#most of my ancestors are not Mormon but I also still want to connect with God and Jesus and the Holy Ghost

[verinqueerstake]

Mormon folk magic.

Discuss.

[imaminoccultation]

Letter 3: How Nubians Became Arab - A Sufi Hypothesis for the Arabicization of Sudan

Peace be upon those who follow the right path. Which is to say, okay, Sudani Sufism? Aren’t you a Shi’i Neoplatonist?

Ugh, I know it seems a bit weird, ‘Umar, but trust me, Neoplatonism is a bit more common than you might think. I have it on good authority that the Tijaaniya Sufis are Neoplatonists, and lately I haven’t been able to not wonder about what other Sufis in Sudan might be. I think of how my mom used to describe God to me, how I always believed in him: like some sort of power that runs through and connects the universe, not so much a being with a distinct personality…

This is why Muslim Neoplatonists like the Isma’ilis, the Tijaanis, and yours truly like intercession. We think God is inaccessible except through intermediaries, a bunch of middle men (or women!) of varying degrees of qualified to help you access God. It’s gonna be really complicated to get into how this works, but sufficient to say: okay, everybody has a little bit of the Light of Muhammad (the Ideal Man, in the Muslim Neoplatonist worldview) in them. Sheikhs, imams, other spiritual teachers, basically they are the most qualified to identify the Light of Muhammad in things and also know the best tools to bring it out. This is why Sufis are obsessed with isolation: one of the main ways Sudanese people got educated in my parents’ time was in khalwas, secluded rooms usually built around mosques where some old dude (Light of Muhammad extraordinaire AKA sheikh AKA Sunday school teacher with magic powers), where they do nothing but memorize and recite the Recitation in hopes of getting the deep, personal knowledge of the truth of the Light of Muhammad that their sheikh has.

Make sense? No? Well, we’ll have to come back to it.

Anyways, so, for the record, the place I’m from is also very Sufi. Mostly Hindiyya, I think, but you also got yourself a lot of Sammaanis and just enough Mukaashifis that the old ladies in the village still like to yell “Oh sweet St. Mukaashifi!” (or, in Sudani Arabic: ya al-mukaashifi!)

See, calling on the names of bearers of the Light of Muhammad, even after they’re dead, is just one of many tactics to accessing God. The idea of accessing the divine with your coolest ancestors as your middle men is REALLY old in Sudan. Before Sufi Islam came along and took the region by storm, people were Orthodox Christians.

Now, Orthodox Christians aren’t quite Neoplatonist, from what I understand, but they’re pretty close. The Father is, like, the absolutely simple reality that Shi’i Neoplatonists like me call “Allah” or “God” cause we don’t like confusing people, which eternally gives birth to the Word, the logos, the Son! The Son basically breathes out the Holy Spirit (or Holy Ghost, if you’re Mormon, or “Sacred Breath” if you want a plain English version), which then generates the reality we can experience. But, you know, cause Orthodox Christians hate the idea that somebody could comprehend the Trinity, they also add the fact that, you know, they all do this shit in perfect unity while all being the same entity. It’s a paradox, but it’s how the One God has chosen to reveal himself! At least, that’s how much I can understand it.

Now, I’m Muslim. I don’t believe God does paradoxes. For me, that’s why I call the Christians’ Father “God” and not the Father: like I was saying in my letter about tawhid, I don’t believe God resembles things in the known universe. While I also believe in the logos, the Light of Muhammad, or the Universal Intellect which contains all the eternal truths that govern our experiential reality, I see the Light of Muhammad more like Allah’s Pen, which he mentions in the Recitation. It’s the first thing he created, according to some Shi’i hadith. When he created it, the first thing it said was “what do you want me to write, dude?” and God said “everything that will ever happen.”

Well, what does such a Pen write on? See, this where the Guarded Tablet, Allah’s heavenly notebook, comes in. As a Shi’i, Allah is basically just the ultimate Drawn to Life protagonist: hence the Recitation talking about all his “all he needs to do is say ‘Be,’ then it is.” The Guarded Tablet, often known as the Universal Soul, is its own, independent eternal being that generates the cosmos. In some senses, it's a Trinity, except the power dynamics are different: while the Pen and the Guarded Tablet are independent eternal beings, they are both created by and wholly dependent on Allah for their existence. They are the intermediaries closest to him, but still perfect Slaves: totally subordinated. But, if it depends on God to exist, in the Hikma worldview, it is 100% not God.

Anyways, back to Sudan. Ya see, in the Funj Sultanate, what I would argue is basically the first Sudanese state (sans-Darfur and South Sudan, of course), some famous dude named Muhammad son of Dayf Allah took it upon himself to record a bunch of biographies of all the Sufi bigwigs he was hearing about. It’s like, one of the oldest Sudani history books, Sudani Sufis still read the shit out of it today. At one point, Dayf Allah basically gives us the cliff notes of how Islam spread in Sudan and the Funj Sultanate took over the former territory of Dotawo, “The Kingdom of the Upper and Lower Nile,” which included basically all of modern Sudan except Darfur (and also not South Sudan). 

