street that you can’t be my kid because you look egyptian, and i was amused and pissed in mexico when they stopped me to tell me that you were not mine because you were mexican. yes, you pass well in those cursed/ blessed places that are the crossraods and mixing grounds of humanity, because you are from one. you are the kid of a waspy northerner and a southern black woman from the us. and we love each other through the bullshit that our histories carry, and the beauty. and we love each other through our own strengths and weeknesses. and we love you more.

so when you stop every kid yopu pass in the street to start a dance party i beem, and your mama is no end of proud when you sit and write letters to her while you sing your abc’s and then deliver them to her half asleep in the morning.

i worry sometimes about the faith i am passing to you. in my earlier daydreams my kid would be baptized by now and instead i wonder at times if i should claim my baptism, but i’ll support you as you find your way. i will be thrilled if you found the beauty and power in christianity to live as fully you fully looving and struggling. and i will be thrilled if you pass it by to find your own way to strength and connection. in the meantime we will wander churches and light candles together, but duck out before the preaching. i will keep teaching you to call mary in all her incarnations mama, and you will keep pointing to the icons of jesus in her lap and calling him aza. why not you come from bethlehem too and are chosen of god/dess.

it’s scary that i have regrets already as a papa. the times i have been too wrapped in my own head to be as tuned in as i should are not a few, and at least one of them hurt you bad. all praise tht your leg healed well and that contrary to the church-lady curses you don’t walk with a limp.

mostly baby, figure out you, and mama and i have your back. and if something about who we tell you you are dosn’t fit, tell us and we’ll knock it off and tell the world that you are who you say you are.

in the morning when you wake up and crawl into bed asking for juice and deciding what highlighter tattoos you will sport for the day, i will be my cranky morning self, and so glad that you are the one bringing that craziness into my world.

two years down and still kickin’ ass. aza

some thoughts brought to the fore by the post we don’t need another anti-racism 101, including the comments by belledame222 and by kathy at restructure where there are excerpts of the post and comments. to be noted, kathy spoke about the sacrament of reconciliation in response to the same topic, but bnot haviong been raised catholic, my experience is different, proddy bastard here.

matthew 5:27-8 you have heard that it was said: do not commit adultery. but i tell you this anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has in fact already committed adultery with her in his heart.

this passage is clearly problematic for i’ts sexism, women are objects to be lusted over. if you doubt later in the same sermon when he talks about divorce jesus again assumes that the man will be the one who decides and acts.

not  the point of this post but should be acknowledged at the start. what i want to write about is how it has functioned to create a morality based in intentions that fosters dishonesty.

on face value jesus’ saying requires that even if no physical harm was done if there was desire to harm it is wrong. this falls in line with the overall thrust of the sermon, which gives a stricter interpretation of his jewish tradition contrary to a running theme in christian anti-semitism that judiasm was all strict and mean til jesus taught about grace

in the christian culture that i was formed in it has come to mean that the intent is what matters and if there was no desire to do harm then there is no fault for the actual impact and you can get off with a lame assed i’m sorry you took it that way apology to damage done.

i would tie back to  lens of privilege that i wrote about earlier. dominating culture will interpret everything in a way that allows it to hold onto it’s power.

this shift to intent is all over the place in the sayings that i learned to interpret the world through. i didn’t mean it that way. only god can judge a persons heart {which is what really matters}, i’m sure they had the best intentions….

of course all these excuses are used to enforce power. the government, church, police, teachers… are always doing their best. we, white midwestern christian folk, have the best of intentions. but if someone starts to upset us, or we step out of line and beginn to question, well that is trying to cause troubke, being cynical, or paraniod. and again it is the intent that matters. even if the uncomfortable statement/act was undeniably true the fact that it was “trying to make trouble/coflict” makes it immoral.

the shift to intentions is perfect for policing heirarchy because whoever has already claimed the power to speak for others gets to decide the intentions and thus the culpability of everyone in a situation. and if it is within your grasp to be the dominator all you must do to grab it is have the best intentions, or convince everyone that you do, or make everyone who is not convinced shut up.

if in the process you lose the ability to be honest about what your aims are even to yourself… welcome to the road to hell

a handful of thoughts that keep germinating, but i have not been able to pull together fully. hoping that getting them out will allow me to let them grow instead of being trapped inside and bouncing in circles

-spirituality is about connecting to power that transcends the self. people who are spiritually connected put that power to use in ways that are liberatory/ oppressive/ both at the same time.

-religions are attempts to organize people around shared experience of connection to transcendant power, or the promise of that experience. because of this they are fertile ground for oppressive/ dominating movements and for liberatory/ community creating movements

-powerful spiritual events and symbols become the sites of struggle between opressive and liberatory meanings as people and religious groupd contend for who will harness their power and for what. because of this they often serve opposing functions (e.g. guadalupe who is both a con of the catholic church to dominate indigenous culture and the trojan horse by which idigenous culture flourishes in catholicism)

-i think that the goal of the spiritual life is to sift and chose those ways of connecting and interpretations of connection to power that provide for our own and others liberation and for forging mutual connections, while uprooting methods and interpretations that lead to dominance and breaking of mutual relations.

-listening to praise songs in church throughout the fall i have had the intuition that we are at least to some extent trying to create the god/dess we are praising. that maybe this/ these ultimate source(s) of creative power needs our help to take shape and part of our co creation is the responsibility we have in shaping our divinity.

-i feel like the best gamble to make spiritually is that god wants to be just and she will empower push us to liberation and community if we will cooperate