#specifically christianity or catholicism which is what i was forced into before i realized how ridiculous it is and got myself out

[autisticlee]

so many christian conservatives that hate/criticize science and don't believe in it because "it's not always right/it always changes/they don't know for sure/there's no solid proof/etc" sure do love to believe in their magical sky daddy they never saw with their own eyes but swear is real, just because mommy and daddy and the old bald man at church had told them this since they were babies.

just like much of the scientific theories they're talking about, this god also has no actual solid proof. no one knows for absolute sure that this magical being exists, or anything in the bible actually happened. this god, his son, and every other religious figure could be nothing more than a character in an ancient fictional fantasy novel the ancient people wrote for fun because they had nothing better to do. some say there's proof the "person" existed. but there's no proof they performed magic or had magical things happen to them. maybe the readers got so engrossed and obsessed that it took on this religious culture that persisted for centuries. (imagine if the twilight series took on this form and a religion about worshiping vampires emerged and people a few centuries from now though bella and edward are their original, very real existing, saviors and everyone worships them hoping to become a vampire. I remember seeing articles that thar series started getting religious cults around it. don't know if it was true of just male journalists hating that teenage girls enjoyed something —let's be honest, it was probably that.)

but if you say those things to conservatives, that there's no proof, that it could be nothing more than an ancient fantasy novel, they get so upset and defensive. they won't admit it. they come up with excuses. they turn around and point fingers instead. at least the science they hate for "having no proof" or being proven wrong always admits when it's wrong and is always trying to disprove *itself* in order to find the truth. it's based on theory and everyone should have learned about that in school, so i won't explain it. science, in general, is the study of trying to prove and disprove theories and gain evidence needed to reach a truth. it's ongoing. even these truths are usually accepted as things that can still expand and get rewritten as we learn more.

yet most christian conservatives are often over there saying those bad things about science, which actually realistically applies better to their sky daddy and his son's story. even the meanings of their bible change depending on the language/translation and who's interpreting it, with no solid proof one way or another. their religion is very stagnant. they have forbidden questioning it. they know it won't hold if you do.

they can't believe in science because there is never any concrete evidence, and scientists never know for sure....... yet at the same time, though they won't admit it, they truly don't even know if their magical god exists up in the clouds for sure. all they do is "believe" but "belief" is not proof, no matter how much they try telling you it is. but,,,,it only is if it's directed at their god. if it's belief in anything science? "no, you're brainwashed! it's all fake!"

they preach to you from a kid that you need to blindly believe and if you question it or don't believe hard enough, you get sent to hell to suffer. you're not allowed to think or choose for yourself! but they try really hard to make it look and feel like you're "choosing" it. it sounds very brainwashy to me. it FELT very brainwashy as a kid experiencing this, being foeced to go to church 2-3 times a week and a catholic school for 11 years. it's truly the opposite of what most conservatives preach and rant about. they're all about ~individualism and not being a sheep and free speech and freedom of choice~ and whatever else they yell about that is generally the opposite of how they actually live, lead, and raise their young.

science doesn't do that to you. science is more forgiving. if you dont believe, go prove it wrong! yet they claim scientists are trying to "brainwash" everyone; if you listen to and believe science, you are being "brainwashed." but *they* aren't. no. they're definitely not brainwashed by their big benevolent sky daddy and his magical story book, who threatens to strike them down into the pits of hell to suffer if they get even the smallest inkling of questioning or doubt in their tiny brains.

hypocrites they are!

[mdshow-me-your-moves]

I know a lot of people may already understand this, but if we hope to overcome people who oppress on the basis of sexual freedom and bodily autonomy, it's important, I think, to approach it with an understanding (but not necessarily respect) of the opposition's mindset. In America at least, these people tend to have beliefs that fuse ideas of Christianity/Catholicism with deeply fascistic ones. To them, what we call "sexual freedom" is, intentional evil, meant to disrupt and destroy society and and joy itself in the same way that the devil would do. Because to them, the devil is who is telling us to behave this way.

It's a dehumanization tactic, but most people see it as a passive truth that doesn't really inspire questioning. It's what it means for an idea to be engrained.

The point is that if they did think about it, many of them would see that it is liberating even if not for them specifically, but we have to make them think, and use several different tactics.

From the perspective of the average American, the "free the nipple" campaign was a shock tactic, which caused them to dig their heels in further, because, whether they realized it or not, that is what people expect from the "satanic" or "evil" source which they unquestionably believe in. It made it easier for the oppressor to notice and shut down. The vast majority of citizens showed no resistance.

I'm not saying we shouldn't use tactics like that, but, I think the conversation needs to be somewhat on their terms in order for their minds to be changed.

It doesn't need to be about being more correct than the opposition, that will never be a convincing stance. It needs to be about emotions and logic in tandem. How does that look? That differs from person to person, and you might have to get to know people you'd rather not, but I think the concept that nipples on breasts are only different from nipples that aren't on breasts in the sense that they typically produce more milk on average than nipples that are not on breasts, and that other cultures passively believe it's strange that they are sexualized to such a degree in the us.

Just try to demystify the concept to people, because shock value has its place, but oftentimes it does result in harder pushback from forces that are far stronger in terms of influence. We have to help more individuals understand before we try to just throw out haymakers at forces like that

Too many people are forgetting these things too quickly:

-SESTA/FOSTA passed. Despite the many, many warnings of sex workers.

-A bunch of apps started their censorship policies because Apple directly threatened their revenue if they didn't promise to cut down on the amount of porn on their sites

-MasterCard and VISA tried to outright stop processing OnlyFans work SPECIFICALLY because of the association with sex work, and no other feasible financial reason.

There is not a sudden regressive movement among individual people. Free The Nipple didn't fade into obscurity because people didn't care. It was stopped. By policies. By laws. By arrests. By censorship. These things have been purposefully put in place by companies and politicians. They saw the work we were trying to do wrt bodily autonomy, sexual liberation, and sexual freedom, and they forcibly put a stop to it.

[theoi-crow]

Can I ask about your religion? I’m catholic but I’m feeling so drawn to Hellenic Paganism but I’m so scared. I don’t want to believe it because I don’t want to go to hell. But I feel something for Hellenism and I’m just confused. I’ve felt something reading about it. It’s so scary to me b/c I do believe in Catholicism. I don’t know what to do with these feelings tho.

Hi! I apologise in advance for how long this answer was but I wanted to be as specific as possible.

You are more than welcomed to ask me about my religion.

This ask was a little hard to answer because I believe in the freedom of allowing anyone to worship whatever faith they want to believe in, but because you are asking me about my religion, I'm assuming you're asking me about what led to me leaving Catholicism for that religion as well.

Before I continue I just want to say that I respect your decision to stay in Catholicism because although it wasn't kind to me due to it's rigid structure and politics, it is a religion others find comfort in, and I would never dream of bashing what others believe in.

Having said that, I would like to talk about what led me to my spiritual divorce from Catholicism when I was once also confused and afraid about the idea of "going to hell."

---------------------------

My childhood:

I grew up in a very poor neighborhood during a time when gang wars, kidnappings and homicides were so rampant that my 5 year old self wondered if I would ever live to see 10. That's when I met my "imaginary friend."

"Who are you?" I asked.

"Your ancestors know me as Mars." He replied. My real last name is Roman and it literally translates to "Child of Mars." It has been in my family for so many generations but I didn't make the connection until I got older.

He introduced himself as just a Roman soldier although his uniform looked nothing like the ones my church showed when they did re-enactments.

He taught me how to fight, defend myself, be cautious, assess my surroundings, how to work around a panic attack and basically taught me how to survive.

Back then we didn't have smartphones and the internet wasn't as informative as it is now so I was sheltered from anything that wasn't Catholic, including Ancient Greek things so I wasn't able to identify him which is funny because "Mars" had a very Spartan looking outfit rather than a Roman one. I would often ask about it. "I like it better" was always his reply. I would often introduce him as "my weird looking Roman friend, Mars." I didn't know about the Roman gods Mars, Jupiter, Venus, etc. I just thought he was really into the planet Mars for some reason.

My Catholic upbringing was so sheltered, I was sure I was going to end up being a nun because of how much I studied it and how little I knew about the political history surrounding it.

I was fascinated by Satan and always wondered about the appropriatness of his punishment, for example, if he likes bad things and bad things are in hell, wouldn't he be surrounded by the things he likes? If god punished the wicked by sending them to hell in order to be punished by Satan, wasn't Satan helping god punish the wicked? Or the idea that Mary was not a goddess but was venerated like one.

It never made any sense to me until I started going to school and became friends with people who practiced Buddhism and Hinduism. They told me about reincarnation, an idea which made a lot more sense to me.

The more they told me about their religions, their multiple gods and female gods, the more they made sense to me, so I started researching other religions and bumped into Wicca. (I'm not wiccan but it was the only thing I could find at the time, in the 90s, about female empowerment (because I was tired of the sexism laced in the Bible) in a religious setting without me encroaching in Buddhism and Hinduism)

Wicca made me realize my friend Mars was actually Ares, god of war. The book was so nasty (and I will later learn, very inaccurate) about Ares that he and I ended up having a falling out. I was afraid and wondered if I was going to hell but then I said to myself "it'll only be temporary because then I'll be reincarnated." Reincarnation had officially become part of my personal philosophy.

