This morning, I talked to my brother. My brother and I have a sometimes somewhat awkward relationship; he’s a “Born Again” Christian (I suppose my mother didn’t do a good enough job the first time?), and I’m, quite obviously, not. I don’t know what I’d call myself, actually, mainly because if I could sum up my faith easily I wouldn’t be writing a book about it (but I can’t, and so I am). When my brother and I speak, we usually try to set aside topics of religion and politics so that we can, you know, smile at each other and mean it.
Over the course of catching up (Christmas might well have been the last time we spoke. If not, sometime in the early spring?), I learned that he’s shortly going to be teaching science, math, and history at a middle school or somesuch. I didn’t get all the particulars.
But I wonder: how can a born-again Christian possibly teach either history or science? I’m fairly certain my brother believes two things:
1) God created the entire universe, from scratch, in six days, and
2) He did so approximately 6,000 years ago.
Now, mind you, I have nothing against the story of Creation, and of Adam & Eve. As fables go, it ranks up there with Aesop in its simplicity, message, and ability to teach young’uns a thing or two. Personally, I tend to think that one of the things that can tell you most about about a particular culture is its Creation story. Many of the tribes originally on this continent believed that the world was born on the back of a turtle emerging from the mud. Pretty much every culture has its own.
The Christian creation story seems to be one of arrogance and domination. Man created separately from beasts and in the image of a deity, and then handed dominion over all the land (and we wonder that the environment is currently buggered). It’s very little surprise Bush considers himself a born-again Christian.
I wonder about the curriculum. Didn’t some Kansas school board vote a couple of years ago about whether to give equal representation to both the science of evolution and the story of Intelligent Design (about which there is nothing intelligent whatsoever; if God does, in fact, exist, God does so in a way that transcends such an adjective as ‘intelligent,’ anyway).
The thing is, I do think everything in schools should be given equal representation, just not in the ways most boards attempt to implement it. I think we should start teaching children about the nature of myths and stories early. Like, in kindergarten, or even preschool, and I think that, when we teach children about creation, we should tell them every story of creation we still have on record. I think children should learn that God created the world in six days and that it came into being born on the back of a turtle (to name but two creation stories), because I think in so learning, they will begin to understand the real origins and meanings of stories. I think it will make richer their relationships with each other, and throughout life.
And then, when they are ready to learn more about physics and evolution and biology and reproduction, they will understand the science of it but still appreciate more subtle meanings. The child who learns how science works in equal measure to why we tell the stories we value might just change the world.
Aroundabouts his junior year of high school, my brother got really into Christianity. I don’t know when he was ‘born again,’ (as if my mother didn’t do a good enough job the first time around) but I think it occurred at some point when I was in college.
Back then, I was premed and fairly set to be a doctor. I had studied biology, chemistry, and physics. My feelings toward religion, back then, could probably be best described as a backlash. Which meant that there was often some tension between my brother and me; we were both young and set enough in our respective ways to believe the other was wrong and it was our job to convince him of the truth. He would argue that Jesus is the only answer and belief in him as one, true savior the only way to ‘eternal life,’ while I would argue that was closed-minded. We would discuss creation versus evolution, historicity versus mythology, and when I say discuss, of course, I mean the sort of heated diatribes that might only occur between siblings.
During those conversations, my brother would become noticeably anxious. His voice would take on a higher timbre, like his throat had tightened. That’s what I remember most about them, actually.
That, and the Bible.
Whenever he needed it, he’d pull out the Bible. It must be so because the Bible says.
And how, I ask, does one argue then?
The past few weeks, I’ve been reading here and there about the kerfuffle with the Orange prize, and heated discussion from both sides. And I’ve noticed a term I don’t know if I’ve encountered before:
“Privilege.”
I had to look it up on Wikipedia, and I think I generally get the idea, which is that there are divisions in society, and one side holds some position of power/dominance, not necessarily over the other so much as, it seems, compared to. An example would be in terms of race: someone who is white has ‘privilege,’ compared to, say, someone who is black. Here’s an html of something called “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”, by Peggy McIntosh. McIntosh writes:
I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize
male privilege. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I have
come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in
each day, but about which I was “meant” to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible
weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools , and blank
checks.
And you know, that’s fine. If Peggy McIntosh feels that she hasn’t actually earned her assets, that she has cashed in, that’s on her.
