March 2008
THE BROOKLYN RAIL PRESENTS RANTRHAPSODY #16- "FAITH"
MARCH 29TH, FREDDY'S BACK ROOM
All right, the long slumber is OVER! After an extended hiatus during which we co-devolved our collective desires into the simplest of formulations, whereby all we NOW wish for is simple human WARMTH, we return to you just as the thaw commences, with wise words and tall tales to start out yet another spring season in the borough of Kings. This month we sought out seekers and sojourners of all...kinds. We gathered yet again at Freddy's Back Room, where the beer is cheap, the stories are free, and the company is top-notch, 'natch. Please enjoy the edifying, amusing, anecdotal, analytical, political, polemical, and poignant musings of the following angry and/or euphoric writers, which were read OUT LOUD at Freddy's Backroom on March 29th, 2008:
Scott Korb and Peter Bebergal are the co-authors of "The Faith Between Us: A Jew and a Catholic Search for the Meaning of God" Between them they have written for Harper's, Gastronomica, the Revealer, Commonweal, Killing the Buddha, the Believer, and the Boston Globe. They also teach.
Reverend Osagyefo Sekou is a Minister at Judson Memorial Church
Nadia Davids is an award-winning playwright, recently nominated for the Noma Award for her play, "At Her Feet."
Brian Carreira is the Brooklyn Rail city editor
Hosted By Brooklyn Rail Contributor, and RantRhapsody creator, Mark W. Read
TEARLESS ONION IN DEVELOPMENT- From the Guardian UK
Scientists have developed a tearless onion that means cooks may no longer have to suffer stinging eyes and crying in the kitchen. The breakthrough by New Zealand's crop and food research institute after six years of research has been made using gene silencing technology. Dr Colin Eady, the institute's senior scientist, said that he and his team were able to turn off the gene that produces the enzyme that causes a person slicing an onion to cry. "By shutting down the lachrymatory factor synthase gene, we have stopped valuable sulphur compounds being converted to the tearing agent, and instead made them available for redirection into compounds, some of which are known for their flavour and health properties," he said. "We anticipate the health and flavour profiles will actually be enhanced by what we've done. We'll have nice, sweet aromas instead of bitter, pungent ones."
The international onion trade journal Onion World is featuring the breakthrough on the front cover of its latest issue. The magazine quotes Dr Michael J Havey, professor of horticulture at the University of Wisconsin and a world-renowned onion scientist, as predicting that tearless onions will become a mainstay in household kitchens around the world. But although the tearless onion will be welcomed by cooks everywhere, it is still at the prototype stage and will not be in kitchens for at least another decade. The New Zealand team is also working on how to improve sustainable and efficient production of the genetically altered onion. "We have a burgeoning population to feed, and with climate change and other challenges, available resources are being reduced. The gene silencing system can also be used to combat virus diseases and biotechnology in general can help us produce more robust crops," said Dr Eady.
In many countries onions already contribute a significant proportion of the daily fibre requirements of the populations, he said. "They are such a versatile and nutritious vegetable that if we can manage to get more people cooking and eating fresh onions, then that has got to be a positive outcome."
WHEN FAITH ISN'T FUN- Brian Carreira
The theme of my reading tonight is those times when faith isn’t fun. But before we begin, I wanted to remind the folks in the audience that this bar sits on occupied land. A rich, well-connected developer decided that he wanted to pursue his grand vision for a “New Brooklyn,” and so got all of his well-connected friends to intimidate and cajole as much of the land around here from folks so that he could build a basketball arena and a bunch of skyscrapers. The rich developer got all of his buddies in the government to say that he could take the rest of the property when he was ready to make his dream reality.
So, this bar sits on occupied land. And so all of us at the moment are sojourners in hostile territory…Welcome!
Now that we’ve located ourselves in the grand swath of history, I’d like to talk about those times when faith isn’t fun. But let me tangent for a second to explore the vision of this rich man, called Atlantic Yards.
Atlantic Yards was the rich man’s version of a bold new age dawning in Brooklyn. Mall stores, hermetically sealed glass huts in the sky, well-manicured gardens, and the coliseum in the center. Where we sit might one day be a TGI Friday’s, or maybe an American Apparel store!
I always enjoy rich mens’ eschatology. It always sounds pretty reasonable if you close your eyes and don’t think about it too hard. Like those behind the utopia arising in Iraq, the rich man behind Atlantic Yards was convinced that he’d be welcomed as a liberator by the downtrodden folks of Prospect Heights.
But I’m digressing, and if I keep going, I’ll never be able to talk about those times when faith isn’t fun.
I think about that magical vision for the Atlantic Yards. You see it wasn’t just going to be for rich folks. It was going to bring jobs and cheap housing for the less fortunate as well.
I remember one of the organizations this rich man came up with to support the project had an office over on Vanderbilt Avenue. They were creating a job bank. You could put your name down on a list and the rich man was going to make sure you got a great job in the shiny new offices he was going to build, or in the arena he was creating, or in the shops that would inhabit this new magic land.
And pre-approved low-income families were going to be able to live in this shiny new city too. Not too poor mind you, just poor enough so that the rich man could show what a good guy he was yet not scare away the yuppies looking to plunk down a few million on one of those glass huts in the sky. It might take 10 or 15 years for your apartment to be built, but really, it’s the thought that matters.
But I keep veering off of my point. I want to talk about those times when faith isn’t fun.
Except I forgot to talk about all the new greenspace that would be created with Atlantic Yards. The highlight was this crazy track that circled high up in the air over the arena. A monument of engineering, of architecture, and of urban space. If you are one of those yuppies who plunks down a few million on a condo, maybe you’ll even get to see it.
But there is other open space too. Huge swaths of land in-between the glass boxes. It’ll probably only get 15 minutes of sun a day what with all the cool new skyscrapers about, and the rich man has made it clear that this isn’t really going to be lounging around, lying on blankets type of space. There’ll be trees though…and grass.
So, let’s talk about those times faith isn’t fun. It was crazy, when the rich man told his friends in our government his plan, they thought it was such an awesome idea that they gave him half a billion dollars (and the promise of a bunch more) to make it happen. Just like that. Just for having such a good idea.
I wish I had good ideas like the rich man so that I could get half a billion dollars when I thought of them. I’m in the middle of moving right now, and let me tell you, a half a billion dollars would make that whole process a LOT easier.
That gets me thinking a bit. Not all of us are rich like the rich man. What if the people who already live here didn’t think that the rich man’s plan was such a good idea? What if Donald O’Finn, who manages this bar, LIKED managing the bar and wanted to keep doing so?
Well, that gets me to those times when faith isn’t fun. Most of the time faith is comforting. It is consoling. It brings order to our lives and gives us purpose. But sometimes faith isn’t easy or fun. Whether it is faith in God, faith in a political idea, or faith that when you live someplace or work someplace some rich guy isn’t going to come up with a good idea and get his powerful friends to take your home or business away.
For the folks who live in this community, faith hasn’t been fun. Their Borough President wouldn’t listen to them, their Mayor opposed them, their U.S. Senator (Schumer, not the other one) said that they were part of a “culture of inertia.” And as of right now, that rich man’s vision has been approved and they are told that they are living on borrowed time.
A little over a week ago was the feast of Purim on the Jewish Calendar. It was also Easter in the Western Christian tradition last week. In the story commemorated on Purim, Esther faces death to try to save her people. She tells all the Jews in her community to fast with her for 3 days, and although it isn’t lawful for her to approach the King without his permission, she knows that the fate of her community is more important. “If I perish, I perish,” she said.
In Christian tradition, we are told that a preacher from the boondocks comes to Jerusalem, the big city. After making a ruckus in the temple, one of his buddies who he came with sells him out. He knows that things are about to get a lot, lot worse. Yet the rest of his friends are asleep as he hopes in the garden that somehow the story will turn out differently.
These are the times when faith, when sticking with your guns even though the deck is stacked against you, isn’t fun.
In Purim, the celebration is that the Jews were saved. In Easter, Christians celebrate that after the Cross, there is Resurrection.
But for most of us thankfully, life and death isn’t at stake. Sometimes it is a home or a livelihood. Most of the time, the stakes aren’t that high. For most of us, it is trying to do what is right when culture, friends, and family tell you that your fight isn’t important or that you don’t need to be so passionate or wish you’d just “chill out.” We all have those moments in the garden when faith isn’t fun.