There was a section in Wicca that talked about religion. It talked about various religions and the history of how Christianity demonized them. So I started reading as much as I could about the history of Christianity and Catholicism outside of the Wicca books that mentioned them. The more I learned about the political structure of Catholicism, the more I could see the gods sprinkled in the religion.

For example: Jesus and Osiris: both born December 25th, both born to Virgins, A star led 3 wise men to both (for Jesus it was the North Star, for Osiris it was the Eastern Star), Both taken to Egypt to escape the wrath of (for Jesus: Herod, for Osiris: Typhon), both taught in a temple as a child, both baptized at 30, both had twelve disciples, both could perform miracles, both walked on water, both raised someone from the dead (Jesus: Lazarus, Osiris: El-Azur-us) both were crucified, buried in a tomb, both were dead for 3 days and both resurrected, both had titles like "The Messiah", "the good shephard", "lamb of god", etc.

Jesus and Dionysus: Both wandered around, both could turn water into wine, both had legions of followers, both were persecuted, both claimed to be the son of God, both called holy child and if you want to get technical with Dionysus being born from a virgin because Jesus being the true son of God implies Mary was with God but technically a virgin because she had never been with an actual human man. By this technicality, Dionysus' mother Semele was also a virgin since she had never been with a human man.

Here's a couple more for Jesus:

Then you have the Christian holidays with Pagan roots and history: (LINK)

Example: Easter has bunnies and eggs because they are the symbols that represent fertility, which was used by the pagans to celebrate the Assyrian and Babalonian goddess Ishtar (pronunciation sounds a lot like Easter). This is why even though in Catholicism Easter is for the resurrection of Christ, there are eggs and bunnies which never made sense to me until I learn about Ishtar.

The reason why there are so many pagan symbols is because Catholicism didn't start until 300-400 years AFTER the death of Jesus. The Roman empire decided it was going to be Christian and in the process it forced the other countries it ruled over to be Christian as well. But because Pagans love their gods, they had to figure out how to sway them so they looked at their gods and holidays and appropriated them.

Because there were other Romans who still loved their gods and wanted to keep them despite the emperor, they created angels saints with ambiguous backgrounds but could do a lot of things that gods could do and we're used as avatars for their gods like Hermes being the messenger of Zeus (the god of gods) and Gabriel being the messenger of God.

The idea of a one true god is also a political tactic that uses fear which works because the human brain has evolved to respond better to fear thanks to evolution. In the beginning, Catholicism acknowledged other religions but claimed their god was the best one, hence when the Bible or prayer says "You will worship no other gods before me" which I always thought was a weird thing the Bible had because how could one worship other gods when there was only one god?

The idea of there only being a "one true god" came during the dark ages where people would accuse each other of being witches and working with the devil. Here is when Christianity started equating pagan gods with demons and devils.

The dark ages and persecutions were SO BRUTAL that fear became a thing synonymous with Catholicism thanks to the Spanish Inquisition that would randomly show up to make sure people were "properly" following the word of the Pope and not worshipping pagan gods now dubbed demons. This is where the idea of "going to hell" came from.

I also didn't like that the Catholic Church would automatically forgive the rich that would give them money and basically buy their way into heaven which was an actual rule and the reason why Martin Luther created the Protestant section of Christianity.

As for wether or not the gods are real, I will only say that for me, they are and possibly for these ex-non-believers who had very specific signs happen to them: PLEASE READ THE NOTES: (LINK)

But changing faiths can get messy because you have to unlearn what you've been taught your whole life. That is layers and layers of it being part of your subconscious and fear is something that was used because there was a lot of bloodshed that came with the politics of the christianization of Europe and the Americas.

If you are interested in Hellenic paganism, nothing is going to happen as far as going to hell goes, but there will be times where your anxiety will flare up. I suggest you learn as much as you can about the history Christianity, Catholicism and the witch trials of Europe in comparison with paganism.

Hell is a human concept evolved from fear tactics and mass hysteria.

The more you learn about Catholicism, the more you'll see that history has shaped it, paganism has shaped it and as long as you do the best to be the best version of yourself you'll be okay.

If it makes you feel better, you can continue to work with Jesus/Mary/Saints and Angels outside the Catholic system. I do it all the time, especially when I want them to take care of my parents who are hardcore Catholics. I celebrate day of the Dead and do Catholic prayers for my grandparents who were also super Catholics when they were alive.

Spirituallity and Religion are a lot more complex than we humans will ever understand.

I hope this helps.

May your heart connect with those who want to help you make a sounds decision about where you plan to take your spiritual journey.

[delicatestar]

Pagan meme 🌲🌳🍁

Tagged by @rosegoldtunic , @thepastelpriestess , and @daughterofthegoldenandthesilver

Do you have a magical/Pagan name?

No, I'm just Skyler or Sky 

How did you find Paganism?

I don't know if I identify with the word "pagan" the way other ppl do. It makes me think of Wicca, which I don't practice. But I guess it started with Catholicism. I was raised non-practicing Catholic, but I always went to church with my grandmother when I'd visit her. And I loved it because country Catholicism in the U.S. Deep South is like doing a ritual. It's not the obligational, dry Catholicism of the "city" (my city had 50,000 ppl lol). It was magical. The people there also believed you had to eat black eyed peas and cabbage or pot liquor for dinner on New Year's Eve. And you had to have your whole house clean before New Year's. And hold your breath as you pass a cemetery. And they spoke of Marie Laveau and the Yazoo Witch in quiet, awed whispers. These weren't great times in my life, but I loved the old tales and the forests I ran around in by myself for hours.

As I grew up, I realized it wasn't the specific god being worshipped in Catholicism that interested me, but the solemnity and beauty of the connection and the marriage of ritual, belief, and history. So I started spending more time in the woods and fields, talking to the spirits, the fairies, and the trees.

That was all squashed, of course, as I was growing up, but it's been nice to rediscover it over the last few years.

How long have you been practicing?

Hm... Probably from ages 2-14, then again over the last few years. Though some of those traditions never really left me, haha.

Are you out of the broom closet?

I...honestly kind of hate this term. I don't know why! Of course, if someone uses it, it's their own thing and that's ok. My beliefs and practices are private outside of this blog.

Solitary or group practitioner?

I'm not really comfortable letting other ppl dictate or influence how I interpret the universe, the gods I worship, etc.

What is your path?

I don't really understand this question. No one defines my path for me. I follow my gut.

D E I T Y

What’s your brand of deism?

Agnostic pantheism. It's expressed outwardly as a mix of Hellenic polytheism (revivalist), Shinto-Buddhism, science, and nature. (I do not talk about the Shinto-Buddhism parts on my blog because I am not Japanese and I feel it would be appropriative. I generally keep those things private.)

Who is your patron God/ess?

I don't actually subscribe to this concept.

What Gods do you worship?

Directly: Tyche/Fortuna, Apollo, Athena, Hermes, Hotei

Indirectly: Hades, The Erotes, Jesus, Hyacinthus

Do you fear darkly aspected Gods/Goddesses, or rather respect them?

No. I generally disregard the "evil" or "darkness" ascribed to certain gods, or choose not to work with them. The world has enough negativity in it. Humans are capable of enough evil without godly intervention.

Do you worship the Christian God?

No, but see my answer to "How did you find Paganism?" I consider Jesus to be an example of good and how doing good can be its own reward. Take care of the poor, feed the hungry, clothe the cold. Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you... These are core things I believe.

Do you worship animals? Or plants?

Not exactly. But I do think everything has a certain energy or life force or spirit. And as a kid, I used to wander the woods alone for hours to commune with them.

N A T U R E

Do you regularly commune with nature?

Not often because living in NYC makes it hard to find nature to commune with. On a recent trip, I found that I still really enjoy being in the forests and on the sea. I love the calm beauty of nature just existing. With no other purpose, no rush. Everything happening when it should, no sooner or later. 

Taken a camping trip just to talk to nature?

I went camping all the time as a kid and probably didn't realize this was why I loved it. I haven't been in a long time.

Describe the moment you felt closest to Mother Earth?

(When I was a kid, around 10 years old.) 

Standing in the middle of a forest in Mississippi, surrounded by green and brown and the smell of pine trees. The ground feels "old" and solid in a way other places don't. It vibrates with energy and certainty. The air is filled with the chattering of birds feeding and squirrels scolding each other. The forest is quiet-loud. I'd pet the wild king snakes and anoles. Climb a big tree and sit in the branches, becoming part of the rhythm of the forest until the animals no longer noticed that I didn't belong there and they'd come out of hiding: raccoons, rabbits, foxes, whole families of deer. I was able to identify every plant, every sound, every smell, even if I didn't have a name for it at the time. I was alone, but never felt lonely. I didn't go home until the cicadas started singing, the mosquitoes started biting, and it was almost too dark to see.

Do you have a familiar?

No, not really. But butterflies tend to come up for me a lot.

