February 7, 2010
On the days when I particularly overwhelmed–when I am convinced that any reform in my church will require at least 10 million perfect words, when I am sure that nothing I can think or say or write will ever make any difference, when I am tempted to think that the countless number of books in Harvard’s theological library may actually make so little an imprint on the world–on these days you will probably find me cross-legged on the floor of the Harvard Bookstore. I will be hunched over barren pages held together by thin bindings in the poetry aisle. Their words belong to people that most people do not know, people I do not know.
I don’t just come for the poems; I come for all the white space that fills these poetry books. The white space actually comforts me more, I think, reminding me of two things: First, reminding me of the arduous silence–all the wordless thinking–that accompanied very worthwhile word I have ever written. Wordlessness can be precious and productive in its own ways. Second, reminding me that I do not need to say everything–I do not need to say everything–only a few beautiful, dangerous, honest-to-God, true things. Poems are so captivating because they say so much with so little.
I am so little, and I want to say something worth so much.
Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/kokjebalder/366508847/
January 13, 2010
“Speak your mind, even if your voice is shaking.” -Maggie Kuhn
I have memories of being a typically-gregarious little girl who was afraid to speak in class. Maybe it was more self-consciousness than fear. My young male peers taunted me on the basketball court at recess and inside the classroom walls–”like children do”–because I was a young female with something she wanted to say. They told me this. They explained to me my boundaries “because I was a girl.” Even though I sensed that all of us knew these were untrue, these young men said all this because it had power. It had power because we all knew it had once been thought to be true. And that was a powerful reminder. (Where do second graders learn this? Probably Nickelodeon sitcoms).
Generally speaking, I imagine these situations evoke two types of reaction: Either young females learn not to speak up in class; studies have confirmed this. Or, they start talking louder. With the impassioned cursive script of a second grader, I decided to report gender confrontation after gender confrontation in our class “Conflict” notebook, which my teacher read aloud once a week before facilitating a detailed lesson and class discussion concerning conflict resolution skills. I started talking louder.
And I’ve been loud ever since. I’m the kind of person who steps out into the middle of Boston traffic to yell at taxi drivers who spit out racist and homophobic slurs in moments of senseless road rage. I have this intense moral compass (undoubtedly learned from my mother) and I will simply shatter if I don’t speak up sometimes.
That’s why I don’t know what to do with the trembling voice and unsteady pen I have found myself with in recent times. In moments like these, I don’t recognize myself. I ask myself, “What happened to that little girl with that strong, loud voice? The young woman who believed in the potential power of her voice?” I am second-guessing my words, projecting onto myself the presumed judgements of others. I doubt whether anything I have to say could possibly make any difference for the causes I address. My voice trembles when I speak, and I struggle to silence its shaking doubt.
I keep speaking, though. I keep writing, clearly. One of my favorite quotes reads, “No great art has ever been made without the artist having known danger.” It’s from Rilke, the writer who told a young poet to keep writing when he doubted himself. I think my voice shakes these days because I have given myself to a sort of danger–to the danger of a challenging academic environment, to new friends and brilliant peers, to a world far from the comforts and tangible love of home. It feels vulnerable. But it is getting better.
I still believe that one day I will open my mouth and the words won’t shake anymore. I hope they will resound louder and stronger than before.
Until then, I’ll keep talking.
Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/manjidesigns/2924530940/
January 11, 2010
When did this begin? When did I become a Catholic?
I started reading a book on major themes in literary theory this evening, and (naturally) the first chapter detailed the topic of “beginning” in literary criticism. The opening lines of Dante’s The Divine Comedy were among the examples treated in the chapter. These lines read: “Midway in the journey of our life I find myself in a dark wood, for the straight way was lost.” The book’s commentary describes this beginning as a “middling”–a beginning in the middle of life, in the middle of a dark wood–suggesting that Dante’s opening communicates that, “there are no absolute beginnings–only strange original middles. No journey, no life ever really begins: all have in some sense already begun before they begin” (3).
I thought of my faith when I read these lines. I think the beginning of my faith was a middling.
Some people teach that Christian faith begins in baptism. (This idea of beginning seems particularly fitting for consideration, as it is the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord today!) They might say that when I was baptized a Catholic by my parents as an infant, something about my existence changed in that moment. I became a Christian. Or, they might say that in baptism my parents established the context that would determine my faith in the the future. Baptism was the beginning of what would unfold in me later in life.
Others cite a one-time proclamation of Christian faith as the definitive beginning. When one accepts Christ as his/her Lord and Savior from sin, he/she becomes a Christian. Many people tells stories of this moment when they knew something in them changed. They became Christians.
But I think my faith began with a middling more like the one described in this textbook of mine: “There are no absolute beginnings–only strange original middles. No journey, no life ever really begins: all have in some sense already begun before they begin.” I cannot tell the story of how my Catholic faith began, so much as I can look back at the story of my faith and realize that it began before the moment that I recognized it. When I try to pin down a moment, I always identity some precursor–some prior person or event or moment or memory full of grace and faith and god–one that complicates any notion I have of “beginning.” Every “beginning” I consider becomes more like a “middling.”
I cannot tell of my faith’s beginning, only that it began. And the story continues.
[This entry is cross-posted on CTA's Young Adult Catholic Blog]
Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/traerscott/3167629678/
January 10, 2010
Pulitzer Prize winner Nicholas Kristof, a regular op-ed contributor to the New York Times, has dedicated his influence to fighting against women’s oppression across the world. Most recently, with this wife Sheryl WuDunn, he released the popular book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide (Knopf, September 2009).
Yesterday in the New York Times his op-ed was titled, “Religion and Women,” so naturally I was eager to read. And I really appreciated many things about this piece. It highlighted a multiply of oppressions against women, both some regularly witnessed and experienced by women in the US, and some more commonly associated with other parts of the world. He also illustrated how widespread these problems are in relation to religion–many types of religion throughout history and across the globe.
Most of all, I appreciated how Kristof demonstrated the complex relationship between gender and religion. Keep reading →
On the days when I particularly overwhelmed–when I am convinced that any reform in my church will require at least 10 million perfect words, when I am sure that nothing I can think or say or write will ever make any difference, when I am tempted to think that the countless number of books in Harvard’s theological library may actually make so little an imprint on the world–on these days you will probably find me cross-legged on the floor of the Harvard Bookstore. I will be hunched over barren pages held together by thin bindings in the poetry aisle. Their words belong to people that most people do not know, people I do not know.