It is funny then, that last week as well, the rich man told the New York Times that his great idea might not happen after all. Apparently the half a billion dollars his friends fronted him just wasn’t going to cut it in these crappy economic times. I must admit, I was always a little suspicious of the rich man’s idea. I thought, if it’s such a great idea, then why doesn’t he want the City Council or the state legislative bodies to vote on it? I thought, if it was such a great idea, then why did he have to create and buy off “community” groups to support it? Why did people who come to this bar seem to think it was such a stupid idea? They must’ve been jealous that they didn’t think of it first so that they could collect their half a billion dollars.
Or maybe, just maybe, they really had faith, really BELIEVED that what he was doing was wrong and that standing against him was right. For the last few years, this faith was not a lot of fun.
But then you get moments like last week. The fight is far from over. BUT the rich man, with all the king’s horses and all the kings men, couldn’t put the rotten egg of Atlantic Yards back together again! It is in these sublime moments that the dark times of faith enjoy light.
Have fun.
Thank you.
IMAGINED RESPONSE OF "THE ONION" TO TEARLESS ONION EDITORIAL BOARD TO TEARLESS ONION
Mark W. Read
From The Onion, America’s Finest News Source.
March 25, NEW YORK CITY- Editors of the Onion issue fatwa against developers of “Tearless Onion”
In a news conference on March 27th 2008, The editorial board of the Onion, America’s Finest News Source, declared that “the blasphemous tinkerers shall be stopped. Their mutant blood will decorate the shrines of the holy Onion martyrs; those who have sacrificed their dignity and their self-respect in the pursuit of amusing, intelligent, satirical faux- news pieces. We shall honor the vales of tears that have been shed in this pursuit, and in the humbler pursuit of simple culinary pleasures, like Onion Rings, Onion Soup, and Onion Fritters. These tears shall not have been shed in vain. We call upon all the faithful, all the pure-hearted and valiant lovers of the Onion, to seek out this Dr. Michael J. Harvey, and all his cohort. Their meddling in the perfection that is The Onion must be put to a halt. We shall not rest until their blood is sacrificed, and is joined with the black soil of Central New Jersey, from which so many fine and delicate Onions have sprung.”
MADRESSA
by Nadia Davids
See article in the Brooklyn Rail, with photos: http://www.brooklynrail.org/2007/11/express/madressa
Living in New York has changed my language. That, more than anything has signified the difference between home and here. Home, Cape Town, a twenty-five hour flight and two security checks away, means different food, slower internet connections, more obvious racial segregation, interfering aunties and a constant awareness of one’s physical safety. Those are the clear differences, the ones I can weigh and see and hold. But in the last few months something has shifted; words that I have always carried with a peculiar kind of tenderness and ease have been coated by something distasteful and defensive. Some words suffer horribly in translation; others change shape radically when they travel, and there are a few (emotional shortcuts to my home and my past) that have acquired an unnerving timbre and resonance through their Atlantic crossing.
One of these words, madressa, seems especially charged in New York. I have said this word during public discussions, between puffs over a shared cigarette, as an after thought in exchanged confidences about the past, and have been repeatedly surprised by the startled response. The reaction at one dinner party was especially strange. We were speaking about religion and childhood, the perfect space in which to pour both laughter and suffering—with a dash of guilt for dismissing old loyalties. Everyone offered their bit; choking on the Eucharist wine, running away at the crucial moment in a cousin’s bris, inventing wildly inappropriate sins for confession. The stories were funny and moving. Then I mentioned that I had spent my afternoons after school at madressa. What followed was fleeting; a second of silence that seemed to hang in awkward angles in the air, eyes darting about quickly, gratefully settling on inspecting furniture or cutlery and then a sudden burst of conversation with offers of more food and wine.
It took me days to work it out.
Madressa here seems to conjure up images of young children being brainwashed into turning themselves into human bombs by unfeeling adults hell-bent on world-domination. These adults are mostly men with an excess of facial hair and zealot eyes that flash on cue; the children are generally sweet looking tots clothed in Hamas-style gear who unnerve everyone with their unchildlike chanting. The word which I had grown up inter-changing easily with ‘school’ seems to summon the same kind of shudder that usually accompanies jihad or burkha—two other words which have become uncomfortably loaded. This is not to imply that I have been surrounding myself by rabid right-wingers. On the contrary, the flinch at the word comes from people who are genuinely concerned that I might have had to resist the frothing instructions of a crazed anti-Semite who wanted to cover my hair and insert fundamentalism in my mouth. I have stopped finding the flinch especially offensive: I have only seen madressas portrayed in two Hollywood films, Syriana and Rendition, both works that make a concerted effort to be balanced critiques of the roots of terrorism. In Syriana two Pakistani boys run around in a pretty garden playing soccer and bee-keeping, only to have their idyll shattered by a green-eyed teacher who shows them a large missile. In Rendition, the madressa is a covert political cell grooming a new generation of suicide bombers. The imam shouts ‘Takbir!’ and the students, whipped into an emotional frenzy chant back ‘Allahu Akbar’. I have only ever heard the Takbir chanted as a battle cry in films or footage of protests in other countries. I grew up hearing ‘God is Great’ whispered in prayers, by people expressing gratitude at good news, or chanted through the loudspeakers at the local mosques as a call to prayer. The notion of maddressa being tangled up with war and killing is utterly foreign to me.
It is a strange thing to see your own past refracted through a distorted lens. I grew up in a devout Muslim community in South Africa that had its roots snarled in the trauma of spice and slave trade of the 1700s. Today, the Muslim population in Cape Town—diverse, modern, traditional, religious, secular— numbers at around 900,000 and is deeply intertwined with the life and character of the country. It has framed itself as a community for over three hundred years—but has only been free for the tiniest portion of that time. Slavery ended just over a hundred and sixty years ago, apartheid barely thirteen years ago. Those twin evils continue to cast long and terrible shadows. Life under systemized oppression was a porous experience—the law tended to seep into everything, circumscribing even verbal freedoms. Madressa, despite its strict structure was a space in which many people felt safe to speak about the difficulties, stresses and awfulness of life under apartheid.
Years ago, certain life choices led me towards embracing a secular existence. The decision had very little to do with Islam in particular and more to do with religion in general. Organized faith does not feel all that compatible with the way I organize my life, but that doesn’t stop me from being enormously invested in how the world understands and mediates the faith and the people I love who continue to practice it.
I tried explaining this to someone and she shrugged ‘Old loyalties die hard’, but the question is not of old loyalties, it is of loyalty itself, and a loyalty to the truth of one’s own history. Post-9/11, there have been an array of books published by women who were born into Muslim families and have embraced secularism, Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel is just one of them. Her experience of madressa, veiling and Islam has been horrific, her anger and pain is understandable, but her story has become monolithic. Irshad Manji’s book, The Trouble with Islam Today (in many ways a clarion and important call for open and tolerant debates about Islam) describes her madressa as being steeped in bigotry and sexism with a teacher who, unable to handle her questions, asks her to leave the school. For me, reading and watching Hirsi, Hollywood and Manji’s madressas are more like anthropological forays into another world that bear very little resemblance to my school.
My experience of madressa was for the most part quite banal. Boring yes, but not tarnished by the same kinds of cruelty that shaped these women’s experiences. Instead, it raised some crucial questions around personal identity and provided an institutionalized morality that acted as an antidote to the state-sanctioned inequality. Coming of age in an economically schizophrenic city (grinding poverty, oppression and police brutality coupled with excessive European beach-resort type wealth), in the midst of a low-grade civil war, in a community defined by state- prescribed ‘race’ (coloured, Malay, Indian) was not easy. Going to a private all-girls Anglican school in the day (morning chapel, hot lunch, tennis, prefects, blazers, curtsey to the headmistress) and then off to madressa (suras, recitations, old men with beards, compulsory burkhas) in the late afternoons tended to complicate things more.
For the most part, I didn’t want to go to madressa. An hour of intense religious instruction after a full day at school is torturous for any child. I remember feeling coerced and resentful, that my body, heavy from the impending boredom, felt as though it was being dragged there and that my parents (not especially religious themselves) were peculiarly intractable about attendance. My attention span wondered constantly while we learnt classical Arabic, aspects of Shariah law and how to make salaat. I had a constant flow of potential excuses for not going. I drew inspiration from the weather: it’s too hot, it’s too cold, it’s too windy; to the instruction: the sheik expects less from the girls than boys, he smells of pipe tobacco, he isn’t very bright; to the other students who were singularly unimpressed by my going to a private, Christian-based school: don’t keep yourself white! was a regular admonishment. I regularly ditched classes taking refuge at my friend Celeste’s house—she had wild curly hair and a crucifix above her bed; she wasn’t going to tell anyone where I was.