I’d really like to know more about these maps, passports, and other miscellany. Especially that “blank check.” I never got a blank check, and totally for seriously, I could really use it right now (so if anyone has my blank check, send a note to willentrekin at yahoo dot com, so I can tell you where to send it. That’d be awesome). As for ‘unearned assets’ . . . I can understand McIntosh believing that, given her honorary degrees, but I’ve worked too damned hard to let her say anything in my life is unearned.
That document I linked to includes a list of 50 examples of what makes one privileged. Stuff like “I am treated neutrally when I move into a new neighborhood” and:
12. I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket
and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser’s shop and find
someone who can cut my hair.
Because, of course, privilege is a function of shopping.
But there’s a more important point, which is that the idea of privilege seems to me to shift the ‘blame’ for any such favoritism away from the people who propagate it and toward the people who ‘benefit’ from it. In other words, it makes it sounds like the music of the shop is the customer’s fault. Nevermind the fact that, living in a society truly moving toward globalism, such distinctions are becoming quaint and outmoded. McIntosh’s ‘privilege’ cites white people as the benefactors, but last time I checked, Billboard charts are as likely to be populated by hiphop acts as, say, pop, or punk. In fact, here’s some hard evidence it’s bullshit. Top selling CDs and singles for 2007. CDs themselves are full of Nickelback, Hinder, and Rascall Flatts, but it notes that the year’s previous were Mariah Carey, 50 Cent, and The Game. The singles are a pretty eclectic lot (and, I’d wager, artists make more off those, anyway).
And I write about this because I think it’s wrong. I’m a white heterosexual male, each descriptor of which should create new benefits of ‘privilege,’ but they haven’t, at least so far in my experience. One point of feminism and other movements predicated toward equality has always seemed to be that generalities are bad and, very often, people can’t share the same experiences as others. I.e., that because I’m white, I can’t understand the perspective of someone who is black (I think this idea, too, is bullshit). But what I don’t get is that many ‘feminists’ seem quick to argue that the male experience, or, for McIntosh, the white experience, is universal. That all men, and especially all white men, must think and feel and behave the same way. That there are certain benefits to being white in society (n.b., is this global society? American society? Manhattan society?) shared by all white people.
And now the idea of privilege is even being applied to the body. Not only am I white, heterosexual, and male, but I’m also thin, and even that has privilege, too. Apparently, it’s now privilege not to take up two seats on an airplane. One I loved: “11. I don’t pay extra for my clothes because of my size.”
Because it’s, you know, privilege that smaller clothing requires less material to manufacture. Makes me want to state something very simple, which I would’ve thought was obvious, but is, apparently, not: I don’t have ‘privilege’ just because some people in the world are fat. Maybe I should be more ‘body positive,’ or then again maybe the so-called ‘fatosphere’ (and no, I’m not making that up) could, you know, lose some weight.
Reminds me of this bit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail:
The whole idea, in fact (and here’s where I bring it back to the Bible), reminds me of the way my brother used to argue. When his best argument is that it’s the Bible, it effectively shuts down discussion in much the same way that this idea of ‘privilege’ does. When engaged in any discussion about gender or race or class or identity, the moment I start to disagree is the moment someone says I ‘have privilege’ I can’t see through or, worse, ‘suffer from poor little white boy syndrome.’
Because the sad thing is that I’m not arguing that society isn’t messed up, that inequality doesn’t exist, that things must change, and for the better, and soon. The sad fact is that these sort of ideas shift the blame of the real problems to those who don’t really deserve it and often have nothing to do with it, which is made doubly worse because they’re the very people who could most effectively help ameliorate the problems in the first place. Feminists who truly believe in ‘male privilege’ should seek to work with, rather than against, the men they believe have that privilege in the first place.
My first memory in relation to religion is dropping a cross.
I was an altar boy at the time, all of probably ten or so. If that. I was in grade school, and I might have been in fourth grade.
Here are some pictures from way back then:
When all this becomes a book, I might just have to make these the cover.
Which just goes to show that even back then, I had awesome hair (I’ll give you a moment to finish laughing. No worries; you’re laughing with me at this point).
The top picture is, I’m pretty sure, of the very first morning I ever served mass.