Basically, according to Dayf Allah (with some details added in from the Granary Clerk’s Manuscript, a Turkish-era book about Funj history): 

Apparently some Muslim dude went and met up with the Funj, wowed them with his brilliant table manners (or religious knowledge, there are a ton of different versions of this story), got hitched to the Funj chief’s daughter, and they gave birth to the Funj royal line (I mean, supposedly). Then, they followed this one magic bull to the shore of the Nile where they found some chick who called herself “Sinnar” (some people claim this means Essin-Aar, “Island of Water” or “Island of the Sister,” but neither seem likely to me), and they decided “fuck it, why not build the capital of one of the two great Sudanese Islamic empires right here?”

Anyways, supposedly, after this rousing start (details are disputed, but that’s the gist), these niggas made their way up from southeastern Sudan (modern-day Sinnar state), up the Blue Nile (and northwards on a map), slowly conquering the former territories of the Kingdom of Alwa, the southernmost Nubian kingdom. By that time, Alwa was already sort of going through a rough time and it may have joined forces with Makuria to form Dotawo to deal with that stuff, but they couldn’t stop the Funj onslaught. The Funj crushed the Alwans, fucked their capital Soba up so bad that I know this one Sufi song that goes like “law ma ahl an-noba kan ad-dunya khirbat kharaab zey Soba,” basically “if the Sufis hadn’t shown up, the world woulda been fucked up the way they fucked up Soba.” Yeah, that bad.

Anyways! Funj Sultanate kicks Alwa’s ass and reaches, let’s say, the bottom of what Dayf Allah calls as-Saafil: basically, roughly the border between ash-Shimaaliya and the River Nile, around where the Shawayga and Ja’aliyyin squat. Now here’s where things get a bit twisty. What’s happening up in Makuria, AKA ash-Shimaaliya + River Nile State + Red Sea State + Kassala? Maybe?

So, there are two theories:

Some Yemeni dudes land in Red Sea State from Hadramawt and marry some rich Beja kings, ending up with something called the Hadariba Sultanate (Hadariba, Hadarima, see? Also notice – Ancient Egyptians called the Beja, Medjay). These guys hire some Meccan dude (or maybe a Beja dude who was claiming his grandma was from Mecca, sources are unclear) named Abdallah Jamaa’ (the Gatherer), who then basically starts an Orthodox Islamic Empire starting in the East, working his way until he’s taken up former Makuria territory and made it all the way down to Arbaji. Abdallab Sultanate v.s. Funj Sultanate: they’ve both done a lot to take up the former land of two of Africa’s most powerful kingdoms, Makuria and Alwa, and now they’re facing off in el-Gezira of all places. The Abdallab convince Amara Dungus that he should convert from paganism to Islam, he does, and they agree to join forced and form the Islamic Funj Sultanate.

Abdalla Jamaa’ is as fake as the Muslim Arab dude who gave birth to the Funj royal family. In reality, like Dayf Allah tells us, the Abdallab Sultanate (perhaps an Arabized Nubian or Beja state?) whooped the asses of some Nubian kingdom in the north, kept moving south, then got in a fight with the Funj. I mean, it makes sense, I feel like the Funj lowkey already knew what Islam was without having to have some Meccan dude tell them.

Instead, Dayf Allah just mentions that, before the Funj came along, people in Nubia/Makurian Territory/Ash-Shimaaliya+Northern state+East Sudan/The Funj Lowlands/as-Saafil did the dangerously sinful and barbaric deed of…checks notes “Divorcing a woman and getting married the next day without the Islamically specified waiting period.” Okay really, Dayf Allah, that’s all you got for me? It’s gotta be more complicated than that!

He mentions some famous sheikh coming in and then teaching them hey, have an ‘idda period, ye fucking bastards, which is, I mean, like, okay. But my point is, starting from the south/the Funj Highlands/as-Sa’eed/Alwa, the Funj move northwards and establish Islamic polities. That’s not to say there weren’t Muslims before: we got tons of examples of Old Nubian documents with Muslim names in them, sometimes with parents with Muslim names, some not (too lazy to find examples, look up Old Nubian onomastics, or send me an email complaining for citations, I got y’all). We also know from Muslims who wrote about Nobatia, Makuria, Alwa, and their final combined form, Dotawo, who talk about how there were already Muslim communities in the area. Famous Arab explorer and fuckboy Ibn Battuta visited the Hadariba Sultanate and claimed he met Arab Muslims there who spoke Bidawiyet. Ibn al-Aswani also mentioned meeting people who identified as Arab but spoke Nubian. This phenomenon was basically recorded among the riverine Sudanese groups all the way up until the 19th-century, as far as I can tell, where we have the last records of white people telling us they met Ja’alis and Shaigis who spoke fluent Nobiin. How widespread was this? I mean, who the fuck knows! 

But I mean, it’s clear something weird is happening at the Makuria/Alwa boundary when it comes to movements of Sudanese Sufi communities. You see, I’m Mahasi. Starting from the first cataract (all the way up in southern Egypt) and all the way down to the 6th (basically before Khartoum?), the Nubian groups basically go:

Kunuz, also known as Mattokki in their language, Mattokki Nubian (means “people of the East”). They may have something to do with the people who migrated from Dongola, the capital of Makuria, after it fell north up to Egypt and founded the Kanz state? Anyways, they basically live up by Aswan, for the most part. 