I walked to madressa with my sister throughout the 1980s. The steep hill tilted our bodies forward as we fought against a wind that rushed us down the sloped road as if it was propelling us faster towards God. Our cream burkhas (flung on quickly while we gobbled our afternoon tea) fell mid-knee covering our shorts and t-shirts. The school was close by, at Mrs. Essop’s house. On the garage wall someone had spray-painted the command, ‘Remember June 16, Lights Out!’ The date was a reminder of the Soweto uprisings of 1976 in which thousands of school children protesting the use of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction, were shot and beaten by the army. The graffiti stayed on Mrs. Essop’s wall for five years, from the beginning of the 1985 State of Emergency until the un-banning of the A.N.C in 1990. It was an annual command to turn off the television, stop the clocks, silence the radio and switch off the lights. It was a call for darkness and quiet, a moment to mourn the uncountable dead. The neighborhood would plunge into silence; candles-light danced at windows and the smell of a tire burning in a confrontation a few streets away would drift up towards my parents’ house. Growing up in the 1980s in South Africa had all the qualities of an unending nightmare, surreal and frightening.
We would run in (always slightly late) at the kitchen entrance and shout out greetings to the aunties standing over stoves, chatting through a haze of cigarette smoke and sipping their tea. The room upstairs was full of veiled sunlight. The afternoon light was softened by the thick net curtains and repetitive brownness of the floor, furniture and carpet. There were perhaps thirty boys and girls. We crowded around a long, rectangular wooden table. In the centre sat our teacher. He was a little man with a beard, a fez and a love of stories. He published educational books filled with miraculous tales about children who could recite the entire Koran by heart at the age of seven. The miracle children would pose for the camera with the wide-eyed look of someone surprised by the intensity of the flash, not being made privy to a spiritual revelation.
We sat and shaped out mouths around the foreign alphabet, making our throats murmur with a nasal intonation. The world was reversed for an hour everyday; sentences ran from right to left, the text was written by spirit, not flesh, and we were costumed as though from another country. We learned about a man called Sheik Yusuf, a prince from Macacasar, who was imprisoned on Robben Island in 1600s for defying the Dutch. “The first political prisoner on the island” our imam would say, and then sigh, “And not the last…certainly not the last.” Sometimes he would twitch the curtains apart and look out across the bay, staring at the island where our leaders sat in tiny cold cells. On good days he told us stories; about Moosa floating along the Nile rescued by an Egyptian queen, about Ebrahim willingly waving a axe ready to chop off his son’s head in a sacrifice to God, about Hagar, dying of thirst in the desert and ran between two points crying to God to help her and he created a fountain of the sweetest water for her to drink. But mostly we sat immobile memorizing lists of what was haraam and what was fardh, which prayers matched which occasion and taking turns to stare at the clock and trying to move the hands forward Jedi-style.
Did the old man shout at us? Certainly. Was he violent? I remember him hitting the boys but even this was not especially shocking. Corporal punishment was legal and the violence in classrooms often reiterated the violence in the streets. In the midst of reciting suras, I would often look up and see a boy leaning against the wall, trying to hide his snot and tears, pulling at his fez, wiping at his eyes with the edge of his shirt. Muslim school was not without fear and darkness, but there were no moments of frenzied Takbir, or declarations of any earthly enemies except for the ones sitting in South African parliament. My madressa was not especially politicized but I had a friend whose teacher mixed Islam with Steve Biko’s black consciousness and shaped his lessons with an Afro-centrism that was heavily informed by Marx. My sheik was not terribly inspiring or child-friendly. He was a serious scholar who wrote books about the importance of Jesus in the Koran. In another life perhaps he would have willed his hours away debating theology in a mosque. I don’t think he was predisposed to teaching children, but he never taught us to judge or hate anyone for not being Muslim.
Words change as they travel. I know this. I understand that they assume different weights, new nuances. But the sense of difference between the afternoons in that brown room and the embarrassed silence that tends to follow it here is made of more than just meaning shaded by place; they were worlds apart, unrecognizable to each other. I have grown up using the word madressa as unthinkingly and normatively as I speak of internal spiritual struggles as jihad or understood the Palestinian uprisings and the intifadas in black South African townships as desperate, miserable mirrors of each other. Wearing a scarf has only ever been something optional. Burkha, chador, abaya, these have been words associated with things required to be worn during prayer, to mark a moment as sacred, not to be garbed in all day. I remember my cousin Sarha, freckled and serious appearing at a family gathering one day, her head covered. ‘Why?’ my sister and I asked her bare-headed then as now, ‘Because I want to’ she answered, and then showed us how she wrapped the material around her head, Badu-style, when she went to work because her boss didn’t think it looked very fashionable the triangular way. There are psychological pressures though, which can be heart-breaking; another cousin, barely seven, her fingers flicking with absolute confidence while she tucks the material flat against her forehead securing it with hairpins, her mother looking on with pride, my heart constricting against my chest. But in South African communities, these are predominantly negotiable traditions, they are not enforced by law.
These stories are not to deny that there are madressas used for propaganda and violence in certain parts of the world, or to suggest that the induction of children into fanatical belief systems is not wrong or sordid. It is not to insist that there are not women suffering terribly under the excesses of Islamic patriarchy, or that the concept of an internal spiritual struggle has not been publicly co-opted into something bloodthirsty and frightening. These stories are just to say that there are hundreds of thousands of rooms around the world, like the one in Mrs. Essop’s house, in which children are learning about a particular faith and its traditions without hate or hysteria.
Looking back through the haze of easy boredom that cloaked those afternoons, I notice that in the midst of my young restlessness I also learned something about duty and discipline and purpose. In affirming those ancient rituals, in believing that I was being protected by something larger and more mysterious that I could conceptualize, a small part of my fear around the constant national chaos was placated. As an adult, I doubt it would have helped as much. But as a child, seeing that same graffiti “Lights out June 16!” for 5 years on the same wall made me believe that God and justice were on the same side.
PRAYERS OF AN ATHEIST-SM Korb
The book, "The Faith Between Us," is available through the site: http://www.thefaithbetweenus.com/
I wouldn't have expected it the day I dotted the last "i" of Faith, but Sunday morning I told a story about prayer to a group gathered for a book discussion at Trinity Episcopal Church in Concord, Mass., not a far drive from Peter's house in Cambridge. Before our presentation, the associate rector Nick Morris-Kliment offered a prayer -- something he seems expert at -- that put the group in the right mood; he asked for God's blessing on our talk, and hoped that our friendship might be somehow useful, a reflection of God's will for his community. A little embarrassing, 100% flattering, and, we hope, at least somewhat true. The rector, Tony Buquor, whose son was married by Peter in a civil ceremony that, he noted, was remarkably religious, introduced us just as kindly.
Before taking questions, and before I told my story about prayer, Peter and I read two short essays about our friendship and the process of writing the book. (These will soon appear on Jbooks.com.) I stumbled over myself for a moment -- blurting quickly, "ah, you'll excuse me for this" -- when I mentioned that seminary had seemed a terrible cockblock during my early days in New York. (This seemed less bad, somehow, than reading the phrase "handjobs on floors" from the book at a Lutheran church in Chicago a few months ago. I remain somewhat prudish, I guess.)
I forget exactly the question that brought my story to mind, but the moment it was asked, Peter turned to me and said, "Tell them about your prayers." So I did.
In Faith, I write, "[E]xcept when they come to mind involuntarily like all-time favorite pop songs, I've more or less stopped saying personal prayers. The transition's been slow. Since those early, comforting night improvising prayers that always began with "My dear Lord God" and ended with the affirmation "Amen" -- meaning basically "Yes, I believe You can do anything" -- I've run the gamut. ... Nowadays, though, the Father isn't there to listen to me silently meditate on the Lord's Prayer, and the Holy Mother doesn't intercede with her Son each time I call her to mind with a Hail Mary. I'd always really understood church petitions to be prayers for miracles. Now, outside of its context within a community able to act on it, a prayer asking God to care for the poor floats away unheard. Kept to myself, any prayer for the sick is just as ineffectual."
In a sense, this is just as true as ever. I still can't imagine praying for miracles. Yet, this, I've learned is a severely limited conception of personal prayer, and not at all what Peter ever means when he talks about his own devotional life as a theist.
So, finally, the story: About a month ago, near the end of research (if that's the right word, which it really isn't) for a new book project, I hit what I considered then to be a snag. Like "research," "snag" is certainly the wrong word, but for our sake here, imagine it as a really big, really painful snag, something really damaging. Consider it a heartbreaking snag. (I provided more details to the community at Trinity. I'm being less forthcoming here, for my own reasons. It's important to know, for our purposes, that I was heartbroken.)
