258 candles-day 21

Sometimes you need to see nothing more than the sheer joy someone takes in the work he or she does to be heartened by humanity.

258 candles-days 36-31

In the same way religious liberals decry that all faiths have their share of fundamentalist thinking and actions, so we must celebrate that all faiths also have a deeply progressive strain that often runs counter to that. These Pakistani clerics deserve to be recognized as pioneers.

when god was a little girl

This is quickly becoming a week of Africa-themed posts. Since yesterday's posting about the lyrics for "Preserve Uganda's Future Hope" (which I retitled "Uganda, the Beautiful"), I've come across David Weiss' project for a book called When God was a Little Girl.

It's not a new idea, the femininity of the devine, the matrilineal deity, because truth be told the confluence of the feminine with creation is probably among the first theological thoughts. And as a pantheistic panentheist, it's one I could certainly be comfortable with. One of the most important words David used in his lyrics is the replacement of kin-dom for the more traditional kingdom. This exchange is old hat for many of us already versed in liberal religion, a de rigeur example of inclusive language. But the notion, despite biblical precedent, can be heretical for others more closely invested in patriarchal terminology.

What if, rather than a patrilineal deity, we acknowleded one that was maternal or, more to the point, one that was absolutely sexless or both sexes? A hermaphroditic god is hardly new either, and certainly if we can accept it in clown fish, snails and flowers, we can accept it in our god. Plato may have been onto something in his concept of the origins of love Aristophenes forwards in his Symposium.

But more importantly, what if we rid ourselves of the notion of a hierarchical god altogether, a god that is part of a kin-dom, with all its resultant relational focus intact, rather than a king- or queendom that relies on a higher order of anything? What if we accepted a horitzontal god rather than a vertical one? A god that is not only open to peer-relationship with reality but is co-created as reality expands. Traditionalists might argue against this idea as it can't exist with a reality that is itself created by god, but that only depends on the acceptance that creation is finished, and I just don't think that's true. That revelation is not sealed is a tenet of Unitarianism. We accept the expansion of the universe. Why not the expansion of reality? There's a legitimate argument to be made, I think, that what I'm really describing is the expansion of our knowledge, that I'm guilty of confusing what is with what we understand. But I'm willing to conflate the two, recognizing as well that god's masculinity and vertical ordering of reality is based on information collected a couple thousand years ago.

gratuitous nude

A few days ago I published a post about feeling monkish. I included a throwaway line about dancing naked in the road to find someone to talk with and used that as the title of my post and an old photo to illustrate it. I found that by Googling "dancing naked" images (NSFW).

One set of friends on Facebook took me to task for having used a picture in which the nude woman is featured prominently but the nude man's penis is hidden (although if you look closely you see his scrotum is prominent below his left leg, although that's neither here nor there; you don't need to enlarge the photo to see the woman's nudity, which is more the point). I hadn't noticed the absence of the man's genitalia. Their legitimate observation was that the photo objectified women or at least the woman in the picture. It's also a reinforcement of a distortion of society that presents nude women readily but is more reticent about nude men.

I mistook the conversation for a light-hearted one and commented that they'd put more thought into it than I had and I'd decided to reaffirm the patriarchy by leaving the photo up. My rationale for leaving the photo up is 1) I don't think it's right to ascribe contemporary questions to modern photos (the picture is obviously early 20th century), 2) I like the picture's drawing on the couple's awkwardness and grace and comfort, and 3) it's my blog. But I soon came to realize the conversation, if it had started light, swiftly turned heavier.

I ended up removing the link on that group's news feed after a few hours consideration. No one had requested it but I decided leaving it there was taking advantage of a privilege that I hadn't earned, and more importantly, I'd become embarrassed having answered their concerns so tongue in cheek before realizing they were serious.

While I think the more correct response on their part might be to say, essentially, "enjoy the cocks," that is to have pointed it out more publicly on their own blogs or by posting male full-frontal nudes, their point is taken. It was relatively easy to find that illustration while to find the one gracing this post required several tries and I wasn't successful until I added "man" to "joyous nude" (again, NSFW); even then, many of the results are porn and about a third are of women.

But I have other sets of friends also on that group's page who could make similar complaints that by choosing two people not in wheelchairs I'm being ableist, or by choosing a white couple I'm being racist, or by choosing a mixed couple I'm being heteronormist. Those arguments have a lot of validity, too, maybe even greater validity because I can't say I didn't notice any of those things, and didn't use any of those elements in my criteria for my Google search. The point isn't to suggest my friends' original criticism is absurd--it isn't, it's a good observation--but to point out that we are privileged even in how we criticize.

we are laundrymen

when they were married back in the mid-50s, my parents took the then-radical and still-progressive step of divvying up household chores between them. my father chose laundry. in other families there are other signs that a young man has come of age: with jews, it's bar mitzvah; with american indians, it's vision quest; in wisconsin, it's ordering your own beer. in my family it was taking responsibility for washing clothes.

my dad, as a professional and a person who trained for a short time to be a teacher, tried to make a science of it, but it really isn't one. mainly, it's an attitude of common sense: "put like-colored clothes together; load the machine one piece at a time; don't overload the machine; separate the pieces and layer them on the floor of the dryer; take them out and fold them while they're warm, it cuts down on ironing time." I hear these instructions in my dad's voice each time I do laundry. I do the laundry here on the rim: I was trained.

along with tending the grill and mowing the lawn a man ought to take charge of the washing of the family's clothes. it is not a sexist or testosterone thing, but it is an acceptance of our obligation for doing for the family. like the responsibility for keeping track of game scores and checking the oil level in the car, it is something we ought to pride ourselves on because our fathers taught us. one task moving down the generations. one solid block of men, each holding a basket.