Egyptian Fadicca, sometimes also called Mahas, heard three etymologies for their names: fark-dijja, I think (“(people of) the five valleys”), fadaja (“peasant,” if I’m not mistaken), and also fayadicca: “I’m gonna die!” Also claimed that this is the result of them being Makurian refugees but I don’t think there’s enough evidence to say so. Anyways,

Sudanese Fadicca AKA Halfawis, usually called Halfawiyyin, but some Sikkotawis are also called Halfawi, so don’t get mixed up. Named after, you know, Wadi Halfa, which is the place they’re from and also the place fucking Jamal Abdelnasser flooded under Lake Nubia. Jesus Christ.

Sikkotawis: Ah, the group Wardi and other people from the Nubian town of Sawarda belong to. Sometimes called Halfawis, too, since they’re a pretty small group. They’re also sometimes called Mahas.

Mahas: Okay, there are Mahas proper, who live in Mahas, Nubia, ash-Shimaaliya, and then there are the non-Mahasi Nobiin-speaking Nubians who also get called/call themselves Mahas, and then there are the Blue Nile Mahasis. I will get to them. I have a personal bone to pick with them, but, they claim to be from Mahas (sometimes)

Danagla: Down by the 4th cataract, Dongola, the most Arab of the non-Arab Nubians, or, you know, the most Nubian of the non-Nubian Arabs. The tribe Sudani (fake) Muhammad al-Mahdi fucking came from, which is to say, the tribe Ja’afar Nimeiry comes from, which is to say, like, the people who speak Andaandi and live in Dar Dongola, the old capital of Makuria.

Now, unlike groups 1-3, which I feel like are at the forefront of most Nubian language revitalization initiatives, I feel like groups 4-6 probably represent the vast majority of Nubians…it’s just that not that many of them speak Nubian languages by comparison. Ya see, tons of Mahasis live in el-Gezira and have since at least the Turkish period, but they don’t got no living memory of speaking Nobiin. Then there’s also Danagla who live outside of Dar Dongola who have a super long connection with Sufism: I mean, fucking Muhammad al-Mahdi, Sudan’s most…successful Sufi sheikh let’s say. They also don’t really speak Andaandi anymore. And notice: people living in southern Makuria territory, like the Ja’aliyyin and Shawayga, they also don’t speak Nubian languages anymore. Not to mention there are all sorts of Western Sudanese Nubian languages that have been lost to history, like Haraza Nubian. At least we still have Midob, the Ajang languages of the Nuba Mountains, and some evidence of Birgid Nubian that has led some experts to think: “you know, maybe Nubian languages started out in Darfur.”

But that’s a whole other topic. But anyway! Noticing a pattern? Slowly but surely, from the south on up, as Sufism spreads throughout Sudan, more and more Nubian-language speakers, while holding onto a ton of Nubian culture and sharing a long connection with Nubians, start calling themselves Arab after the arrival of Sufism even if they still speak Nubian. Then, after they stop speaking Nubian languages, they stop calling themselves Nubian.

What could be happening here?

Well, ya see, prior to the arrival of Sufism, Nubians were Orthodox Christians. They had a very transcendent concept of God the Father, similar to my crazy specific tawhid, ‘scept I can tell you, them niggas believe in a Trinity. Which basically means, for them, God was so far away and so inaccessible, but also so powerful, basically anything can connect you with God if you use it right. So Nubian Christians prayed for the intercession of angels, The Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ, all sorts of Coptic saints (like Saint Mena, who you should totally read up on), and when Sufism came along, I mean, it fit like a glove. Sure, you can’t call the intermediaries God anymore, but Sufis lowkey see the world the same way that I do as a Shi’i Neoplatonist. Just like Nubians called on their Christian saints to connect them with God because of the great deeds they’ve done for Him, Nubian Sufis (and indeed, Sufi Sudanis generally) call on their Sufi sheikhs/saints to connect them with God because of the great deeds they’ve done for It. 

So maybe what separates the Nubians (Halfawi, Mahasi, etc.) from the Arabized Nubians (Ja’aliyyin, Shawayga, etc.) is primarily religion, the former converting later than the latter. I’ve noticed a lot of tribalist jokes tend to imply that Nubians are less religious, but I mean, every Nubian I’ve ever met is religious as fuck, and historically, Nubians are religious zealots. The Kushites, like Amanirenas, were basically Amun keyzaan, then they got into Jesus in the 6th-century just to show the Egyptians and Ethiopians how to do it right, and then when a version of Islam that wasn’t Orthodox Sunnism finally came along (Sufism) they were super into it. 

So maybe that’s why the Nubians who still speak Nubian languages, still do, and those who don’t, don’t? i.e. me as a Geziran Mahasi whose ancestors claim to be from Sawarda (Sikkot territory) or Badeen Island (Sikkot territory…?), living in a Sufi hotspot with an extremely long connection to Sufi history (the areas along the Blue Nile), and maybe the reasons Halfawis keep getting stereotyped as being the most blasphemous despite being very practicing is cause maybe they fucking converted last. You know, Orthodox Christians hated the Muslims’ guts, maybe they were still dropping those hot takes, sibbing the deen like nobody’s business, I mean, Muhammad Jalal Hashim claims there were Christian Nubians till the early 20th-century who literally fought their Nubian Muslim neighbors.