What happens in my life when heartbreaking things happen -- when a dad dies, when a relationship ends, when I hit a snag -- is that I call Peter. (The book contains a moment when the reverse happens: Peter's heart is broken and he calls me. Why am I being so mysterious?) So that morning I did. He'd never heard me so crushed.
He knows very well -- better than anyone else -- that I've given up prayer. He knows very well how horribly it went the last time a friend recommended I pray. But he said it anyway: "Maybe you should pray about it. You know, at a moment like this, you really have to go into the belly of the beast." This is how Peter sounds when he really means something. And he never means that a miracle can happen, or even that God is looking out for me.
The belly of the beast, where we go when we pray, it turns out, is within me, within all of us. It's the unselfconscious place where, as they say, you turn your life -- your heartbreaks -- over to God. You stop being embarrassed and stop, if only for those meditative moments, being self-critical. It's the irrational place in us, where we feel. It's where we hope from. And probably also where we love from. This is not how I usually sound when I really mean something. But that advice was the best Peter had for me, and actually the very best in the world.
It's not easy to pray when you don't believe in God. Fortunately, from what Peter tells me, it's not easy to pray when you do, either. But it seems worth trying.
THE GOD OF MY GRANDPARENTS-by Rev. Osagyefo Sekou
If Jesus is the author of my faith, then my grandparents are the editors. In rural Arkansas I was raised in the ways of a Victorian, southern black woman who loved Jesus and justice. A proud Baptist, she rescued her six-month-old grandson from a fate that may have been too terrible to tell. A King James Bible and encyclopedias are the first gifts I remember receiving from her. Her admonishments, shaped by her god, possessed existential gems that pointed to the measure of one’s humanness: “You must never look down on people.”
My grandfather, Rev. James Thomas, was a railroad worker and retired Pentecostal pastor. He possessed a third-grade education and a thirst for knowledge. He delighted in tidbits of black history that he had gleaned from folklore. His proudest moments came when he knew that I had “gotten it.” For him, the Bible was the book that he had mastered, and his desire for me was that I master it as well in the struggle for justice. The signs, symbols, songs, and stories bequeathed to me in rural Arkansas were rife with notions of justice for the poor, democracy for all, and god’s desire for human freedom. My grandfather only had a third-grade education, but he articulated a vision of the world that was profound.
The most magical memory that I have of my grandfather “rightly dividing the word” was on the Friday evening after our town of Brinkley’s only factory had closed. With the economic vitality of the entire community in question, Granddaddy, black and burly, broad-nosed and big-lipped, stood at the sacred desk. He looked upon the sea of black and nearly broken faces, and “took” a text. The congregation stood, as is the custom during the reading of scripture.
Slowly and deliberately, he said, “If you will turn with me in your Biiible…”— stretching the word to stress its significance—“to the gospel of John, the eleventh chapter and the thirty-fifth verse. When you find it say, why don’t you say, ‘Amen.’”
“Amen,” the flock responded, with anticipation on their lips and trepidation in their hearts. Holding himself together, Granddaddy whispered in a tear-soaked voice, “And it simply reads: ‘Jesus wept.’”
The congregation sat down, but Rev. Thomas continued on. In the presence of a voiceless people, he made the book “talk,” retelling the familiar story of Lazarus, the one whom Jesus loved and raised from the dead. Jesus pleaded with his god to raise Lazarus so that others might believe. For over an hour, Granddaddy reminded his community—a people historically alienated, now demoralized and insecure— that they were the ones whom Jesus loved. Seamlessly blending Jesus’ people’s plight with the African-American freedom struggle, Granddaddy’s love for the people and the Bible merged in a way that was life affirming and rendered a hopeless people hopeful.
“God has not forgotten about us. He gave us the right to vote and will honor our desire to work,” he said.
The Bible, and the god that he interpreted from it, affirmed the humanity of black people. It was a project that also put a premium on the possibility of young people leading a freer life in a more just world. It contained a strong belief in education and culture as bridge toward equality.
My grandparents strongly encouraged me to take voice lessons, which I loved, and forced me to take piano, which I despised. Both Mt. Sinai Missionary Baptist Church and Faith Temple Church of God in Christ, the churches of my childhood, were led by sharecroppers who celebrated the life of the mind, social justice, and Jesus. They placed a special hope in young folks. The fifth Sunday of the month was reserved for the church youth, who would be responsible for the order of service as ushers, deacons, devotional leaders, choir members, and even preachers. I was always required to play the piano during the youth service. No matter how badly I botched Bach, I received an abundance of “Go ahead, baby!” and a standing ovation.
Folks who were just two-and-a-half generations from slavery and functionally illiterate taught me the profundity of democracy and religion. Among them was Mrs. Roberta. On documents that required her signature, she made her mark—an X— because she could not write her name.
“Come here and read to me, boy,” Mrs. Roberta commanded with her hands on her walking cane and royalty in her voice. “Come here, boy, and read to me about our people.” I obliged, with reverence. Sunday after Sunday, I heard preachers and laity say, “God freed us.”
In the singing, prayers, testimony, and other liturgical expressions of this worshipping community, Jesus provided hope in unhopeful circumstances. Set against the darkness, faith was our light. In the midst of what DuBois termed the “Frenzy,” the congregation shouted Jesus is “a bright and morning star,” “water in dry places,” “the lily of the valley,” “the rose of Sharon,” “a friend to the friendless,” “a rock in a weary land,” “a lawyer in the court,” “a doctor in the sickroom” and a whole host of such phrases that form the essence of their belief in and about the divine and the community’s plight.
In church, my grandparents were reminded of the assumption of their worth and redemption. They knew that the darkness would not have the last word, because god was with them. My grandfather’s hopes, my grandmother’s vision and Mrs. Roberta’s desires all flowed from this peculiar conception of god and democracy.
At a moment in our history when one can exchange the words Christian, conservative, religious, Republican and right in a sentence without changing the meaning of that sentence, I recall this rich tradition and I am encouraged. For it has been through the courage of these illiterate foreparents that I have come to see my role as clergyperson and citizen to stand with queers, immigrants, Muslims and whoever else is catching hell today. It is within this ferment that my democratic socialist politics and organic liberation theology were born. If we can recover the best of religion as a force for democratic expansion, then we all shall be saved.
THE ONION REVERIE- Mark W. Read
Behold the Jewel at the heart of the Onion
I was “on retreat” recently. You know, meditation, yoga, vegetarian meals, chanting mantras, seeking inner peace and tranquility and clarity of mind….retreat. Also retreat from strangers on subways giving me the deadeye as I wedge my way onto the 9:00am Q train into Manhattan. Retreat from sidewalks so crowded you can barely navigate, where you find yourself muttering curses at the elderly folks who slow your flow. Retreat from late night car alarms, cats fighting in the alley, the daily grind of overscheduled, multitasked days and weeks and months. Retreat.
The Guru there at the retreat- this one, some say, can read your mind, and HIS Guru, others say, could make water boil just by sticking his finger in the pot. Anyway, this Guru got to talking one night about the Divine Light that abides in each one of us, a light that he claims is actually the essence of us, our true nature, some sort of Atman-Brahman-cosmic-uni-mind-christ-consciousness-still-small-voice-within-you sort of thing that radiates pure joy.
But we cover it up, the Guru says. We hold on to things that we should let go of. Wounds we suffer remain with us far past what should be their expiration date and these skin over, like the film over warmed milk, and grow thicker and more opaque, clouding the light that still resides within us but can no longer shine and we forget who we are, says the guru. And we become confused, disoriented.
The guru says we need to peel back these layers in order to come back to ourselves.
And there in the ashram, in the meditation hall, listening to the man who, some say, can read minds, I consider the onion: It’s layers, and it’s heart.
The outer layers are thick, and coarse, in some way obvious. They are the strongest, but also the easiest to discern. The further in you go, the more delicate the membrane, the more subtle and fine the skin becomes.
With each layer I tear away, the enzymes flood in through my nostrils, assaulting my tear ducts. My eyes become moist.
I Tear away layer after layer of the obscuring tissue.
A layer of resentment for the lover who could not love me enough
A layer of regret for the lover with whom I could not remain
A layer of disappointment that I have not accomplished all that I should have in the time I have had
A layer of hurt from the time my father told me I was just an asshole
A layer of insult from the time that coach cut me from the team
A layer of sadness from that pretty girl who never called
I tear away the layers of the Tearful Onion, to reveal…
The jewel at the heart of the onion. The pearl.
Blessed be the fruits of the earth
Blessed be the light within you
Blessed be the jewel at the heart of the onion.