Have you ever called upon the powers of an animal in ritual? Or a plant?

No, I do this more organically/innately. It's ingrained in a way I don't notice I'm doing it. For example, if I have to kill a spider in my house (can't get it outside), I apologize to it and try to make its death as painless and instant as possible. I thank animals I eat for their life which will continue supporting mine. Their energy, becoming part of me, means we are now part of something bigger, together. (If I could be vegetarian, I would. It's not an option for me, unfortunately.)

Do you hug trees?

No, but I spent a lot of time sitting in th when I was younger. I do say hi to them when I pass them on the street. I had some big oak trees in my backyard when I was 3 and I loved to talk to them for hours.

Give them gifts?

Not really. As a kid I used to leave daisy chains on their above-ground roots for any fairies or spirits living there, though.

What are your favorite plants to work with?

I don't necessarily work with plants directly. Though I use cayenne pepper, garlic, and sage (all from the spice section at the grocery store), along with honey, to create meals that soothe some of my chronic illnesses. I use tea tree oil and eucalyptus for pain. I'm also particularly drawn to cosmos, chrysanthemums, and irises.

What is your favorite holiday?

New Year's!

What is your least favorite holiday?

The 4th of July.

Have you ever held a ritual on a holiday?

I help my wife prepare things for Day of the Dead. I clean the house before New Year's. And we go to see the first sunrise of the near year together.

Ever taken a day off work to celebrate a Pagan holiday?

No, but my favorite/main holiday is conveniently already a national holiday.

Do you celebrate Yule on the 21st rather than the 25th?

I don't usually celebrate Yule. Instead, I focus on the new year.

Tagging - I'm not going to tag anyone directly. However! If you see this and you want to do it, please tag me so I can see your answers. :D

[kendahl0216]

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…”

[I’m going to rant for a hot minute because (1) I can and (2) I really need to get this out of my head before I explode]

Separation of church and State is never explicitly stated in the U.S. constitution, but it’s how most people interpret the establishing line of the First Amendment (above).

And although Christianity is the leading religion in the United States, there is not a designated national religion, because it would be against the First Amendment. [Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…]

Religion does not belong in the U.S. Government. This has been people’s view since basically the founding of the country because of Government persecution in other countries like England between Catholicism and Protestantism.

Henceforth, religion shouldn’t be persuading the Supreme Court to overturn a court case and now women don’t have a say over their body and full health coverage (which is half the county’s population regardless of a woman’s opinion on this matter).

Some people might say that no one can prove the decision to overturn Roe V. Wade was religion based. And I’ll say that I have yet to hear an pro-life argument that isn’t inadvertently tied to religion (specifically Christianity).

We are seriously going back in time as a society and it’s sickening. It’s how I felt for the past few years and making a decision like this will split the country in two if it hasn’t already.

“Rome wasn’t built in a day, but it burned in one.” Many people believe that we live in the time of the U.S. Empire, bragging about how (over)powered we are and how much better we are than other countries. What most people don’t realize or remember is that most empires crumbled from conflict within, not from an outside force.

With a split country, we might just be seeing the start to the end of this nation-state.

But I’ll still use my First Amendment right -“…or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the Government for a redress of grievances”- and share my thoughts about it. I know I’m not free of consequences but if the Government is going back to 1972 then I’ll fight for my rights to not be taken like this. (Here is a link to Planned Parenthood’s Action website to help fight for abortion access)

And it’s definitely something we shouldn’t be seeing. Cause if they did this, what else will they be willing to overturn and take from their citizens?

I am so sick of this patriarchal country (and world), and the huge slap in the face that was Roe v. Wade being overturned the day after Title IV turned 50 years old (June 23).

Sincerely,

Disgusted, upset and above all disappointed

[queernuck]

Holes in the “Whole-Cloth”

Catholic schools, as an institution, are at once some of the best examples of what can be taken from the Church, what the Church can provide as part of being an entity within hegemonic control, and a structure that reproduces Oedipal trauma, that creates the sort of reactionary-unto-fascist culture that Catholic ideology so readily draws out of liberalism, the means by which Catholic education becomes a sort of money-laundering and a haven for various fascists, pedophiles, abusers, and reprehensible people who use a kind of social justice rhetoric in order to disguise their ideology. The notion of a “whole-cloth” concept of pacifism and support of life, one often endorsed tacitly or explicitly by the same reactionary elements, specifically goes on to ignore the sort of anticapitalist thought needed to even begin considering the hyperreal fabric of whole-cloth ideology, instead using it to justify a kind of liberal politics that accepts hegemonic violence while justifying anti-abortion legislature. All the same, the way in which Catholic education is so often part of a life that leads toward good, that leads toward a certain commitment to the betterment of others, of oneself for the sake not of individualist moralism but rather a commitment to self-criticism and reconciliation, the understanding and acceptance of a framework of restoration and liberation, presents the best possible case for Catholic schooling in contemporary discourses. 

First, the role of Catholic education as a sort of colonial structure must be addressed. The hegemonic role played by the Church is one that specifically must be understood as colonial, and a post-colonial Catholicism is one that is not readily apparent, is certainly not unthinkable but neither a clear possibility, as the very structure of Catholic identity is linked to colonization, to standards of colonial acceptability, rituals of belonging and becoming that are specific to Catholic ideation of the body and spirit. I do not wish to enter into a critique of Catholicism as dualist, as I personally do not believe that Catholicism requires it be realized in the dualism it claims (that dualism rather being a kind of differentiation of the molecular and the phantasmic, the spectral, which does not lead to a separation of the phantasmic imposition of ��essence”) but rather in a specific kind of ritual acceptance of Catholic rituals as symbolic, as a kind of semiotic transference: the reverse-anthropological, the knowing and ironic application of languages of anthropology to the hegemonic, creates an awareness of what Catholic rituals represent when compared to the means by which becoming-Catholic is contrasted to the culture of the colonized. The potentiality for syncretic belief, for ritual that specifically inherits colonial trauma as part of a larger burden realized in decolonization and is preserved within the postcolonial act of identification, the retention of the mark of colonization as part of keeping score of colonial violence, of an anti-Oedipal turn that recognizes the previous Oedipal signification, is foundational to realizing what purpose Catholic education serves. The way in which there is a unity found in the notion of a singular Catholic identity, Catholic both in the sense of the word as a signifier of all-inclusive, of true Christianity as beyond that which is merely Christian, and additionally as a signifier of a certain Christian identity that has largely been repeated and spread through colonial violence, one sees that the role of Catholic education in the First World is to accept a hegemonic structure of control and to articulate it within pedagogical structures that can stay with a student for a lifetime. 

And indeed, many a lifetime has been marked by Catholic education. From pre-K to pre-med, hospitals and law firms, schools of Divinity and schools of trade, the influence of Catholic education is never terribly far from reach. The avant-garde style of Montessori teaching is most associated with Catholic schools, and the funding that many schools receive from relatively wealthy hierarchies means that there are often thriving Catholic schools in colonized neighborhoods, a specific sort of juxtaposition used to justify the entry of the Catholic educational body into the neighborhood in question. The practice (of which I have been a beneficiary) of Catholic schools offering generous scholarships of many sorts is specifically a sort of producing-production where the school is commodified, is made into the sort of experience that can be bought, and is then bought by the school from itself, exchanging value that never was, the creation of value out of itself. That there is a sort of incestuous relationship between numerous Catholic schools, with some such as Fordham going from middle to graduate schools in more or less the same tradition, the same crimson colors and Fordham Rams all the way down, creates a sense in which Catholic education becomes a lifetime commitment, a kind of community that is accepted even by those who are not themselves believers in the strong sense of such a term. 

This is where the hegemonic structure of Catholicism as a kind of influence upon the European concept of self becomes important. The role of Jesuit priests in establishing the modern linkage between Europe and the “East” as a monolithic entity, the way that the history of European accounts of China are marked by Jesuit-crafted systems of romanizations, the importance of Catholic missions to European interaction with Japan, and the colonization of the Philippines most dramatically, the Catholic and the European are in effect the same when discussing the history of these Orientalisms, such that even in not adapting a Catholic faith, Europeans take on a certain Catholic character. The means by which European culture stands as a continuation of the birth of Western Civilization and the potentiality of modernity in the Renaissance and the “Age of Exploration” (as a euphemism for the brutal societies of control and repression with ships and cities named for saints) the hegemony of Catholic identity becomes apparent. The means by which Catholicism has been at once a force for anticommunism on a global scale and has itself been indicted by anticommunist thought, the danger of liberation theology countered by the Evangelical ideology of America, creates a sort of structure of ironic reaction that retains none of the blasphemy that a good Catholic would counter the Church with: there is no reverence for the rituals and thought of Catholic Social Teaching, but rather a resignification of the religious into a kind of ritualized Americanism, the creation of a new resignification that is able to overcode upon the previous presence of a Catholic hegemony as Evangelical, Fundamentalist, as not only uncaring about the world but dismissing it in a reversal of materialist thought: the material world is unimportant, suffering is justified and in fact good for the soul, specifically suffering that lines American pockets. Certainly, this is the most Catholic thing about Evangelical Christianity: the acceptance of suffering as an exercise in goodness, in Godliness, as a possibility of good for the Soul.