But it’s also worth noting that, I’ve read the Turkish-era Nobiin Gospel of Mark from 1860, a time period where we know there were at least SOME Nubian Christians, albeit often recent converts from Islam to Christianity thanks to white missionaries. Like 14% of the words in there are Arabic (and it’s some 3ammu  from Serre writing it), including a ton of the loanwords a lot of Nubian language activists are trying to replace with Nobiin neologisms. I mean, it’s fine if you wanna do that, personally, though, I think it’s worth recognizing that basically any Muslim culture is going to have a TON of contact with Arabic, and that’ll naturally influence the language. It’s true of Urdu, Farsi, Bangla, Swahili, Hausa, Fur, Nobiin, Andaandi, Bidawiyet (Beja), literally it’s all over the place. But most of those languages are doing fine. It’s not Arabic loanwords that kills languages. It’s failing to teach a language to your kids that kills languages. You can sit there making up Nobiin neologisms till the cows come home, but if it’s not helping your kids learn Nobiin better, should you?

[deseretdyke]

i’ve been working on unpacking my religious trauma in therapy and it has been incredibly gratifying but also terrifying. i am beginning to recognize how exactly an LDS upbringing can damage the mind.

i internalized pieces of doctrine so deep that they color every thing i think and do, even years after leaving. my faith in the church was so blind and so uncompromising that i now have no sense of foundational belief that guides my actions. i believed that the church wholly and unconditionally true, and so i never developed my own personal beliefs and morals that were not informed by LDS doctrine. now i am unable to trust myself and unable to trust my judgements because i struggle to even make a judgment in the first place. most times i feel scared and hollow; sometimes i feel like i don’t exist at all.

i blame myself for anything and everything i can on the off-chance that the church is true in hopes that putting myself through that suffering for my own and other’s sins will save me, will cleanse me of guilt. i say i don’t believe in the church but i act and i worry as if my every action has eternal consequences. i punish myself so no one else will. i punish myself before i get the chance to sin because i internalized mormonism’s angry, distant god. and some part of me still believes he is waiting for my return to his presence so he can send me to hell for my apostasy.

the threats still loom over me like stormclouds. i struggle to connect to people because i have been taught to not trust them and to not trust myself. i have been taught that family is forever, that love is forever, only if you follow in the narrow, enduring path of the church’s teachings. i look at the people i love and part of me grieves because i still feel like i will spend eternity alone in darkness, apart from them. i act as though loneliness is my destiny. i can’t convince myself that will ever be untrue.

logically i know that my actions are minuscule, and that i am not the terrible person the church has made me feel i am. i am not responsible for the salvation of mankind. i am allowed to rest without punishing myself first. there is no god waiting to make me pay for my sins. i am enough and have always been enough. i am loved, i give love, i listen, i learn, i accept, i treat people with the grace and acceptance i hope they will give me. but there is a hard, cold pit of anguish deep in my core that i can never fully exhume. i am horrified by the thought of the hate and the ignorance and the oppressive beliefs internalized by the hundreds of my ancestors before me. for the women trapped in polygamous marriages, for the children born to those women who did not want them, for my uncle who committed suicide after being outed as gay at BYU, for the Black members who were denied the priesthood, for the sexual assault victims who were not believed, for the 18 year old newlyweds who enter into commitments they are not ready for, for every person like me who spent their childhood and teen years driving themselves insane with guilt and worry.

i grieve for all of us.

[doffodil]

all prime numbers bintch

What the fuck is a prime bumber,,

2. How old are you?

OLD ENOUGH,,,,

(22, and still useless lmao)

–

3. When is your birthday?

Sagittarius time

–

5. What is your favorite color?

Green n blue like Mama Earth

–

7. Do you have any pets?

Ye I have a fat lazy boy named Gnucci (the nooch) and a wriggly girl who doesn’t like to cuddle, named Pepper

–

11. How many pairs of shoes do you own?

3 ish?? I’m not a shoe person. I’m not even a clothes person

Like in theory yes but I’m either too lazy or depressed for this shit

–

13. What talents do you have?

I can write and cook, and that’s it tbh

–

17. Who would be your ideal partner?

that’s hard to pin down bc there’s so much I’m sexually attracted to and that’s a huge part of a partnership, u can’t diminish it. I love the idea of masc people, and I love very fem people, but then it’s like how do you align that with what’s expected of LGBT people? There’s that margin of erasure that comes with being bi/poly/pan, and it’s so hard to parse. What’s the right way to say you want pussy AND cock w/o someone being like ‘ur greedy’, how do u align what u want with ur identity, while trying to avoid erasure lmao

I’ve got several ideals. IDEALLY, maybe I have a 3 way relationship with all 3 of us participants actively in love with one another (Im too insecure to handle a third party who doesn’t like Me too)

But

Maybe the ideal for me is someone who’s into some of the same shit I am–zelda honestly–and, has the heart to let me go and the faith that I’ll come back, even being given some distance. I’m really struggling with that Libra moon of mine bc it’s just 'BITCH PARTNER UP TF IS WRONG WITH YOU’ but

Connections are so fickle and fragile,,,, I really just want someone who will cuddle me and take care of me sometimes

The bar is SO LOW FOLKS, if u ever wanted to date a fat insecure girl who yells bout writing and Zelda all the time and is open to poly, Your Opportunity Is Now

–

19. Do you want a church wedding?

NO LMAO

–

23. Have you ever met any celebrities?

I am a celebrity fuck outta here

–

29. Have you ever been skinny dipping?

Nah

–

31. What position do you usually sleep in?

Free fall

–

37. Favorite swearword?

I Like Them All

But I really love clusterfuck.