That wasn’t the day I dropped the cross. Wasn’t far off, but it wasn’t that first day. But here’s the story: as an altar boy, and sometimes the only boy serving any particular mass, I led the priest up the aisle. Normally, the person up front carries the a cross, but the problem was that I was really small. Tiny, really. Which meant, instead of the cross, I usually carried a candle, simply because the candles’ holders were shorter, and I could replace them more easily.
But the day my church got a new crucifix was a big deal, and my priest wanted to use it. And I was the only altar boy serving, which meant I had to carry it . . .
It was fine while I walked up the aisle. I was fine, in fact, until it was time to replace the cross on its holder, the base of which came roughly to my chest, while the cross itself had a two or three foot handle.
You can see the sort of trouble this spells.
I tried. I swear I tried. I tried to hold the bottom to balance the top, but ultimately that heavy cruciform proved too unstable. The entire church discovered, first-hand, the utterly discordant sound of wood and metal against marble; it may well be a miracle on the levels of loaves and fishes that brand new, brass-and-wood crucifix didn’t break. One of the congregation members in the front pew stepped forward to help me, and together we got that cross back on its base.
When I walked back down that aisle, I carried the candle. It would be at least a year before I even attempted to approach that cross again.
A few years ago, I would have said a more skilled writer than myself would draw the metaphor here, but I didn’t go to school at USC to underestimate myself; there is some parallel between my journey in faith and that cross, and on several levels. I dropped the cross, but it never broke; I lapsed away from Catholicism and Christianity for many years, but ultimately I came back, in some roundabout way, to Christendom. For many years I never could carry that cross, favoring instead the candles more appropriate to my stature; there is something to be said for shining unto tomorrow rather than carrying a misunderstood symbol–in the end, I’d rather light the way than pray to an idol.
I am, personally, happier carrying the candle. I don’t pretend to believe I light any way for others; I merely intend to shine more light on mine. Which is why, of course, I take you back to my first memory. I don’t remember my first holy communion. I don’t remember the first time I stepped into a church.
But yeah, I remember when I dropped that cross. I’m sure just about everyone else who was in that church probably does, too.
I’ve mentioned religion and faith a couple of times before, albeit in extraordinarily roundabout ways; I remember the first was simply to note that I had completely missed the fact that Ash Wednesday had come and gone and Lent was nearly already over, Easter more than halfway here. This isn’t really because I’ve rediscovered Catholicism after a many-years lapse–rather, I think I often just saw people with ashes on their foreheads. This past Ash Wednesday, I don’t think I had occasion to go anywhere or see anyone, and so I didn’t notice.
I bring this up because faith was one of the things I wanted to explore in greater detail when I started this blog. I was raised Catholic, and though I’d lapsed by high school, still I went to a Jesuit college, where I studied biology. The life sciences. Physics and chemistry and genetics. While I will note that I never had a priest for a science teacher, back then, I will also note that I remember all my teachers wore their ashes proudly when Wednesday came around. I learned about phylogeny recapitulating ontogeny (or vice-versa; truthfully, I can never remember, because truthfully, I never actually understood what it meant) from a woman who took communion. When I studied theology, Robert Kennedy taught not just the Bible from Genesis to Revelations but also Hobbes, Hume, Dante, and Joyce. I actually read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man for a theology class.
My senior year, I began work on a novel about time travel. I had an idea for where it would end, but for a long while, never for how it got there; when I realized that Jesus of Nazareth might have a role as a character, I fought it–I didn’t want the book noticed for its controversy rather than for its story.
One of the most formative moments of my life was when one of my characters surprised me and I realized I didn’t have any choice in the matter. Not just because it was the first time a character didn’t merely take on a life of his own so much as actually fought with me, but also because it forced me to go back there. Back to Jerusalem (however metaphorically speaking), back to Jesus and the crucifixion. In order to get it right, I did a lot of research, reading just about every Jesus-related book I could find.
During the process, I became closer to the idea of Christ and God. Not in the Biblical sense of either word, but both ideas as I perceived them, and in that distinction there is, I believe, a very crucial difference.
I’ve been reading a lot about the recent spate of anti-religious books by guys like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. A lot of books that seem to speak about the evils of organized religion but ultimately fail, I believe, to address why faith exists in the first place.