Additionally, commonality is found in the way that there is a fundamental lack of recognition between those who live Catholic lives and the Catholic Church itself. Going to mass on occasion, having a sense of morality and moreover a sense of the metaphysical is more meaningfully Catholic than many who call themselves Christian are meaningfully Christian. This is specifically because of how Catholicism, as a series of rites and rituals, becomes a kind of metacultural entity realized in these semiotic exchanges, the creation and cultivation of the phenomena of living a certain life and a kind of agnosticism about the actual importance of Jesus the man, Jesus the teacher, savior, so on. The importance of questioning the Bible, of accepting it as a means of discussing fundamental questions of goodness, of acceptance, while acknowledging it as a historical tool of oppression, of colonialism, of antisemitism is a difficult process that many Catholics are unable to meaningfully enact. Instead, they take on a sort of realization of Hobbesian salvation as signified through Catholic aesthetics, the acceptance of a certain tale of salvation as all but ordained at birth and requiring an acceptance of empire, of imperialist structure, and the tireless support of such violence in political alliances, the creation and support of the American war machine, the creation of a phantasmic violence against White Catholics while the very meaningful and present persecution of Catholics as a result of imperialist violence, the means by which Catholicism as a conceptually Western means of living is specifically named in reactionary, fascist ideologies and thus met with violence, violence that is ironically tied to the very Catholicism of the West, is ignored. 

Instead, the proposal of a “whole-cloth” solution, one that takes the notion of a weak anti-war stance (mostly of convenience) and occasional references to the importance of charity and marries it to an ardent opposition to abortion justifies the means by which abortion is structured in the larger social space that is presented by a Christian-but-not-Catholic society. The notion that abortion is tied to existing structures of violence, that “wanting” an abortion is hardly an accurate description of how most women approach the procedure and that it is due to the danger of childbirth, the cost of being pregnant even before adoption, the subjectification that adoption implies as it violently serves to enforce racialized ideologies about the goodness of white families and the inherently immoral structure of black ones, is all ignored by the sort of advocacy taken under “whole-cloth” approaches. That “whole-cloth” approaches recognize an inconsistency, the pro-death penalty views of many anti-abortion advocates, the support for American imperialism that many vocally hold, is no great feat as it requires merely a cursory glance at what passes for political discourse in American society. However, the way in which children who are eventually born are left profoundly unhelped by the Church in many situations, are helped only insofar as they are given symbolic support until they are old enough to become the victims of pedophiles protected by the Church for generations, is never addressed by such whole-cloth ideologies. Advocacy for Palestinian Christians who are colonized in Israel is never addressed; a sort of resignification of “Birthright” as a Christian, patronizingly anti-semitic ritual that claims Jewish belonging, Jewish culture, as a mere precursor to Christianity and more specifically Catholicism in this case, replaces it. Meanwhile, the antisemitism present in Catholicism itself, in Catholic anticommunist thought, in the anticommunist accusations of the Church as a New World Order (with an obviously Jewish backing) is addressed only insofar as it discusses the Church, with no meaningful effort at examining the antisemitism of Church history, the vital means by which Catholic history cannot exist except as a continued and intentional realization of antisemitic, imperialist violence becomes simply part of Church History to be sanitized and presented as an Other, as something that was sealed away at Vatican II. 

Conversely, the potential of actual revolutionary Catholicism, the building of liberation theology and the lack of recognition given to it by the Church, the way in which Catholic Social Teaching has created a sort of specific radicalism, the discontent that is brewing on college campuses that are undergoing the realization of a Catholic transgender experience, a gay Catholic experience, the realization of a figure of the lesbian nun, the gay priest, the homosexuality of scripture, presents both theoretical-theological opening through the deconstructive approach of figures such as Derrida, Butler, Žižek, and numerous others, and an attempt at global consciousness of the sort urged by Catholic education, that Catholic education did not realize it was cultivating. Even limited by liberal-democratic structures, the socialist necessities of the Church, the anticapitalist implications of scripture, are becoming clearer and clearer and the possibility of militant Catholicism, a Catholicism of liberation, grows by the day. In this fashion, fascism urges a reactionary traditionalism, a sort of grasping at the symbols of the Church in order to hold itself steady. But reactionaries are, as ever, paper tigers and they soon crumble when faced with how these symbols of hegemony are quickly being resignified through acts of love and sex and postcolonial critique into the beginnings of socialist thought.

[humansofhds]

Heather Rick, MDiv ’19

“I think Divinity School is the best place to be as a writer because this is where you really learn how to ask the questions that are at the heart of the human experience and the human-divine relationship.”

Living in Two Different Worlds

I grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts, which is about an hour west of Boston. It’s a medium-sized, working-class city. I have a working-class background, so growing up I never thought that I would end up at Harvard. Neither of my parents went to college, so it was always, for my mom especially, important that her kids go to college.

That’s the weird thing about coming from a working-class background—there’s an expectation that your parents want you to do better than they did, but they don’t want you to do so much better that you completely transcend your background.

That’s sort of a rift I’m feeling between myself and my family now that I’m at HDS. There’s this idea that people like us don’t go to Harvard, and therefore I’m going to think I’m better than my family because I go to Harvard or I’m using all these big words that aren’t part of their vocabulary. So, part of what I��m struggling with is figuring out how to hold on to the family values that they taught me while being embedded in a rigorous academic setting like HDS. It’s kind of like living in two different worlds, and I feel like the generation that’s in transit between classes.

The Road to Divinity School

Initially, I went to an art school in Chicago for creative writing. I’ve always been a reader and a writer, and I knew I wanted to get out of New England. But being a working-class student, it was really hard being in a school that had very little support for people from working-class backgrounds.

Even socially, people didn’t understand why my parents couldn’t pay my rent or tuition. I did three semesters there and then I had to drop out. I think that was when I realized that although I had been taught that education was my key out of poverty, education is still very much a class privilege.

After I had to drop out and I came back to Massachusetts after being on my own far away, I became really disillusioned and very depressed. I felt like I would never become a writer because I believed in the gatekeeping function of the institute and that I needed a BFA and eventually an MFA to be a writer.

Eventually, I went back to community college in Central Massachusetts, and, of all places, that was where I really started writing again. Some of the best professors I’ve ever had I met there—professors who really understood the background I was coming from, who really understood what it meant to try to be a working-class artist and the struggles I was facing. After being in community college I ended up getting a scholarship to Smith College to finish my bachelor’s degree.

I had initially thought I was going to finish my degree in writing or English, but I ended up switching to religion. At that point I had realized that the questions and issues I was asking in my writing were fundamentally issues of being, and I ended up coming back to God. I felt I already had the tools to write, but what I needed was the ability to ask the kinds of questions that my writing was getting at and the time and the space to do soul searching, as corny as that sounds—that’s really what being a writer is about.

I like to write from my own life, and I often find myself in this weird place between fiction and nonfiction. Emotional truth is what I try to get at in my writing, regardless of the facts. Sometimes friends will read something I wrote and be like, “It didn’t happen exactly like this.” And I’m like, “Yeah, but this is how it felt. This is the truth of how this felt.”

So, I like to write on this margin of playing with facts and reality and to get to emotional truths. I think Divinity School is the best place to be as a writer because this is where you really learn how to ask the questions that are at the heart of the human experience and the human-divine relationship.

Writing in the Election Aftermath

In the Boston area, we tend to think about Trump country as being in the Midwest or the South, but that’s not the case. The town where I went to community college, Gardner, Massachusetts, is the kind of place where people feel they have been left behind.

I hated it when I lived there, but one of the last things I remember saying to my creative writing professor at community college before I left was: “I think I’m beginning to owe a debt of compassion to this place.” When I was in Gardner, a very small, depressed, conservative area, I felt like I was in exile, but I now feel that’s the kind of place that gave birth to me.

In the election aftermath, a lot of what I’m hearing is “How could those people have voted against their own economic interests?” What people don’t understand is that a lot of these working-class white people don’t see themselves as being poor, because there’s such a stigma of shame around being poor. There’s a stigma that that if you are wealthy, it means you are good and that you did the right things. Therefore, to them Trump isn’t just a billionaire who’s going to screw them over. To them, it’s: “He’s a rich person, so he did things right.”

The urge is to blame others because you don’t want to accept that there’s something wrong with you morally that prevented you from attaining success. That’s when the classism and the racism gets all blurred up together. It’s so easy to prey on the racism of those people who refuse to see themselves as victims of a classist system. Instead someone tells them, "You are poor because these immigrants are taking your jobs."

In a lot of analyses, I’m not seeing an awareness of how these people actually view themselves. There seems to be quite a willingness to just write off that demographic altogether, which I can understand, but at the same time that’s where I come from. I feel like I can’t do that. There’s so much talk about regarding the role of the white working class in getting Trump elected, and I feel like it’s important for people like me, who came from that background, to be able to describe how those people really see themselves and to say what it’s like being in those towns.