–

41. Are you a good liar?

I am…. a very good liar. Being raised by invasive religious zealots makes you a gr8 liar.

–

43. Can you do any accents other than your own?

I do a ROBOT VOICE but I don’t think that counts

–

47. What is your most expensive piece of clothing?

This white and black dress I got from my last place of work. The ticket price was $130, but lmao,,,,, I stuck it back and hid it till it fell out of season and hit clearance, and threw a coupon on it. I wound up getting it for $20

(Shhhhhh don’t tell corporate)

–

53. Favorite foreign food?

Oh God oh no oh God this is hard

Saag paneer,,, or maybe sushi, I also really like elote

I like so much food don’t do this to me

–

59. Do you suck or bite lollipops?

Fuckbois beware: I’m a chomper

–

61. Do you sing to yourself?

When I’m manic or otherwise happy yeah maybe

–

67. Can you name all 50 states of America?

It would take me a long time and the stakes would have to be high, and id give you a stiff maybe

–

71. What makes you nervous?

I have GAD, literally everything makes me nervous. Otherwise, drunk people, guns, graphic violence, large spiders and any scorpions

–

73. Do you correct people when they make mistakes

Depends on whether I like them. If I do, I might correct them after they’ve made the same mistake several times, and I’ll do it out of sight of others

If I don’t like them and they’ve made the same mistake several times, I will Fuck Them Up right where they stand, in front of God and everyone bc fuck them

(But if I correct ppl I do wait for them to make the Same Mistake several times, just to be sure it wasn’t a fluke bc shit slips my mind too sometimes)

–

79. Who was your first real crush?

This boy who moved here from Utah when I was in fifth grade. Turns out he’s my fifth cousin once removed, and he apparently liked me and waited around for me to lose weight, but I never did so he had to passive aggressively tell me how Disappointed he was before he moved back to Utah

Fuck him and that Mormon bullshit anyway tho

–

83. How fast can you run?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHA

–

89. Do you like your age?

???? No????? I’m 22 people my age should have degrees and shit but no I’m like a weird failure and I’m Incredibly Bitter about it, you have no idea how bitter.

–

97. Were your ancestors royalty?

I got my mom an ancestry DNA test for Christmas and the results came back 'assorted crackers’

Probably not tho

[apostateangela]

Ashes to Ashes

*WARNING*

This is not an uplifting post.

I doubt there will be a great lesson learned or an inspirational outcome.

Read, if you want real.

I burned my temple clothes yesterday.

And the reasons for doing so and the outcome of the act don’t match.

Which is disheartening.

But that should not surprise me.

My heart has been undone throughout this entire process.

Why should this instance be any different?

Reasons for burning things:

Burning signifies destruction and cleansing.

Life is reborn from fire.

Fires help the forest, getting rid of the old and making room for new growth.

The legend of the phoenix is that of the old dying and the new being reborn from the flames.

It is archetypal and something we are drawn to.

I have had a cleansing burn already.

I burnt all my baggage from my bad marriage: love letters, certain photos, momentos, memorabilia.

It was a necessary exorcism of my heart.

I did it on the day my divorce was final.

And I danced around the fire with joy even as the sorrow of it snuck up on me and I had to drown it with rum.

Then, some darkness came at me from behind, from the back of my brain leading me to believe there must be some apocalyptic lobe that waits to be ignited when the stars align.

And regardless of my intention, my feeling of control, I am engulfed anyway.

I wrote this poem then to describe it:

Clatter of Bones

It creeps from behind

A bite of flesh at a time

Way back past

The brain-eye’s

Bloody tie.

Pieces

Sucked dry,

From the wellspring heart to

Plump toes.

So far from the start of anything

Healthy.

Husks of habitation

Empty as yesterday’s wine bottles.

Untouched skin

Disintegrates

Like palm tree sheds

Dehydrated by

Unending crying,

Wondering at its

Purposeless hanging

As the sloughing finishes.

Organs cease, lacking

Once particular purpose.

Muscle memory sits

Hushed in the corner

Out of any semblance of time

Unused softly to tragedy.

Still it comes.

Darkness devouring

The ripe bloated sadness

Until a clatter of bones

Is all that remains

And no one remembers.

-angela

I’ll get to what that creeping thing was in a moment.

Because it came at me AGAIN, nearly two years later as I had this second burning.

As I said above, I burned my temple clothes--along with my temple recommend and the memorabilia connected with my covenants made in the temple. I wanted to cleanse myself in the same way with this burning as I did with that one.

Here is a list of the kindling:

My ankle length, high-necked, long-sleeved, white temple dress complete with slip and white stockings and slippers.