Faith, I believe, is a story. It is one we construct by living, and I think, like all stories, it has come over the years to tap into our deepest realms of psyche. I think these books fail, finally, to explore faith, focusing instead on the negation of belief, religion, and dogma, which, while arguably a worthwhile goal in the day and age of extremists of all kinds, does not actually engage the topic in the meaningful fashion it deserves.
Where they failed, however, they left room enough for someone to try, which is what I plan to do.
Lots of religious posts today, of course. Lots of children with smiles missing teeth searching all over their yards for embryos in hardy shells (decorated rapturously and exuberantly) by, of course, a six-foot tall bunny.
So let us not forget what Easter is truly, and has always been, about:
Bunny rabbits are for shagging, and eggs are for fertility.
It is, to be pointed, simply a more explicit version of Valentine’s day, just without the saint and all the Hallmark hooey.
(what is it about us that prevents us from the simple celebration of love and sex in all their grandeur? Why must we throw commerce and religion into the mix at every available opportunity?)
And it’s one of the few years I can remember when the spring festive came so close to the actual start of spring.
I tried to post a video of my cousin playing a sexhityune; if YouTube will let me, I still may.
In the meantime, instead, some Steven Brust and Eddie Izzard.
From Brust, “My Girlfriend Is a Pagan”:
My girlfriend is a pagan, she don’t believe in Christ.
Theologically suspect, but in practice kind of nice.
She’s teaching me her favorite fertility rites.
And every time I learn one, I yell out Jesus Christ.
My girlfriend is a pagan, I truly have been blessed.
I don’t mind the pentagrams, or the lack of rest.
We’ve been doing all we can to see the crops don’t fail.
If when I die I meet with Pan, I’ll shake him by the tail.
My girlfriend is a pagan, I guess she is a witch.
She prays to her Goddess while wearing not a stitch.
She says incense and crystals give her mystic energy
And she has to use it somewhere, which works out best for me.
My girlfriend is a pagan, who could ask for more?
At the altar she’s a heathen, in the bedroom she’s just fine.
I’m happy as a pig in shit, what more can I say?
My girlfriend is a pagan and I’m learning how to pray.
Conferences today (I’m writing this from my office); USC’s Writing Program requires instructors to do one-on-one conferences with each student once per assignment, of which there are 5. I’m basically, then, the one professor my students really connect with to some real degree.
I like that. It opens it all up to remind everyone that my class isn’t about the room it’s in.
It’s hard, some days, to pinpoint what it’s really about; writing is hard to teach. I’m teaching freshman composition/rhetoric, and it’s exciting and challenging, but I also find it extraordinarily difficult to teach because it’s made me realize I haven’t a clue how I learned in the first place. I know I’m pretty good at it (some days better than others), but the how?
I was a sophomore in college when I took a seminar in theology with Robert Kennedy. We mainly watched videos during lectures, but the real meat of the class was our own thought-time; we began the course in Genesis, and each week we tackled something new (following Biblical chronology). I was, by then, already lapsed in both Christianity and Wicca, and just starting to explore Buddhism, which made Kennedy perhaps a perfect teacher at that point in my life; he’s a Jesuit priest ordained in the White Plum lineage of Zen, and he wrote a book called Zen Spirit, Christian Spirit, concerning questions of where the two intersect.
We finished the Bible two weeks into the second semester. We still had four months to go, and so we moved on: Hobbes and Dante and Joyce (oh, my!). Yeah, James Joyce in a theology class.
The real thing I learned most was how connected everything is. We’d watch a lecture, after which I’d go across to the library, max out my library card with five books, read them, and then come up with a compelling argument. He didn’t teach us how to write our papers, how to analyze the texts, how to support our own arguments.
He only listened.
That first semester I pulled a 3.5 after starting with a couple C+s.
The second, I earned a 4. It’s the single college grade of which I’m most proud, because it really did reflect how much I learned.
But how to teach that?
I’m still learning. Some days I struggle with it. I challenge my students to be bold and to really own their own ideas. Some think I’m too harsh a grader, others feel they earned what they get.
The thing is, the writing process is hard to teach. I’ve been writing for fifteen years, and I’m still learning every day. In a goal-oriented society, it’s hard to really convey the idea that some processes won’t end until you’re dead (and then, who the hell knows? There’s probably even more after that fact). Some of my students note that they still have trouble with it, and each time they do so I smile and I say: “Welcome to writing. It doesn’t get easier, but sometimes you do get better.”
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