How do I have the conversations that we have so easily and so openly at HDS with people who don’t talk about things like classism, who don’t recognize their own racism, who don’t recognize themselves as victims of a classist system? I think for people like me who are here in academia coming from those sorts of backgrounds, we need to figure out how to bring these conversations that we’re having here back to those communities.

The big question here is, “What’s my role as a writer?” Writing is what I’m good at. That’s what I know how to do, and I know whatever I’m going to do, I have to use that.

Storytelling is a political act, and it is really important to tell the stories of these places that we’re from, especially the places that are misunderstood, forgotten, or left behind. Post-election, the urge many of us have is to get out there in the world and start doing things, but I think the first step is introspection, to connect with ourselves and ask, “What resources do I have within myself? What is my connection with the divine right now, and how am I going to use that connection as my strength, as my way to move forward with this work?”

It’s draining to try to be so active in this climate, but I think storytelling is something that gives me strength and that will allow me to bring these conversations out into the world.

From Catholicism to Riot Grrrl, Feminist Punk Rock to Islam

I didn’t grow up with any kind of religious education. I had a lot of antagonism towards Christianity and rejected it at a very young age, mostly because my mother’s family is indigenous, from the Ojibwe Nation, in what’s now Canada. After a certain point I realized that the only reason her family was Catholic was because it was imposed on them when that area was colonized by French Catholic immigrants.

Growing up, I had this idea of a profound lack of compassion on the part of the Catholic Church. Not only was this a religion that was forced on my mother’s people, but it eventually led to a spiritual trauma because people like my grandfather were just cast-offs. So, I turned away from religion altogether for a long time.

Punk rock was the closest thing that I had to any kind of system or ethical community. That was really where I learned about radical politics, and I learned how to assert my voice and find self-esteem and self-confidence, especially through riot grrrl feminist punk rock.

That was what I had for a long time, and it was through punk rock that I got interested in taqwacore, which is Muslim punk rock, specifically Michael Muhammad Knight. He wrote this book imagining what a Muslim punk community would look like. Then people started picking up this book and actually doing it. Reading his book was really the first time I saw people like myself reflected in religion—kids with tattoos and funny hair who came from broken families and who felt like they were on the outskirts of multiple communities, not just a religious community. That was the first time I felt like Islam was big enough for all the weird, broken people like me and my family, and the first time I felt a sense of compassion that was just not there in the Catholicism that I knew growing up. So that really attracted me to Islam; it felt like coming home.

I feel like I’ve been writing my way through this whole journey. Writing has been a form of prayer for me and a form of self-discovery. Even if I’m bad about doing my five daily prayers, as long as I’m writing, I’m still praying and I’m still in communication.

I want people to think about Islams, not Islam. I think one of the reasons Muslims are feared and misunderstood is because people assume that Islam is somehow this monolithic entity—that all Muslims do this, all Muslims are this, all Muslims are from a certain place.

I think it’s really important to remember that Islam, like any other religious tradition, has constantly been in flux since its inception and is hugely diverse in terms of where Muslims are coming from, who’s converting to Islam, the cultural practices that we bring with us, the things we believe, and the things we do.

There is no one average Muslim. It always strikes me as funny when people are surprised when they find out that I’m Muslim. They’re surprised that I have tattoos or that I’m queer. I’m like “No. Muslims are just like everybody else. We bring so much to our religion. We’re not just this one, monolithic entity.”

I think it’s really important to remember and to embrace that openness. That was really what drew me to Islam first. I was like, “This is something that’s big enough and dynamic enough to have room for somebody like me.” And that’s why one of my big academic interests is Muslim youth subculture, like hip-hop and punk rock, because I think that brings a side of American Islam that your average non-Muslim does not know about, and it shows the kind of the dynamism of the American Muslim community.

[philippmichelreichold]

The question "what is our place in the universe?" has challenged mankind's understanding and creativity since before the dawn of history. At first, mankind lived in an uneasy harmony with nature, and saw itself as a part of nature. In time, people saw the world as being divided into two parts: things people could control and things they could not. It seemed logical to some that if mankind could not control the forces of nature, perhaps there existed someone or something that could. Some of "our Pagan ancestors honored -- even deified -- natural forces in their religions"(Fitch, ix). Two separate cosmologies arose; one saw mankind as being able to master the universe through mankind's mental and physical prowess, the other saw mankind as needing to rely on the aid of an outside, supernatural agent; "religion came into being when man(sic) realized that . . . his(sic) control of the universe is limited."(Gonzales-Wipplier, pg 6) The flower of humanism may be said to have come to full bloom in classical Greece, where, "the statement by Protogoras, 'man is the measure of all things', could be said to embody the Greek artistic ideal."(King) These two cosmologies, humanism and religion, are represented in today's civilization in such institutions as socialism-communism and Roman Catholicism. Frderick Engels, one of communism's founders, summaries the differences between communism and Christianity thusly, "Christianity places this salvation in a life beyond, after death, in heaven. So communism places it in this world, through a transformation of society."(Engels, pg 168)  

Humanism, in the form of Socialism, became the driving force of the Mexican Revolution of the early twentieth century, as seen by the commissioning by the Mexican government of artists like Rivera to paint murals at the University of Agriculture at Chapingo and the National Palace at Mexico City. Religion, in the form of Roman Catholicism, was the driving force of Renaissance Italy, as seen by the commissioning by the Pope of artists like Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Though the societies of Revolutionary Mexico and Renaissance Italy had divergent cosmologies , they shared many social conditions, and found themselves faced with the same challenge: how to indoctrinate a largely illiterate populace. They found the same solution: the depiction of important themes in murals in public buildings. In Renaissance Italy, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was chosen as the location for art which presented Roman Catholicism's view of humanity's role in the universe. In Revolutionary Mexico, the walls of buildings such as the National Palace were chosen to display the goals and philosophy of socialism. Artists of the Mexican Revolution, such as Rivera looked to the Renaissance for inspiration and, "in the classical myths and forms of Renaissance art Rivera recognized a specific device and mode of procedure by which the ambitions of Mexico's new, post- revolutionary government could be achieved. Just as the Italian Renaissance artists had revived pride in their country's heritage from ancient Greece and Rome, so Rivera, with similar emphasis upon realism and humanism, would create murals that would evoke a pride in the heritage in a rich indigenous past."(Arquin, pp142-3)  

Comparisons may be made not only between individual works of individual artists, but between the social and cultural conditions that brought these artists into being. Also, the lives of two artists of different times and different cosmologies may possess similarities. Thus, the lives of artists separated by centuries may be more similar than those of contemporaries. "The life of a Rivera . . . comes closer to that of a Michelangelo or a Cellini than it does to. . . a Puvis or a Picasso."(Wolfe, pg 197), These similar circumstances may have a direct impact on the content of the artist's work. Both Michelangelo and Rivera were the sons of middle class parents. Michelangelo was the son of "a city magistrate"(Hale, pg 122); Rivera was the son of "the editor of a liberal news paper"(Arquin, pg 21). Both Michelangelo and Rivera owe their careers to having their talents recognized and developed at an early age. The work of both was made possible by powerful patrons. For Rivera, this patron was the state in the form of Mexican Government. For Michelangelo, the patron was the Roman Catholic in the personage of the Pope. An understanding of their social settings is essential to an understanding of the iconography of the artists. The iconography of Rivera contains images drawn from the historical setting of the Mexican Revolution- socialism and Mexico's Aztec heritage; that of Michelangelo contains the images drawn from Renaissance Italy and Catholicism, under the influence of its Greco-Roman heritage. The works of both Rivera and Michelangelo are representative of the views of mankind's role in the universe held by the artists, and the societies in which they lived. I will demonstrate how this is so by comparing murals of each of these artist's cosmologies, Rivera's Creation and Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam". I have mentioned the need in both Rivera's Mexico and Michelangelo's Italy to us art to educate a largely illiterate populace. The iconography and content of Rivera's mural, The Creation, located in the Mexico City, Escuela Nacional Preparatoria, Anfiteatro Bol¡var is an example of what Bertram Wolfe called Rivera's "Aztec approach to communism."(Wolfe, pg 149) In overall appearance, this mural at first resembles the work of a renaissance artist depicting a religious scene. However, there are distinct differences. Unlike a renaissance religious work, Rivera's Creation does not contain a divine image or a religious figure-- God is conspicuous by His absence. Rather than an image of God bestowing manna from heaven, we see an image of a man literally up to his arm pits in fruit. There is bounty, not by means of divine intervention, but rather as a result of the labors of enlightened men and women under the Revolution. Unlike the figures in a Renaissance painting, these figures have a more earthy than heavenly appearance in that they are not the stately, white-skinned saints of Michelangelo, but rather the dark-skinned peasants of the Mexican countryside. The background of earth tones reinforces the message that bounty, symbolized by the bananas, comes from the earth, through the labors of mankind. The figures on the sides do not represent saints or Christian virtues, but rather, The "Emanations of the Spirit of Woman" on the left, and the "Emanations of the Spirit of Man" on the right.(Helms,pg 238) It is important to note that these qualities arise from the nature of man and woman. They are not bestowed from on high. This point is emphasized by the lack of implied lines between themselves and any part of the painting-- they do not gaze at the central figure in adoration, but go on with the tasks at hand. . There can be seen an "elegiac quality of mood in his glorification of peasants and workers. . . ."( Myers, pg 219.)  