My temple recommend (The priesthood signed card that said I was worthy to attend the temple)

The pink card that said I’d participated in my own ordinances and made the covenants--dated 12/07/1990.

The heirloom temple handkerchief passed down from four generations of temple going female ancestors.

And the temple ordinance clothing itself.

Green satin fig leaf apron meant to symbolize Eve covering her nakedness and her

commitment to her husband (Sewn by my great aunt, a woman of great character and beauty whom I still love deeply)

White chiffon pleated robe containing many symbols connecting to everything from which shoulder you wore it on to how you tied it. (too much to get into and not that interesting)

White chiffon sash, same as the robe.

White chiffon veil meant to hide my face in my sin as a daughter of Eve.

All these clothes are kept in a chiffon fabric envelope handcrafted by that same great aunt, and are an integral part of the temple endowment ceremony.

They are necessary for the covenants.

I don’t know if you understand the gravity of that.

You enter the temple in your Sunday best.

Change into your white dress and slippers.

And then as the ceremony progresses you put on pieces of the ordinance clothing as the symbols and promises arise.

At the end of the session, you remove the temple ordinance clothing and put it neatly away in the chiffon envelope, change out of your white dress and back into your Sunday dress, and then and only then can you leave the temple.

Along with being bound by promises not to tell anyone about the details of the temple ceremony (as mentioned in previous posts) I also promised to keep my clothing safe, hidden (meaning only worn in the temple and not shown to anyone) and in pristine condition.

Sidenote: I accidentally ran across some Mormon-spun porn where the costumes were the temple clothing and it seriously disturbed me.

All of this explanation is to help you understand the weight this clothing contained: spiritual weight, moral weight, historical and ancestral weight, personal weight.

And I put it all in a fire pit, sprayed it with lighter fluid, and set it ablaze!

I just covered my mouth with my hand and widened my tearing eyes after writing those words, still astonished that I did such a thing.

My intention in burning these things was to continue to set myself free of that old, oppressive mormon life; to take another step in cleansing myself in the hopes that my newly birthed self could continue to grow after being set free of that baggage and restraint.

I’m sure that happened on some level.

But I didn’t feel it.

I felt the darkness cut loose from my mind and creep up on me, again.

I described that feeling to my friend and confidant as ‘ugly’ when he asked me how it felt to burn everything.

This post has been about trying to understand an to explain what that ‘ugly’ means.

The ‘ugly’ is the outcome.

It doesn’t match the glorious reborn--the intention I started with.

It overshadows it.

And just like my last burning, in digging into that devouring darkness that comes from some low part of my brain, way back inside my skull but feeling beyond it, I find something I don’t like to look at.

It is ugly.

It is shameful.

It is frightening.

And…

… it is true.

That it is the TRUTH is perhaps the most horrific part of it all.

Because more than anything, I don’t want it to be true.

It conflicts with my new truth and makes me feel ashamed and afraid.

Here is the truth of both burnings:

Two years ago the darkness showed me that I deeply LOVED the man that abused me for over two and a half decades.

And yesterday it showed me that I truly BELIEVED these things with a similar depth.

The breaking of those promises, the destruction of that clothing, made me feel dirty, unworthy, and sinful.

Not guilty, I hold no tie to the actions/commandments required to be worthy of the temple.

No, it is only the things I said.

I felt unclean--as if my soul somehow wore the soot and ashes of the burning.

Logically, none of these things should be true.

I have already written about my worthiness in connection with the temple.

It was one of my first posts.

I understand the ridiculousness of it.

And yet, that ugliness has come at me from behind again.

And I still feel it.

GODDAMN THEM!

And Goddamn ME!

Good thing I have therapy today.

-Angela

P.S. Maybe the value of this post lies in the relatability of the difficulty of escaping this muscle memory.

I don’t know.

I hope you don’t relate.

But if you do, I understand and I’m sorry.

[flamequil]

Deserts and Defiance 3: “Paradise”

*Deserts and Defiance is my history as a trans person*

One if the reasons I distanced myself from the TG Artist and worked so hard to solidify my “masculine” identity was the fulfillment of a then life-long goal: serving two years as a full-time missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It was something expected, but something I’d romanticized enough to actually want. My interactions with the TG Artist and the loss of my mom both happened in the midst of my preparation, so I had plenty of reason to reach for something already in my grasp than sift through the ambiguous concept of gender.

In order to give context for the rest if this part of my story and for further along as well, I’m going to be listing a few of the beliefs of Mormons. I have a weird relationship with it right now, and won’t be discussing it in messages or asks, and would prefer not to have to explain this, but there’s no way to tell my story without it.

So, Mormons build temples, as places God can physically visit on Earth. The highest form of Latter-Day Saint religion happens at these temples. There are requirements beyond just being a member if the church to enter, including living commandments about sexual conduct, and abstaining from tobacco, alcohol, tea, and coffee. Either before getting married or serving a mission, or after having been an adult convert for over a year, members go to receive an endowment, or blessing of power over sin. After receiving this blessing, members wear unique undergarments with small bits of symbolism related to the endowment. No, it’s not “magic underwear.”