MARCH 29TH, FREDDY'S BACK ROOM
All right, the long slumber is OVER! After an extended hiatus during which we co-devolved our collective desires into the simplest of formulations, whereby all we NOW wish for is simple human WARMTH, we return to you just as the thaw commences, with wise words and tall tales to start out yet another spring season in the borough of Kings. This month we sought out seekers and sojourners of all...kinds. We gathered yet again at Freddy's Back Room, where the beer is cheap, the stories are free, and the company is top-notch, 'natch. Please enjoy the edifying, amusing, anecdotal, analytical, political, polemical, and poignant musings of the following angry and/or euphoric writers, which were read OUT LOUD at Freddy's Backroom on March 29th, 2008:
Scott Korb and Peter Bebergal are the co-authors of "The Faith Between Us: A Jew and a Catholic Search for the Meaning of God" Between them they have written for Harper's, Gastronomica, the Revealer, Commonweal, Killing the Buddha, the Believer, and the Boston Globe. They also teach.
Reverend Osagyefo Sekou is a Minister at Judson Memorial Church
Nadia Davids is an award-winning playwright, recently nominated for the Noma Award for her play, "At Her Feet."
Brian Carreira is the Brooklyn Rail city editor
Hosted By Brooklyn Rail Contributor, and RantRhapsody creator, Mark W. Read
TEARLESS ONION IN DEVELOPMENT- From the Guardian UK
Scientists have developed a tearless onion that means cooks may no longer have to suffer stinging eyes and crying in the kitchen. The breakthrough by New Zealand's crop and food research institute after six years of research has been made using gene silencing technology. Dr Colin Eady, the institute's senior scientist, said that he and his team were able to turn off the gene that produces the enzyme that causes a person slicing an onion to cry. "By shutting down the lachrymatory factor synthase gene, we have stopped valuable sulphur compounds being converted to the tearing agent, and instead made them available for redirection into compounds, some of which are known for their flavour and health properties," he said. "We anticipate the health and flavour profiles will actually be enhanced by what we've done. We'll have nice, sweet aromas instead of bitter, pungent ones."
The international onion trade journal Onion World is featuring the breakthrough on the front cover of its latest issue. The magazine quotes Dr Michael J Havey, professor of horticulture at the University of Wisconsin and a world-renowned onion scientist, as predicting that tearless onions will become a mainstay in household kitchens around the world. But although the tearless onion will be welcomed by cooks everywhere, it is still at the prototype stage and will not be in kitchens for at least another decade. The New Zealand team is also working on how to improve sustainable and efficient production of the genetically altered onion. "We have a burgeoning population to feed, and with climate change and other challenges, available resources are being reduced. The gene silencing system can also be used to combat virus diseases and biotechnology in general can help us produce more robust crops," said Dr Eady.
In many countries onions already contribute a significant proportion of the daily fibre requirements of the populations, he said. "They are such a versatile and nutritious vegetable that if we can manage to get more people cooking and eating fresh onions, then that has got to be a positive outcome."
WHEN FAITH ISN'T FUN- Brian Carreira
The theme of my reading tonight is those times when faith isn’t fun. But before we begin, I wanted to remind the folks in the audience that this bar sits on occupied land. A rich, well-connected developer decided that he wanted to pursue his grand vision for a “New Brooklyn,” and so got all of his well-connected friends to intimidate and cajole as much of the land around here from folks so that he could build a basketball arena and a bunch of skyscrapers. The rich developer got all of his buddies in the government to say that he could take the rest of the property when he was ready to make his dream reality.
So, this bar sits on occupied land. And so all of us at the moment are sojourners in hostile territory…Welcome!
Now that we’ve located ourselves in the grand swath of history, I’d like to talk about those times when faith isn’t fun. But let me tangent for a second to explore the vision of this rich man, called Atlantic Yards.
Atlantic Yards was the rich man’s version of a bold new age dawning in Brooklyn. Mall stores, hermetically sealed glass huts in the sky, well-manicured gardens, and the coliseum in the center. Where we sit might one day be a TGI Friday’s, or maybe an American Apparel store!
I always enjoy rich mens’ eschatology. It always sounds pretty reasonable if you close your eyes and don’t think about it too hard. Like those behind the utopia arising in Iraq, the rich man behind Atlantic Yards was convinced that he’d be welcomed as a liberator by the downtrodden folks of Prospect Heights.
But I’m digressing, and if I keep going, I’ll never be able to talk about those times when faith isn’t fun.
I think about that magical vision for the Atlantic Yards. You see it wasn’t just going to be for rich folks. It was going to bring jobs and cheap housing for the less fortunate as well.
I remember one of the organizations this rich man came up with to support the project had an office over on Vanderbilt Avenue. They were creating a job bank. You could put your name down on a list and the rich man was going to make sure you got a great job in the shiny new offices he was going to build, or in the arena he was creating, or in the shops that would inhabit this new magic land.
And pre-approved low-income families were going to be able to live in this shiny new city too. Not too poor mind you, just poor enough so that the rich man could show what a good guy he was yet not scare away the yuppies looking to plunk down a few million on one of those glass huts in the sky. It might take 10 or 15 years for your apartment to be built, but really, it’s the thought that matters.
But I keep veering off of my point. I want to talk about those times when faith isn’t fun.
Except I forgot to talk about all the new greenspace that would be created with Atlantic Yards. The highlight was this crazy track that circled high up in the air over the arena. A monument of engineering, of architecture, and of urban space. If you are one of those yuppies who plunks down a few million on a condo, maybe you’ll even get to see it.
But there is other open space too. Huge swaths of land in-between the glass boxes. It’ll probably only get 15 minutes of sun a day what with all the cool new skyscrapers about, and the rich man has made it clear that this isn’t really going to be lounging around, lying on blankets type of space. There’ll be trees though…and grass.
So, let’s talk about those times faith isn’t fun. It was crazy, when the rich man told his friends in our government his plan, they thought it was such an awesome idea that they gave him half a billion dollars (and the promise of a bunch more) to make it happen. Just like that. Just for having such a good idea.
I wish I had good ideas like the rich man so that I could get half a billion dollars when I thought of them. I’m in the middle of moving right now, and let me tell you, a half a billion dollars would make that whole process a LOT easier.
That gets me thinking a bit. Not all of us are rich like the rich man. What if the people who already live here didn’t think that the rich man’s plan was such a good idea? What if Donald O’Finn, who manages this bar, LIKED managing the bar and wanted to keep doing so?
Well, that gets me to those times when faith isn’t fun. Most of the time faith is comforting. It is consoling. It brings order to our lives and gives us purpose. But sometimes faith isn’t easy or fun. Whether it is faith in God, faith in a political idea, or faith that when you live someplace or work someplace some rich guy isn’t going to come up with a good idea and get his powerful friends to take your home or business away.
For the folks who live in this community, faith hasn’t been fun. Their Borough President wouldn’t listen to them, their Mayor opposed them, their U.S. Senator (Schumer, not the other one) said that they were part of a “culture of inertia.” And as of right now, that rich man’s vision has been approved and they are told that they are living on borrowed time.
A little over a week ago was the feast of Purim on the Jewish Calendar. It was also Easter in the Western Christian tradition last week. In the story commemorated on Purim, Esther faces death to try to save her people. She tells all the Jews in her community to fast with her for 3 days, and although it isn’t lawful for her to approach the King without his permission, she knows that the fate of her community is more important. “If I perish, I perish,” she said.
In Christian tradition, we are told that a preacher from the boondocks comes to Jerusalem, the big city. After making a ruckus in the temple, one of his buddies who he came with sells him out. He knows that things are about to get a lot, lot worse. Yet the rest of his friends are asleep as he hopes in the garden that somehow the story will turn out differently.
These are the times when faith, when sticking with your guns even though the deck is stacked against you, isn’t fun.
In Purim, the celebration is that the Jews were saved. In Easter, Christians celebrate that after the Cross, there is Resurrection.
But for most of us thankfully, life and death isn’t at stake. Sometimes it is a home or a livelihood. Most of the time, the stakes aren’t that high. For most of us, it is trying to do what is right when culture, friends, and family tell you that your fight isn’t important or that you don’t need to be so passionate or wish you’d just “chill out.” We all have those moments in the garden when faith isn’t fun.
It is funny then, that last week as well, the rich man told the New York Times that his great idea might not happen after all. Apparently the half a billion dollars his friends fronted him just wasn’t going to cut it in these crappy economic times. I must admit, I was always a little suspicious of the rich man’s idea. I thought, if it’s such a great idea, then why doesn’t he want the City Council or the state legislative bodies to vote on it? I thought, if it was such a great idea, then why did he have to create and buy off “community” groups to support it? Why did people who come to this bar seem to think it was such a stupid idea? They must’ve been jealous that they didn’t think of it first so that they could collect their half a billion dollars.