Like Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam, The Creation seems to celebrate the creation of a new world. Unlike The Creation of Adam, it lacks clearly religious symbols. In this work is a new creation, one wrought by the labors of mankind rather than of God, through implementation of socialist reforms and the education of the people. Sr. Rivera's work seems to say, "By the fruits of the Revolution will you know us; by our labors will we prosper." The Creation of Adam (1508-1512, fresco) is located on the Vault of the Sistine Chapel. It is a asymmetrically balance painting with two dominant figures, the one, of Adam, on the left, the other , of God, on the right. The youthful figure of Adam reclines passively and expectantly on the ground, waiting on God. He appears to be lit from above, as by a heavenly light. The ancient figure of God hovers powerfully in the air, pondering Adam. He is attended by a host of genii above, below and behind him, and "The group assumes the aspect of a gigantic cloud." (Mariani, Plate XII) All of this iconography establishes the Roman Catholic view of mankind in relationship to God and the universe. Man is below, , and subordinate to God, dependent on this supernatural being for his very existence. The choice of colors in the background emphasizes the Church's opinion on the state of humanity. There is contrast between the backgrounds behind the figure Adam and the figures God and his host in that the figure of Adam reclines on a green and blue earth with a white, early dawn-like sky, while the figures on the right seem suspended in space and enclosed in a cloak of red-violet and blue-violet. Adam's side of the painting is green and blue, the colors of earth, with a view of the sky. God and the genii of his attributes a cloaked in royal purple. Adam's left hand rests limply on the left knee and his gaze, fixed on God, seems to lack independent will. God's outstretched hand seems vibrant and powerful, and his gaze is full of wisdom and creative purpose. I would like to conclude with a final comparison of the implied lined of The Creation and The Creation of Adam, that illustrates the differences between these two divergent cosmologies. Rivera was an adherent of a modern form of Humanism, communism. In ancient times, this cosmology was represented by the tau, which is made by placing a vertical line under a horizontal line; the vertical line connecting at its top end with the horizontal at its mid point. In simplest terms, it resembles the letter "T". The tau symbolizes the cosmological formula of "reaching the heights from below. It may be thought to symbolize the words of Marks," freedom is never given from above, it is taken from below.(Laskin, pg 8) The tau may be seen in the implied lines of The Creation. The center line, rising through Emerging Man, reaches the horizontal line of the top of the alcove. Also, Emerging Man forms the shape of the tau with his outstretched arms. He does not reach up beseechingly to heaven, nor does his gaze extend the implied line above the horizontal by gazing heavenward. Rather, he gazes outward, to the audience, That Emergent Man is reaching the heights by his own efforts can be seen as he arises from the stack of the bananas.. The symbol of the other cosmology, religion, is the cross. The shape of the cross is also made by first drawing a vertical line. The vertical line is not topped by a horizontal line, but rather crossed at mid point or at a point somewhat higher. More simply put, it looks like this: + . The cross makes the cosmological statement "as above, so below", or in the words of the Our Father, ". . . Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven".(Matt. 6:10) An implied vertical line separates the two halves of The Creation of Adam, and an implied line connects the figure of Adam with that of God, thus forming the cross. Implied lines following the gaze of Adam to God and the gaze of God toward God show the connection between God and mankind. We thus see the two world views of humanism and religion, of the Mexican Revolution and the Italian Renaissance, demonstrated in the lines and art of two of their artistic propagandists, Diego Rivera and Michelangelo Bounarotti.  

Works Cited

Arquin, Florence. "Diego Rivera, The Shaping of an Artist, 1889-1921". Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971.  

 Engels, Frederick. "On the History of Early Christianity", Feurer, Lewis S., Marx and Engels, Basic Writings in Politics and Philosophy. No Place: Anchor Books, 1959.  

Fitch, Ed. Magical Rites From the Crystal Well. St. Pali, Mn. Llewellyn Publication, 1992.  

Gonzales- Wippler. The Complete Book of Spells, Ceremonies and Magic. St. Pali, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 1991.  

 Hale, John R. and the Editors of Time-Life books. Renaissance. New York: Times, Inc., 1965.  

Helms, Cynthia Newman, Editor. Diego Rivera A Retrospective. No Place: Founders Society, Detroit Institute of the Arts, 1986.  

King, Kathleen. "The Gordon Writing Rlie".No Place: No Publisher, 1997.  

Laskin, Harold. Harold J Laskin on the Communist Manifesto, Clinton, MA: Random House, 1967.  

Mariani, Valerio. Michelangelo the Painter. New York: Harry N. Adams, 1964.  

The Gospel of St. Matthew. The Holy Bible, KGV.  

Myers, Bernard S. Encyclopedia of World Art, volume XII.New York: McGraw Hill Book Company, 1966.  

Rivera, Diego, The Creation. Diego Rivera Web Museum, Online, Internet, March 7,1997.  

Wolfe, Bertram D. The Fablious Life of Rivera Diego. New York: Wolfe, Bertram D, Stein and Day, 1963.

[theconservativebrief]

Even the trailer for the documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor, about the legendary children’s television figure Fred Rogers, had a lot of people in tears. But the film, which has been touring the festival circuit before making its theatrical debut on June 8, doesn’t traffic in nostalgia.

Instead, director Morgan Neville (20 Feet From Stardom, Best of Enemies) was motivated to make the film by a deep-seated belief that what Rogers had to offer to the world over decades of his show is missing from our culture today — and desperately needed.

So the movie is less of a cradle-to-grave biographical documentary and more of an argument for simple kindness and empathy of the kind Rogers displayed. And, it turns out, that message can move us to tears even as adults.

Neville talked with me by phone about making the film, Rogers’s Christian faith, and whether TV and movies can still unite us today.

The following conversation has been edited lightly for clarity.

Morgan Neville talks about his film Won’t You Be My Neighbor in May 2018. Araya Diaz/Getty Images

Alissa Wilkinson

Where do you start in making a film like Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

Morgan Neville

From the beginning, I wanted to make a film about ideas. In fact, when I first went to Pittsburgh and met everybody including the family, when I met [Fred’s widow] Joanne Rogers, I said, “I don’t want to make a film about the biography of Fred. I want to make a film about the ideas of Fred Rogers.”

And she smiled and said, “I love that, because Fred always said his own story would make the most boring film of all time.” I disagree! But I think the idea from the beginning was not to make a film about nostalgia, but to make a film about these ideas that are timeless, and in fact timely.

So making the film was a very instinctual, emotional reaction to listening to a bunch of speeches Fred Rogers gave and feeling like this is a voice that’s missing in our culture today. How do I reintroduce that voice? That’s kind of an unusual way of thinking about making a film. But when I respond emotionally to something, then I figure that other people may too.

The difficulty with a character like Fred Rogers is he’s in many ways a quintessential two-dimensional character, in the popular conception, with no dramatic tension and no character development. The reality is he was a very dimensional person, with a lot of dramatic tension and a lot of self-doubt.

There were a number of hints that I got early on, before I actually started making the film. When I was still deciding on that first trip to Pittsburgh, I went to the Fred Rogers Center and spent a day going through materials there to kind of get a better sense of where this story might go. The first thing I looked at was the Bobby Kennedy assassination special, because it only aired one time and it was never repeated, and I’d read about it. But I hadn’t been able to see it. When I watched that episode, I knew I could make a film. Any doubts I had about depth or dramatic tension were gone.

So that was kind of my toehold as a filmmaker: to understand that [Rogers’s story] feels so simple but actually has so much complexity. A lot of the struggles I have had are the same struggles that Fred had — he made a show that was very simple and very deep. But we tend to mistake simple for superficial. How do you make something that’s very straightforward but also profound? Because I think that’s what Fred did.

At a certain point, you have to just kind of lean into the sincerity of the subject. He’s such an emotionally honest person, and to make a film that is so uncynical feels almost radical in today’s culture.

Alissa Wilkinson

You get the impression he’s a kind of countercultural figure, something we might not have detected as children. The Bobby Kennedy assassination episode is especially surprising because most of us probably never saw it, since it only aired once. What was it about that episode specifically that really struck you as a linchpin for the film?

Neville talks about his film at the Sundance Film Festival in 2018. Robin Marchant/Getty Images

Morgan Neville

The story behind the episode is that Bobby Kennedy was killed on a Wednesday night, and his funeral was to be televised that Saturday. Fred insisted that he put together this special to air Friday night because he knew that children around the country were going to be watching on Saturday and would have questions, and they would know something bad had happened. Rather than letting those fears fester, he said, “You have to level with kids. You have to tell them. Help them. Explain to them in age-appropriate terms what the bad things in life are.” He knew from his own background that if you tell kids to not worry about things, that does not stop them from worrying.

In fact, I think he felt that the greatest — I don’t know if he’d call it evil, but I think he thought the most negative forces in our lives stem from fear. Fear was the thing that festered and led to things like anger and hatred and resentment. So he was always about trying to quell fear.