Endowed members return to the temple regularly for three other purposes. First is to receive revelation and understand things they should do and how they can help others. Second is to connect family bonds beyond the grave. Marriages happen there, and ceremonies connecting children and parents together. The third is to offer salvation to those who didn’t have the opportunity to receive it while living. Mormons seek out their ancestors and act as proxy for baptisms, endowments, the connecting ceremonies, etc so that the spirits of the deceased can receive them if desired.

The last thing I want to point out about Mormon belief before moving on is that to them, the highest form of salvation involves those family connections, and generally requires marriage and children.

So holding on to these beliefs, and having at last received my own endowment, I went to northern California and walked the streets and knocked on doors. There’s not a lot to bring up during these couple of years other than I really enjoyed them, and a few dreams. I dreamt a few times that I’d wake up as girl, then just go on with my day. There was nothing sexual about these dreams, and that was kind if a new thing since most of my dreams for the past couple years had been. I was often struggling with trippy and vivid wet dreams that freaked me out. These dreams were pleasant. However, a little after waking up, I’d feel guilty and rehearse those things I’d been telling myself as an anchor to manhood. I’d also think about the TG Artist and how I’d try to convince her and others like us that we didn’t need transition. I’d try to “save” us.

At the very least at this point I acted from a place of similar feeling, although there was still a lot I wouldn’t get for more than a year afterward...

[kowsdontski1]

This year’s cemetery month begins with graveyard poetry. For today’s post, I begin with the end: the final stanza of The Jewish Cemetery at Newport by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The poem was first published 160 years ago, in 1858, and contemplated an abandoned Jewish graveyard established nearly 200 years previously in 1677. Among Longfellow’s contemplation, he wondered about the first major Jewish settlement in the American Colonies and their subsequent disappearance from the streets of Newport Rhode Island a century after their arrival. In similitude, people around the world have wondered about the Jews who lived lived actively within thriving European communities but disappeared by the millions in less than a decade during the Holocaust. Longfellow’s final stanza is this lament:

But ah! what once has been shall be no more!

      The groaning earth in travail and in pain

Brings forth its races, but does not restore,

      And the dead nations never rise again

Perhaps Hitler and his Nazi sympathizers counted on the fact that the Jews lost in the Holocaust would remain lost and forgotten like the Jews of Newport. But thanks to the efforts of people like Ruth Contreras in Austria, the dead nations are rising again. Perhaps not literally, but they are being revived in the memories of towns across Europe like Pitten, Austria, and their names are being reconnected with family members who have lost contact. Those dead nations are indeed rising, one-by-one.

Four years ago, I posted the photograph of a tombstone in Europe. Like the tombstones of Longfellow’s poem, it was spelled “backward, like a Hebrew book, Till life became a Legend of the Dead.” That tombstone was indeed a mystery to me and my family. We had been unable to find anyone to help us connect that tombstone with or own family legend.

Until ten months ago, that is, when I received an email from Ruth Contreras referring to my blog, and asking about my post, How my Mormon Mom Learned She was a Jew. Attached to Ruth’s message was a photograph of a broken tombstone written in Hebrew lying in the grass. The bottom of the tombstone bore my great-grandmother’s name in Roman lettering.  I’d seen that tombstone before, but I didn’t recognize it in its dilapidated condition.

Ruth wanted to know if my grandmother was the same Josephine Daniel who was the daughter of Franziska Abeles Daniel from the tombstone and had lived in Pitten a century ago. If so, could I possibly help her get in touch with any of Josephine’s living relatives? As I read through the letter, I realized that this was a person who had done some in-depth research into my grandmother’s family. She mentioned dates, names, and places particular to my family, and in my intense overload of excitement, I missed the fact that she was even solving the mystery of the tombstone, just like Longfellow’s “mystic volume of the dead.”

The tombstone, finally identified.

My great-grandmother, Franziska “Fanny” Abeles Daniel

My grandmother, Josephine Daniel, and her sister Sommer, at their mother’s tombstone.

I felt like an overexcited puppy being let out to play after a long day at home alone. I was positively bouncing; and if I had a tail, I’m sure my whole back end would have been wagging.  The first thing I did was call my parents in Utah to share the message. My mom was just as elated as I was. After all, she had spent years searching for information regarding my third great grandfather who had lived in Pitten all those years ago. This was a break-through for my family. My reply to Ruth’s first inquiry included a photograph of the woman belonging with the tombstone.

Over the next few weeks a flurry of emails went back and forth between Kentucky, Utah, and Austria. Each new message from Austria was followed up by a phone conversation with Mom and Dad. During that first flurry of messages I learned that Ruth was the granddaughter of the family that lived next door to my grandmother and third great-grandfather in Pitten in the years between the first world war and the Holocaust.

My first and most empowering understanding of the Holocaust was my study of The Diary of Anne Frank in eighth grade. To my young mind, Anne’s story explained so much of a grandmother I barely remember. My mother heard grandma speak of her Jewish past only once, and never again. I was able to learn of my own relationship to that Jewish past through a reel-to-reel tape recording of that same conversation. The recording, and my study of Anne Frank raised difficult questions: Who were my relatives in Austria? How many of Grandma’s close friends and cousins died among the six million in the Holocaust? How many others survived? Who were they? Where are they now?