Or maybe, just maybe, they really had faith, really BELIEVED that what he was doing was wrong and that standing against him was right. For the last few years, this faith was not a lot of fun.
But then you get moments like last week. The fight is far from over. BUT the rich man, with all the king’s horses and all the kings men, couldn’t put the rotten egg of Atlantic Yards back together again! It is in these sublime moments that the dark times of faith enjoy light.
Have fun.
Thank you.
IMAGINED RESPONSE OF "THE ONION" TO TEARLESS ONION EDITORIAL BOARD TO TEARLESS ONION
Mark W. Read
From The Onion, America’s Finest News Source.
March 25, NEW YORK CITY- Editors of the Onion issue fatwa against developers of “Tearless Onion”
In a news conference on March 27th 2008, The editorial board of the Onion, America’s Finest News Source, declared that “the blasphemous tinkerers shall be stopped. Their mutant blood will decorate the shrines of the holy Onion martyrs; those who have sacrificed their dignity and their self-respect in the pursuit of amusing, intelligent, satirical faux- news pieces. We shall honor the vales of tears that have been shed in this pursuit, and in the humbler pursuit of simple culinary pleasures, like Onion Rings, Onion Soup, and Onion Fritters. These tears shall not have been shed in vain. We call upon all the faithful, all the pure-hearted and valiant lovers of the Onion, to seek out this Dr. Michael J. Harvey, and all his cohort. Their meddling in the perfection that is The Onion must be put to a halt. We shall not rest until their blood is sacrificed, and is joined with the black soil of Central New Jersey, from which so many fine and delicate Onions have sprung.”
MADRESSA
by Nadia Davids
See article in the Brooklyn Rail, with photos: http://www.brooklynrail.org/2007/11/express/madressa
Living in New York has changed my language. That, more than anything has signified the difference between home and here. Home, Cape Town, a twenty-five hour flight and two security checks away, means different food, slower internet connections, more obvious racial segregation, interfering aunties and a constant awareness of one’s physical safety. Those are the clear differences, the ones I can weigh and see and hold. But in the last few months something has shifted; words that I have always carried with a peculiar kind of tenderness and ease have been coated by something distasteful and defensive. Some words suffer horribly in translation; others change shape radically when they travel, and there are a few (emotional shortcuts to my home and my past) that have acquired an unnerving timbre and resonance through their Atlantic crossing.
One of these words, madressa, seems especially charged in New York. I have said this word during public discussions, between puffs over a shared cigarette, as an after thought in exchanged confidences about the past, and have been repeatedly surprised by the startled response. The reaction at one dinner party was especially strange. We were speaking about religion and childhood, the perfect space in which to pour both laughter and suffering—with a dash of guilt for dismissing old loyalties. Everyone offered their bit; choking on the Eucharist wine, running away at the crucial moment in a cousin’s bris, inventing wildly inappropriate sins for confession. The stories were funny and moving. Then I mentioned that I had spent my afternoons after school at madressa. What followed was fleeting; a second of silence that seemed to hang in awkward angles in the air, eyes darting about quickly, gratefully settling on inspecting furniture or cutlery and then a sudden burst of conversation with offers of more food and wine.
It took me days to work it out.
Madressa here seems to conjure up images of young children being brainwashed into turning themselves into human bombs by unfeeling adults hell-bent on world-domination. These adults are mostly men with an excess of facial hair and zealot eyes that flash on cue; the children are generally sweet looking tots clothed in Hamas-style gear who unnerve everyone with their unchildlike chanting. The word which I had grown up inter-changing easily with ‘school’ seems to summon the same kind of shudder that usually accompanies jihad or burkha—two other words which have become uncomfortably loaded. This is not to imply that I have been surrounding myself by rabid right-wingers. On the contrary, the flinch at the word comes from people who are genuinely concerned that I might have had to resist the frothing instructions of a crazed anti-Semite who wanted to cover my hair and insert fundamentalism in my mouth. I have stopped finding the flinch especially offensive: I have only seen madressas portrayed in two Hollywood films, Syriana and Rendition, both works that make a concerted effort to be balanced critiques of the roots of terrorism. In Syriana two Pakistani boys run around in a pretty garden playing soccer and bee-keeping, only to have their idyll shattered by a green-eyed teacher who shows them a large missile. In Rendition, the madressa is a covert political cell grooming a new generation of suicide bombers. The imam shouts ‘Takbir!’ and the students, whipped into an emotional frenzy chant back ‘Allahu Akbar’. I have only ever heard the Takbir chanted as a battle cry in films or footage of protests in other countries. I grew up hearing ‘God is Great’ whispered in prayers, by people expressing gratitude at good news, or chanted through the loudspeakers at the local mosques as a call to prayer. The notion of maddressa being tangled up with war and killing is utterly foreign to me.
It is a strange thing to see your own past refracted through a distorted lens. I grew up in a devout Muslim community in South Africa that had its roots snarled in the trauma of spice and slave trade of the 1700s. Today, the Muslim population in Cape Town—diverse, modern, traditional, religious, secular— numbers at around 900,000 and is deeply intertwined with the life and character of the country. It has framed itself as a community for over three hundred years—but has only been free for the tiniest portion of that time. Slavery ended just over a hundred and sixty years ago, apartheid barely thirteen years ago. Those twin evils continue to cast long and terrible shadows. Life under systemized oppression was a porous experience—the law tended to seep into everything, circumscribing even verbal freedoms. Madressa, despite its strict structure was a space in which many people felt safe to speak about the difficulties, stresses and awfulness of life under apartheid.
Years ago, certain life choices led me towards embracing a secular existence. The decision had very little to do with Islam in particular and more to do with religion in general. Organized faith does not feel all that compatible with the way I organize my life, but that doesn’t stop me from being enormously invested in how the world understands and mediates the faith and the people I love who continue to practice it.
I tried explaining this to someone and she shrugged ‘Old loyalties die hard’, but the question is not of old loyalties, it is of loyalty itself, and a loyalty to the truth of one’s own history. Post-9/11, there have been an array of books published by women who were born into Muslim families and have embraced secularism, Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel is just one of them. Her experience of madressa, veiling and Islam has been horrific, her anger and pain is understandable, but her story has become monolithic. Irshad Manji’s book, The Trouble with Islam Today (in many ways a clarion and important call for open and tolerant debates about Islam) describes her madressa as being steeped in bigotry and sexism with a teacher who, unable to handle her questions, asks her to leave the school. For me, reading and watching Hirsi, Hollywood and Manji’s madressas are more like anthropological forays into another world that bear very little resemblance to my school.
My experience of madressa was for the most part quite banal. Boring yes, but not tarnished by the same kinds of cruelty that shaped these women’s experiences. Instead, it raised some crucial questions around personal identity and provided an institutionalized morality that acted as an antidote to the state-sanctioned inequality. Coming of age in an economically schizophrenic city (grinding poverty, oppression and police brutality coupled with excessive European beach-resort type wealth), in the midst of a low-grade civil war, in a community defined by state- prescribed ‘race’ (coloured, Malay, Indian) was not easy. Going to a private all-girls Anglican school in the day (morning chapel, hot lunch, tennis, prefects, blazers, curtsey to the headmistress) and then off to madressa (suras, recitations, old men with beards, compulsory burkhas) in the late afternoons tended to complicate things more.
For the most part, I didn’t want to go to madressa. An hour of intense religious instruction after a full day at school is torturous for any child. I remember feeling coerced and resentful, that my body, heavy from the impending boredom, felt as though it was being dragged there and that my parents (not especially religious themselves) were peculiarly intractable about attendance. My attention span wondered constantly while we learnt classical Arabic, aspects of Shariah law and how to make salaat. I had a constant flow of potential excuses for not going. I drew inspiration from the weather: it’s too hot, it’s too cold, it’s too windy; to the instruction: the sheik expects less from the girls than boys, he smells of pipe tobacco, he isn’t very bright; to the other students who were singularly unimpressed by my going to a private, Christian-based school: don’t keep yourself white! was a regular admonishment. I regularly ditched classes taking refuge at my friend Celeste’s house—she had wild curly hair and a crucifix above her bed; she wasn’t going to tell anyone where I was.