The episode showed me somebody who just was speaking to children. But as an adult watching it, it resonated in a whole different way. And you realized that we all live in a culture with a certain amount of trauma, and we tend to not process those things. It felt like we all need to process our fears with a little more Fred Rogers.

Alissa Wilkinson

Something interesting about the film was how many people talked about how Rogers saw his show as “ministry.” That might be a surprising feature of his life for some people, that so much of his work was rooted in that part of his life.

Morgan Neville

Fred was a Presbyterian minister, but he studied all religions. He was very interested in Catholicism. He was very close with Henri Nouwen, the religious philosopher. He studied Quakerism quite a bit. He studied various Christian denominations. He read the Bible every morning. But he also studied Judaism and Islam and Buddhism. He spoke Hebrew; he spoke Greek. He was very much a seeker.

I felt like what he was doing was looking for the common humanist values that exist in most of the world’s religions and trying to impart those — that kind of basic morality that undergirds most of the world’s religions. That’s what I find so powerful. His show was not overtly Christian. It’s humanist.

When I started trying to digest his message down to something, what I came up with was “radical kindness.” But I think Fred himself would have called it grace, because he talked about the concept of grace quite a bit. Grace is the idea of bestowing good to people, even if they don’t deserve it, and with no expectation of anything back. It’s a selfless idea of putting good into the world and treating people with understanding and kindness.

That shouldn’t feel like a radical notion, but we live in a culture that often expects something in return for good deeds. That kind of selfless kindness and civility feels radical, in a way. But it shouldn’t.

I think part of what I wanted to do with the film was just have a discussion, to ask the most basic questions about how we should be living together and how we should be behaving. We live in a culture that incentivizes disgraceful behavior, that incentivizes divisiveness. (I made a film called Best of Enemies, which is all about that.)

It’s about thinking about the neighborhood we all have together as being something that must be nurtured and not taken for granted. The more we live in a culture that presumes we will always have a neighborhood, the more fragile it becomes, and the more dangerous it becomes. I know that all sounds heavy, but it does feel urgent.

Fred Rogers and his trolley in a promotional photo from the 1980s. Family Communications Inc./Getty Images

Alissa Wilkinson

You brought up your film Best of Enemies, which I was thinking about while watching this film. This is something that you keep going back to as a filmmaker: the way we got to where we are, and how our interpersonal relationships have changed based on the way we talk to one another. Best of Enemies argues that TV made it worse because it rewards loud, bombastic rhetoric. But Fred Rogers was trying to counteract just that thing.

Morgan Neville

Yeah, absolutely. Without a doubt. It’s a subject I come back to again and again — how culture is, and how we can find a way of communicating with each other. I feel like the tragedy of Best of Enemies is that you have two cultural figures [Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley] who were grown-ups, who were free thinkers, who I think lamented the thing that their debates gave birth to. Even though they didn’t like each other, they liked the fact that they could come together and have a platform to have a discussion in front of everybody.

So it’s this question of television as a place where you can build community. Fred says it in the documentary: ”Television could build a community, a real community.” I feel like we live in a time where television’s doing the opposite. It’s dividing us, along with everything else. That lost opportunity is something that I want people to reflect upon.

Alissa Wilkinson

You’re a filmmaker. Do you ever feel conflicted about exploring these ideas on yet another screen? Or do you see the potential in the medium?

Morgan Neville

I mean, it’s interesting because I made this film for everybody. There’s a lot of debate in the documentary world about who our audiences are. Are we making films for each other? Are we preaching to the converted? Are we all in our own filter or bubble today?

So I think very consciously about trying to make films or TV shows that anybody can watch and recognize something of their own experience in. I feel like this is a film that anybody can take ownership over. Having screened it for a number of different types of audiences, I feel like it has that potential.

For me, it’s not because I want the biggest audience — which would be nice! — but it’s really because I feel like if you can remind people of the things they agree about, then maybe we haven’t passed the tipping point of keeping our neighborhood together.

Original Source -> Morgan Neville on making a movie about Fred Rogers’s “radical kindness”

via The Conservative Brief

[eichy815]

The Luck Starts Here...

Every year, fun-loving American citizens anticipate the frivolity and debauchery of St. Patrick’s Day.  For people with Irish heritage, it’s an opportunity to display ethnic pride.  For many others, it’s an excuse to watch parades and get drunk.

And then there are those such as myself – those of us who have rarely (if ever) partaken in St. Patrick’s Day celebrations.  Either we don’t possess Irish nationality as part of our genetic lineage (guilty!) or we have other priorities in our lives that don’t involve the garish festivities (also guilty!).

It’s only with the escalating socio-political chaos of our world that I’ve begun to reflect a little more about the concept that is most frequently associated with March 17:  LUCK.

Do we create our own luck, or is it all truly based on random chance?  Do most things in life happen as fluke occurrences...or do chains-of-events get set off that end up having greater ripple effects?  Or, is there truly supernatural/divine intervention in our lives that we have no real way of confirming or disproving?

One “self-stigma” that I’ve spawned for myself, over the years, is a self-perception that I am a human “bad luck charm.”  Worst-case scenarios tend to play out exactly as I fear they will – and I often seem to be an involuntary magnet for many different freaky, unstable, overbearing individuals.  It has been this way since my childhood.

The logical part of my brain realizes that this is merely negative thinking...and that I have more control over my life and my future than I’m usually willing to acknowledge.  Still, I find myself coming back to that fairweather adage of “We make our own luck...” and then reflecting:

“Well, great!  So *how* do I finally generate some good luck for myself???”

My quest for solutions might be off-base, but I’m going to begin giving it my best attempt.

So, the first thing I did was make a list of all of the MAJOR goals and results that I want to see come to pass – both in the short-term and in the long-term.

If we look at actual Irish traditions, there are some common threads.  Associating the color green with good luck and leprechauns just didn’t appear out of thin air.  Hues of green (particularly the shamrock) can be traced back to Catholicism.  Three-leaf clovers are a symbol of the Holy Trinity, and the rise of springtime can be linked to the greenish shades that first appear as plants reblossom following winter hibernation.

Saint Patrick himself had linked religious teachings to the rebirth of spring as well as new opportunities that can arise amidst the season itself.  In other words...what some people choose to perceive as “luck.”

According to historian Timothy McMahon, green began to arise as a nationalistic color for the Irish as they sought independence from Britain during the Great Irish Rebellion of 1641.  This came into play when the Catholics sought independence from Protestant rule...and, again, toward the beginning of the Nineteenth Century when newer freedom fighters desired more of a nonsectarian government.  The latter factor ended up becoming one of several dynamics which prompted mass immigration from Ireland to North America.

Even the clover itself goes back farther than the political unrest of post-medieval Ireland.  Celtic tribes believed that the oddity of a four-leaf clover would provide magical protection from evil spirits – repelling them with a combination of faith, love, and hope.  The pot-of-gold has symbolized eventual wealth and fortune...a bit of a folkloric allegory for how strength and perseverance can ultimately pay off for the sojourner.

Part of the irony here is also how Saint Patrick has been documented as a former slave who eventually attained his freedom and then succeeded in (ironically) converting the Druids to Christianity.  The mythical connection of four-leaf clovers to attract fairies to bring them good fortune became more palatable as the Irish people continued to fight for political revolution.

If you think about it, there are parallels that can be drawn to the modern day.  Most Americans are politically-agitated...at one point or another along the ideological spectrum.  Whether someone translates that into proactive behavior is obviously contingent upon one’s individual life circumstances.

When I first began to ponder the concept of “making my own luck,” I started off that mental exercise by creating a list of the biggest desires I have in life...both for myself and for the rest of the world.  I will mainly speak in generalities, here, so that it’s easier for anyone who wants to apply this to their own life.  That way, they can relate to my efforts without being simultaneously biased by my own specific desires.

First, many of us tend to want specific individuals (or, more broadly speaking, certain TYPES of people) to get successfully elected to office to enact positive changes.  So I began to mull over what little things I can do to promote those candidates while educating others about their virtues.  Then, you scale that up (as much as possible, within the context of your own life) – whether it’s working on a campaign for them directly, or “going rogue” and influencing outside groups to promote a message that will ultimately benefit your given candidate...every action you take to get the word out can have a ripple effect.

Like a stone being dropped in a pond...creating an outward reverberation of ripples in the water.   Or firing off a plethora of bullets from a gun...whereas those bullets are, instead, chunks of clarity and inspiration (rather than lethal tools for destruction).  How many of those individual bullets actually make contact with their intended target will be unknown until you actually fire the bullets.  But you won’t make contact unless you pull the trigger.  

So when you really believe in a candidate and view it as pivotal that they get elected (or reelected, as the case may be) – hammer away on their top endeavors that will make life positive for us.  And highlight the most glaring deficiencies embodied by their opponents. Lather, Rinse, repeat.

Next, too often so many of us tend to forget the art of conciliation.  When you have multiple voices who share a common basic goal – but have drastically different viewpoints on who is to blame, or what a solution should be – we have to find a cohesive way to bring those voices together.