Ruth’s mission, she explained, was to answer some of those questions. She was looking for the members of the former Jewish community in Pitten, Austria, in order to explain what had happened to them after the annexation of Austria to Nazi Germany in 1938. The Jewish community in Pitten was small, but given that out of the 9.5 million Jews living in Europe before 1938, only 1.4 remain, finding the descendants of those missing Jews is like finding a needle in a haystack . Six million died in the Holocaust, and the remaining 2.1 European Jews are scattered across the globe.

In the past ten months, Ruth has been collecting and organizing information, and I have not been telling my stories. I’ve been dealing with life, putting the “grand” into grandmothering, fighting bed bugs (The reason for no posts in September. WHY did we move here?), and feeling guilty for not telling stories. But I have not forgotten that one of the reasons I established this blog was to attract previously unknown family members looking to connect with their ancestors and their untold stories.

My family’s stories are largely unknown, but thanks to Ruth Contreras, I can begin by telling previously unknown stories from my own Jewish ancestors, aunts, uncles and cousins. I hope that Ruth will let me tell her family’s story as well. I’ll never be able to tell even close to six hundred stories of the Jews lost in the Holocaust (let alone six million), but as Ruth reminded me, “The generation of survivors of the Shoah [Holocaust] very often hesitates to speak about what happened, but I think it is the obligation of the second and third generation  to find out as much as possible to ensure that this does not happen again.” Ruth is of the second generation. I am of the third. I take this obligation seriously.

Ruth was also able to tell me of some neighbors to my ancestors in Pitten, Austria:

Ruth’s mother and grandparents lived next door to my family before the Anschluss. They relocated to Columbia, and their property was Aryanized. Ruth returned to Austria to reclaim her family’s property, and lives there now.

Johann Jaul and his wife Josephine  owned the property my family lived in, and were also victims of the holocaust. The Jauls’ daughter and her husband escaped to Argentina.

A fourth Holocaust victim named Barbara Trimmel.

Related results of Ruth’s efforts include:

A photo of my great-grandmother will be included in an exhibit of Jewish life in the Museum of Contemporary History in Bad Erlach.

A bronze “Stumbling Block” laid in front of the building my third great-aunt lived in before she died in Treblinka.

An article published in Messenger from the Bucklige Welt telling of Ruth’s quest to identify Holocaust victims and their families, including the story of how she found my family through a web search leading her to Stories From the Past.

So the dead nations are rising one by one through the  commemoration of their lives in museums, on the streets of their hometowns, magazine articles, and stories told on the internet.

May we never forget.

  A special thanks to Pitten Mayor Helmut Berger, Stumbling Block artist Gunter Deming, project initiator Ruth Contreras, and research director Werner Sulzgruber.

  The Jewish Cemetery at Newport

BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

How strange it seems! These Hebrews in their graves,

      Close by the street of this fair seaport town,

Silent beside the never-silent waves,

      At rest in all this moving up and down!

The trees are white with dust, that o’er their sleep

      Wave their broad curtains in the south-wind’s breath,

While underneath these leafy tents they keep

      The long, mysterious Exodus of Death.

And these sepulchral stones, so old and brown,

      That pave with level flags their burial-place,

Seem like the tablets of the Law, thrown down

      And broken by Moses at the mountain’s base.

The very names recorded here are strange,

      Of foreign accent, and of different climes;

Alvares and Rivera interchange

      With Abraham and Jacob of old times.

“Blessed be God! for he created Death!”

      The mourners said, “and Death is rest and peace;”

Then added, in the certainty of faith,

      “And giveth Life that nevermore shall cease.”

Closed are the portals of their Synagogue,

      No Psalms of David now the silence break,

No Rabbi reads the ancient Decalogue

      In the grand dialect the Prophets spake.

      And not neglected; for a hand unseen,

Scattering its bounty, like a summer rain,

      Still keeps their graves and their remembrance green.

How came they here? What burst of Christian hate,

      What persecution, merciless and blind,

Drove o’er the sea — that desert desolate —

      These Ishmaels and Hagars of mankind?

They lived in narrow streets and lanes obscure,

      Ghetto and Judenstrass, in mirk and mire;

Taught in the school of patience to endure

      The life of anguish and the death of fire.

All their lives long, with the unleavened bread

      And bitter herbs of exile and its fears,

div>The wasting famine of the heart they fed,

      And slaked its thirst with marah of their tears.

Anathema maranatha! was the cry

      That rang from town to town, from street to street;

At every gate the accursed Mordecai

      Was mocked and jeered, and spurned by Christian feet.

Pride and humiliation hand in hand

      Walked with them through the world where’er they went;

Trampled and beaten were they as the sand,

      And yet unshaken as the continent.

For in the background figures vague and vast

      Of patriarchs and of prophets rose sublime,

And all the great traditions of the Past

      They saw reflected in the coming time.

And thus forever with reverted look

      The mystic volume of the world they read,

Spelling it backward, like a Hebrew book,

      Till life became a Legend of the Dead.

But ah! what once has been shall be no more!

      The groaning earth in travail and in pain

Brings forth its races, but does not restore,

      And the dead nations never rise again.

Dead Nations Rising One Citizen at a Time This year's cemetery month begins with graveyard poetry. For today's post, I begin with the end: the final stanza of