I walked to madressa with my sister throughout the 1980s. The steep hill tilted our bodies forward as we fought against a wind that rushed us down the sloped road as if it was propelling us faster towards God. Our cream burkhas (flung on quickly while we gobbled our afternoon tea) fell mid-knee covering our shorts and t-shirts. The school was close by, at Mrs. Essop’s house. On the garage wall someone had spray-painted the command, ‘Remember June 16, Lights Out!’ The date was a reminder of the Soweto uprisings of 1976 in which thousands of school children protesting the use of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction, were shot and beaten by the army. The graffiti stayed on Mrs. Essop’s wall for five years, from the beginning of the 1985 State of Emergency until the un-banning of the A.N.C in 1990. It was an annual command to turn off the television, stop the clocks, silence the radio and switch off the lights. It was a call for darkness and quiet, a moment to mourn the uncountable dead. The neighborhood would plunge into silence; candles-light danced at windows and the smell of a tire burning in a confrontation a few streets away would drift up towards my parents’ house. Growing up in the 1980s in South Africa had all the qualities of an unending nightmare, surreal and frightening.
We would run in (always slightly late) at the kitchen entrance and shout out greetings to the aunties standing over stoves, chatting through a haze of cigarette smoke and sipping their tea. The room upstairs was full of veiled sunlight. The afternoon light was softened by the thick net curtains and repetitive brownness of the floor, furniture and carpet. There were perhaps thirty boys and girls. We crowded around a long, rectangular wooden table. In the centre sat our teacher. He was a little man with a beard, a fez and a love of stories. He published educational books filled with miraculous tales about children who could recite the entire Koran by heart at the age of seven. The miracle children would pose for the camera with the wide-eyed look of someone surprised by the intensity of the flash, not being made privy to a spiritual revelation.
We sat and shaped out mouths around the foreign alphabet, making our throats murmur with a nasal intonation. The world was reversed for an hour everyday; sentences ran from right to left, the text was written by spirit, not flesh, and we were costumed as though from another country. We learned about a man called Sheik Yusuf, a prince from Macacasar, who was imprisoned on Robben Island in 1600s for defying the Dutch. “The first political prisoner on the island” our imam would say, and then sigh, “And not the last…certainly not the last.” Sometimes he would twitch the curtains apart and look out across the bay, staring at the island where our leaders sat in tiny cold cells. On good days he told us stories; about Moosa floating along the Nile rescued by an Egyptian queen, about Ebrahim willingly waving a axe ready to chop off his son’s head in a sacrifice to God, about Hagar, dying of thirst in the desert and ran between two points crying to God to help her and he created a fountain of the sweetest water for her to drink. But mostly we sat immobile memorizing lists of what was haraam and what was fardh, which prayers matched which occasion and taking turns to stare at the clock and trying to move the hands forward Jedi-style.
Did the old man shout at us? Certainly. Was he violent? I remember him hitting the boys but even this was not especially shocking. Corporal punishment was legal and the violence in classrooms often reiterated the violence in the streets. In the midst of reciting suras, I would often look up and see a boy leaning against the wall, trying to hide his snot and tears, pulling at his fez, wiping at his eyes with the edge of his shirt. Muslim school was not without fear and darkness, but there were no moments of frenzied Takbir, or declarations of any earthly enemies except for the ones sitting in South African parliament. My madressa was not especially politicized but I had a friend whose teacher mixed Islam with Steve Biko’s black consciousness and shaped his lessons with an Afro-centrism that was heavily informed by Marx. My sheik was not terribly inspiring or child-friendly. He was a serious scholar who wrote books about the importance of Jesus in the Koran. In another life perhaps he would have willed his hours away debating theology in a mosque. I don’t think he was predisposed to teaching children, but he never taught us to judge or hate anyone for not being Muslim.
Words change as they travel. I know this. I understand that they assume different weights, new nuances. But the sense of difference between the afternoons in that brown room and the embarrassed silence that tends to follow it here is made of more than just meaning shaded by place; they were worlds apart, unrecognizable to each other. I have grown up using the word madressa as unthinkingly and normatively as I speak of internal spiritual struggles as jihad or understood the Palestinian uprisings and the intifadas in black South African townships as desperate, miserable mirrors of each other. Wearing a scarf has only ever been something optional. Burkha, chador, abaya, these have been words associated with things required to be worn during prayer, to mark a moment as sacred, not to be garbed in all day. I remember my cousin Sarha, freckled and serious appearing at a family gathering one day, her head covered. ‘Why?’ my sister and I asked her bare-headed then as now, ‘Because I want to’ she answered, and then showed us how she wrapped the material around her head, Badu-style, when she went to work because her boss didn’t think it looked very fashionable the triangular way. There are psychological pressures though, which can be heart-breaking; another cousin, barely seven, her fingers flicking with absolute confidence while she tucks the material flat against her forehead securing it with hairpins, her mother looking on with pride, my heart constricting against my chest. But in South African communities, these are predominantly negotiable traditions, they are not enforced by law.
These stories are not to deny that there are madressas used for propaganda and violence in certain parts of the world, or to suggest that the induction of children into fanatical belief systems is not wrong or sordid. It is not to insist that there are not women suffering terribly under the excesses of Islamic patriarchy, or that the concept of an internal spiritual struggle has not been publicly co-opted into something bloodthirsty and frightening. These stories are just to say that there are hundreds of thousands of rooms around the world, like the one in Mrs. Essop’s house, in which children are learning about a particular faith and its traditions without hate or hysteria.
Looking back through the haze of easy boredom that cloaked those afternoons, I notice that in the midst of my young restlessness I also learned something about duty and discipline and purpose. In affirming those ancient rituals, in believing that I was being protected by something larger and more mysterious that I could conceptualize, a small part of my fear around the constant national chaos was placated. As an adult, I doubt it would have helped as much. But as a child, seeing that same graffiti “Lights out June 16!” for 5 years on the same wall made me believe that God and justice were on the same side.
PRAYERS OF AN ATHEIST-SM Korb
The book, "The Faith Between Us," is available through the site: http://www.thefaithbetweenus.com/
I wouldn't have expected it the day I dotted the last "i" of Faith, but Sunday morning I told a story about prayer to a group gathered for a book discussion at Trinity Episcopal Church in Concord, Mass., not a far drive from Peter's house in Cambridge. Before our presentation, the associate rector Nick Morris-Kliment offered a prayer -- something he seems expert at -- that put the group in the right mood; he asked for God's blessing on our talk, and hoped that our friendship might be somehow useful, a reflection of God's will for his community. A little embarrassing, 100% flattering, and, we hope, at least somewhat true. The rector, Tony Buquor, whose son was married by Peter in a civil ceremony that, he noted, was remarkably religious, introduced us just as kindly.
Before taking questions, and before I told my story about prayer, Peter and I read two short essays about our friendship and the process of writing the book. (These will soon appear on Jbooks.com.) I stumbled over myself for a moment -- blurting quickly, "ah, you'll excuse me for this" -- when I mentioned that seminary had seemed a terrible cockblock during my early days in New York. (This seemed less bad, somehow, than reading the phrase "handjobs on floors" from the book at a Lutheran church in Chicago a few months ago. I remain somewhat prudish, I guess.)
I forget exactly the question that brought my story to mind, but the moment it was asked, Peter turned to me and said, "Tell them about your prayers." So I did.
In Faith, I write, "[E]xcept when they come to mind involuntarily like all-time favorite pop songs, I've more or less stopped saying personal prayers. The transition's been slow. Since those early, comforting night improvising prayers that always began with "My dear Lord God" and ended with the affirmation "Amen" -- meaning basically "Yes, I believe You can do anything" -- I've run the gamut. ... Nowadays, though, the Father isn't there to listen to me silently meditate on the Lord's Prayer, and the Holy Mother doesn't intercede with her Son each time I call her to mind with a Hail Mary. I'd always really understood church petitions to be prayers for miracles. Now, outside of its context within a community able to act on it, a prayer asking God to care for the poor floats away unheard. Kept to myself, any prayer for the sick is just as ineffectual."
In a sense, this is just as true as ever. I still can't imagine praying for miracles. Yet, this, I've learned is a severely limited conception of personal prayer, and not at all what Peter ever means when he talks about his own devotional life as a theist.
So, finally, the story: About a month ago, near the end of research (if that's the right word, which it really isn't) for a new book project, I hit what I considered then to be a snag. Like "research," "snag" is certainly the wrong word, but for our sake here, imagine it as a really big, really painful snag, something really damaging. Consider it a heartbreaking snag. (I provided more details to the community at Trinity. I'm being less forthcoming here, for my own reasons. It's important to know, for our purposes, that I was heartbroken.)