Speaking in generalities, this can be accomplished if we ask all parties involved to identify tangible goals.  Then, outline what are the most likely paths that could be taken to achieve those goals; this will help the group, as a whole, determine which plan-of-action is going to be simultaneously the most realistic and the most effective.

A third area about which I often find myself stressing is our society’s collective stability when it comes to health, finances, and economics.  This is clearly a very complex problem with no instantaneous solution.  So, with that in mind, the best route here would be to imagine the worst-case scenarios that could befall our society.  Then “work backwards” and construct which preventative measures should reduce the chances of any worst-case scenarios from coming to pass.

On a macroscopic level, this should be the mechanism by which our politicians would construct public policy.  For those of us who aren’t actually elected lawmakers:  we can always do a better job of articulating those policy proposals to those who ARE in power.  Not to mention disseminating those ideas for the masses.

It can also be implemented on a smaller scale, more microscopically.  The aforementioned principle can be scaled down to apply to private organizations or the inner workings of social cohorts.  Context will always determine in which manner it’s modified.

The final ingredient in this general “recipe for luck-creation” would be maximizing one’s exposure so you can disseminate your message to as much of a mass audience as is realistic.  In some cases, your target audience might be very finite and self-contained.  In other cases, you may have reservations about “going public” because you fear ramifications or blowback at your workplace.  If those are indeed factors, you’ll need to adjust your approach accordingly.

Seek out as many like-minded people as possible...but don’t be hesitant about respectfully disagreeing on finer points of detail.  Restate your common goals and similar values.  Describe the ideal endgame.  Acknowledge everybody’s stake in achieving an optimal result.

As for those of us who haven’t yet found “true love”...that’s an even more complex journey.  It could also become an entirely separate topic that warrants a totally different discussion to be saved for another day.

I don’t necessarily believe that things in life happen due to “flukes” or “random chance.”  I think there are forces beyond our mortal comprehension that contribute to influencing the way life plays out.  And I don’t claim to ever hope to fully understand any of it before my mortal life concludes.

But my faith holds that always striving to take these sorts of steps will maximize the odds of an outcome becoming more positive than negative.  If we choose to define those outcomes as “luck,” then that’s in the eye of the beholder.

Do I literally believe that leprechauns and magical gold coins exist in our world?  Not in the literal, caricature-based way that pop culture has appropriated them.  Celtic mythology could indeed be based on greater supernatural and paranormal truths...but let’s not harbor any delusions about unlocking those mysteries during our lifetimes.

So where does that leave us?  “Luck,” such that it is, can be changed and influenced based on the actions we take in the present.  We won’t always know where that path will ultimately lead...but we still do the best we can with the information to which we have access.

That should be enough to make the leprechauns proud.

[queernuck]

hey sorry if this is annoying but i’m kind of dumb but i wanna know what you’re saying about pedophilia and hollywood and the church. and if its not too much trouble could you explain in a way that’s easier? i’m sorry this is anon im just embarrassed

I mean, “easier” I don’t know about, my difficulty settings are not very well scaled and I mean that both in an ironic sense and in an earnest one: I joke, I am humorous about my own style of writing, talking, being, but at the same time I am effectively forced to recognize that I talk in a way that betrays my leanings before too long: I talk too much about sports, I jam postmodernism in at every turn, and the text is everything and nothing is outside the text. All of this is to say that “easier” is, for me, likely going to require “longer” as well, so you’ll have to bear with me. First, to address the Church. It is rife with pedophiles, the Catholic Church has been in one way or another defensive of pedophiles within it as far back as I can think: if there is a meaningful way to use “pedophile” as a contemporary label in a historic context, then anyone who fits that and also is in some way part of the Church hierarchy is going to be protected. This is especially emphasized in the past half-century or so, in no small part due to the way that reports from places like the Boston Globe or the realization of the ubiquity of pedophilia in the Catholic Church in Ireland has allowed for a sufficiently sensational, sufficiently colonial subject of abuse to come to light. 

This does not mean that the Church did not do anything wrong before these cases were exposed, has “fixed” anything, because it specifically took decades upon decades of “scandals” to realize that a structural inclination toward allowing (and even, through this process of allowing, encouraging) pedophilia in the Church exists, and in turn it has only resulted in occasional, superficial changes that do not go terribly far past rearranging deck chairs on a ship with no sign of sinking. For decades there have been documented cases where pedophiles were shuffled around in the Church from diocese to diocese, always before the revelation of their abuse could go past whisper, could unfurl into an event, a condemnation. Even in cases where accusations were made, and accepted, there was a superficial act of separation that in fact was merely the same act of transfer, itself disguised, as if an act of transfiguration. And this is merely what has been documented and admitted in order to prevent greater scrutiny. The problem of sex abuse in the Church is systemic. 

Žižek has discussed this both in a metaphorical and in a literal sense, the way in which the aesthetics of the Church, the ideology of the priesthood, allow abusers to create a flock of victims, how the ideology around the church specifically feeds into the eventual violence, violence that is not realized or named as violence and thus is understood as something else, as an act of piety, as part of sustaining the priesthood and thus the Church. The Church cannot admit its problems, specifically because doing such would involve forsaking its very nature.

Now, the ways in which the Catholic Church has blood on its hands barely begin here, and its role in colonizing places such as Ireland or the Philippines still persists within the cultures in place to this day. However, even in naming the Catholic Church as part of this violence, one must accept that the structure which allowed them to reach out as they did was in fact one of colonial power, a colonial structure that is maintained even today. Any discussion of the Pope as part of a “global elite” that relies upon theories about secret societies and ideation of groups such as the Jesuits as dark forces of collusion misses the forest for the trees: the Church is almost unfathomably fucking depraved on its face. Imagining a deeper structure to it is denying the materially-demonstrated violence that is immediately apparent.

The Jesuits, in particular, are a sort of “occultic” or dark figure because indeed they have a history of taking part in some of the Church’s most reprehensible actions, but have also developed into one of the more important forces for liberation within frameworks of Catholic teachings on Social Justice. I am biased, I confess, for having gone to a Jesuit high school, but Jesuits are often open to some wild shit as far as theology goes. Catholicism, as a site of resistance, is additionally able to do as much: the globalizing impetus realized in Catholicism as part of colonial violence was in many ways reversed by the syncretic traditions found within the wide tent of Catholicism: the many ways in which it was largely up to relatively limited groups of missionaries to pass on the doctrine of the Church lead to numerous opportunities for doctrines just a hair away from heresy to develop as the predominant belief in any given area. And this is part of where I find the Catholic Church to be an incredibly interesting, even positive force: the way that the Catholic Church provides a site of decolonization, of creating the idea of syncretic tradition that can be meaningfully developed out of colonial legacy, the possibility of a postcolonial Catholicism is truly invigorating. 

But, anyway, that is a lot of words about a short point: when a more specific entity is needed than just the Church as far as “occult” and “new world order” goes, the Jesuits are often invoked. More generally, Catholics are often seen as odd by conventional American beliefs because of how developed the idea of Protestant Christianity as “truer” than Catholicism is in America. So, you get a soft invocation of the way that people like Jack Chick see Catholicism as occultic, satanic, evil in a sense far separate from its contemptibility as a colonial artifact.

This is, in turn, transferred onto the idea of an “elite” and “pedophile rings” in politics, entertainment, so on: the idea that rather than many manifestations of the same tendency, there must be a conspiracy going on. This is a way to refuse to recognize how similar conditions enable similar patterns of abuse, to ascribe a sort of supernatural power to the events going on, to place them outside of the “Real” and thus as part of something that can be exorcised. That it echoes the Satanic Panic of the 90s is hardly a coincidence.

And of course, as history so often has done, it is realized through an implied antisemitism that conveniently ignores any meaningful analysis of the structural factors at hand in favor of various derivations of blood libel and related reactionary ideological structures. Whenever imagery of a concealed elite is present, rather than an acknowledgement of the violence allowed by the ideology openly endorsed in the process of globalization, one conducts a sleight of hand that would make Machiavelli blush. Without naming a single person, there is a very clear way in which one lays out the acceptable victims, the assumed subjectivity of the perpetrator, and those who enable it.

Anything about a “Hollywood elite” is either implying antisemitism, relying on antisemitic notions about “Hollywood” as a hyperobject (a collection of people, places, organizations, cultural products) or is just openly antisemitic. Allusions to the Occult allow for a certain lurid aestheticization that separates the understanding of the violence from any actual analysis. There are many, many pedophiles who work with child actors and who are allowed to get away with years upon years of abuse because it would damage their reputation but moreover the reputation of those who would have been able to stop such abuse but chose not to. This extends to all kinds of violence, all sorts of sexual abuse, abuse in general. It is a tendency present in police, in the military, in politicians, in youth sports, in any organization of sufficient size. But the focusing upon the idea of a “Hollywood occult elite” is very specifically relying on certain notions that a reactionary audience already holds in order to stoke certain flows of libidinal energy, to create an enemy lurid enough to fight.

tl;dr - it relies on antisemitism and other related ideas in order to ignore that the problem is not “pedophile rings” but in fact is an attitude toward abuse present throughout American culture