What happens in my life when heartbreaking things happen -- when a dad dies, when a relationship ends, when I hit a snag -- is that I call Peter. (The book contains a moment when the reverse happens: Peter's heart is broken and he calls me. Why am I being so mysterious?) So that morning I did. He'd never heard me so crushed.
He knows very well -- better than anyone else -- that I've given up prayer. He knows very well how horribly it went the last time a friend recommended I pray. But he said it anyway: "Maybe you should pray about it. You know, at a moment like this, you really have to go into the belly of the beast." This is how Peter sounds when he really means something. And he never means that a miracle can happen, or even that God is looking out for me.
The belly of the beast, where we go when we pray, it turns out, is within me, within all of us. It's the unselfconscious place where, as they say, you turn your life -- your heartbreaks -- over to God. You stop being embarrassed and stop, if only for those meditative moments, being self-critical. It's the irrational place in us, where we feel. It's where we hope from. And probably also where we love from. This is not how I usually sound when I really mean something. But that advice was the best Peter had for me, and actually the very best in the world.
It's not easy to pray when you don't believe in God. Fortunately, from what Peter tells me, it's not easy to pray when you do, either. But it seems worth trying.
THE GOD OF MY GRANDPARENTS-by Rev. Osagyefo Sekou
If Jesus is the author of my faith, then my grandparents are the editors. In rural Arkansas I was raised in the ways of a Victorian, southern black woman who loved Jesus and justice. A proud Baptist, she rescued her six-month-old grandson from a fate that may have been too terrible to tell. A King James Bible and encyclopedias are the first gifts I remember receiving from her. Her admonishments, shaped by her god, possessed existential gems that pointed to the measure of one’s humanness: “You must never look down on people.”
My grandfather, Rev. James Thomas, was a railroad worker and retired Pentecostal pastor. He possessed a third-grade education and a thirst for knowledge. He delighted in tidbits of black history that he had gleaned from folklore. His proudest moments came when he knew that I had “gotten it.” For him, the Bible was the book that he had mastered, and his desire for me was that I master it as well in the struggle for justice. The signs, symbols, songs, and stories bequeathed to me in rural Arkansas were rife with notions of justice for the poor, democracy for all, and god’s desire for human freedom. My grandfather only had a third-grade education, but he articulated a vision of the world that was profound.
The most magical memory that I have of my grandfather “rightly dividing the word” was on the Friday evening after our town of Brinkley’s only factory had closed. With the economic vitality of the entire community in question, Granddaddy, black and burly, broad-nosed and big-lipped, stood at the sacred desk. He looked upon the sea of black and nearly broken faces, and “took” a text. The congregation stood, as is the custom during the reading of scripture.
Slowly and deliberately, he said, “If you will turn with me in your Biiible…”— stretching the word to stress its significance—“to the gospel of John, the eleventh chapter and the thirty-fifth verse. When you find it say, why don’t you say, ‘Amen.’”
“Amen,” the flock responded, with anticipation on their lips and trepidation in their hearts. Holding himself together, Granddaddy whispered in a tear-soaked voice, “And it simply reads: ‘Jesus wept.’”
The congregation sat down, but Rev. Thomas continued on. In the presence of a voiceless people, he made the book “talk,” retelling the familiar story of Lazarus, the one whom Jesus loved and raised from the dead. Jesus pleaded with his god to raise Lazarus so that others might believe. For over an hour, Granddaddy reminded his community—a people historically alienated, now demoralized and insecure— that they were the ones whom Jesus loved. Seamlessly blending Jesus’ people’s plight with the African-American freedom struggle, Granddaddy’s love for the people and the Bible merged in a way that was life affirming and rendered a hopeless people hopeful.
“God has not forgotten about us. He gave us the right to vote and will honor our desire to work,” he said.
The Bible, and the god that he interpreted from it, affirmed the humanity of black people. It was a project that also put a premium on the possibility of young people leading a freer life in a more just world. It contained a strong belief in education and culture as bridge toward equality.
My grandparents strongly encouraged me to take voice lessons, which I loved, and forced me to take piano, which I despised. Both Mt. Sinai Missionary Baptist Church and Faith Temple Church of God in Christ, the churches of my childhood, were led by sharecroppers who celebrated the life of the mind, social justice, and Jesus. They placed a special hope in young folks. The fifth Sunday of the month was reserved for the church youth, who would be responsible for the order of service as ushers, deacons, devotional leaders, choir members, and even preachers. I was always required to play the piano during the youth service. No matter how badly I botched Bach, I received an abundance of “Go ahead, baby!” and a standing ovation.
Folks who were just two-and-a-half generations from slavery and functionally illiterate taught me the profundity of democracy and religion. Among them was Mrs. Roberta. On documents that required her signature, she made her mark—an X— because she could not write her name.
“Come here and read to me, boy,” Mrs. Roberta commanded with her hands on her walking cane and royalty in her voice. “Come here, boy, and read to me about our people.” I obliged, with reverence. Sunday after Sunday, I heard preachers and laity say, “God freed us.”
In the singing, prayers, testimony, and other liturgical expressions of this worshipping community, Jesus provided hope in unhopeful circumstances. Set against the darkness, faith was our light. In the midst of what DuBois termed the “Frenzy,” the congregation shouted Jesus is “a bright and morning star,” “water in dry places,” “the lily of the valley,” “the rose of Sharon,” “a friend to the friendless,” “a rock in a weary land,” “a lawyer in the court,” “a doctor in the sickroom” and a whole host of such phrases that form the essence of their belief in and about the divine and the community’s plight.
In church, my grandparents were reminded of the assumption of their worth and redemption. They knew that the darkness would not have the last word, because god was with them. My grandfather’s hopes, my grandmother’s vision and Mrs. Roberta’s desires all flowed from this peculiar conception of god and democracy.
At a moment in our history when one can exchange the words Christian, conservative, religious, Republican and right in a sentence without changing the meaning of that sentence, I recall this rich tradition and I am encouraged. For it has been through the courage of these illiterate foreparents that I have come to see my role as clergyperson and citizen to stand with queers, immigrants, Muslims and whoever else is catching hell today. It is within this ferment that my democratic socialist politics and organic liberation theology were born. If we can recover the best of religion as a force for democratic expansion, then we all shall be saved.
THE ONION REVERIE- Mark W. Read
Behold the Jewel at the heart of the Onion
I was “on retreat” recently. You know, meditation, yoga, vegetarian meals, chanting mantras, seeking inner peace and tranquility and clarity of mind….retreat. Also retreat from strangers on subways giving me the deadeye as I wedge my way onto the 9:00am Q train into Manhattan. Retreat from sidewalks so crowded you can barely navigate, where you find yourself muttering curses at the elderly folks who slow your flow. Retreat from late night car alarms, cats fighting in the alley, the daily grind of overscheduled, multitasked days and weeks and months. Retreat.
The Guru there at the retreat- this one, some say, can read your mind, and HIS Guru, others say, could make water boil just by sticking his finger in the pot. Anyway, this Guru got to talking one night about the Divine Light that abides in each one of us, a light that he claims is actually the essence of us, our true nature, some sort of Atman-Brahman-cosmic-uni-mind-christ-consciousness-still-small-voice-within-you sort of thing that radiates pure joy.
But we cover it up, the Guru says. We hold on to things that we should let go of. Wounds we suffer remain with us far past what should be their expiration date and these skin over, like the film over warmed milk, and grow thicker and more opaque, clouding the light that still resides within us but can no longer shine and we forget who we are, says the guru. And we become confused, disoriented.
The guru says we need to peel back these layers in order to come back to ourselves.
And there in the ashram, in the meditation hall, listening to the man who, some say, can read minds, I consider the onion: It’s layers, and it’s heart.
The outer layers are thick, and coarse, in some way obvious. They are the strongest, but also the easiest to discern. The further in you go, the more delicate the membrane, the more subtle and fine the skin becomes.
With each layer I tear away, the enzymes flood in through my nostrils, assaulting my tear ducts. My eyes become moist.
I Tear away layer after layer of the obscuring tissue.
A layer of resentment for the lover who could not love me enough
A layer of regret for the lover with whom I could not remain
A layer of disappointment that I have not accomplished all that I should have in the time I have had
A layer of hurt from the time my father told me I was just an asshole
A layer of insult from the time that coach cut me from the team
A layer of sadness from that pretty girl who never called
I tear away the layers of the Tearful Onion, to reveal…
The jewel at the heart of the onion. The pearl.
Blessed be the fruits of the earth
Blessed be the light within you
Blessed be the jewel at the heart of the onion.
posted by Mark W. Read at 8:02 AM
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