red cheeks

i look around the library and, though the temperature of the room is cold (we're wearing sweaters), people's cheeks are red from the stress. every once in a while i'll see someone doing what i'm doing--putting my cold fingers to my cheeks, hoping to cool the burning, just for a moment.

the floor is silent except for the typing on laptops and the occassional coughing. i am the loudest, perhaps, because i have drank too much water today & keep getting up. faces look generally concentrated and men and women alike twindle their hair, ironically absentmind, while sorting out big questions.

at the start of the semester i gave a little donor thank you address when i talked about how sometimes harvard is the charicature of itself--all these serious people, doing serious thinking.

a nearby student takes a deep sigh--the problems are sometimes too big for our little papers. yet, we try again and again, somehow convinced that writing about it might make a difference.

this is the rhythm. if i romanticize it, i don't hate it.

vegetarian thanksgiving

its true, ladies & gentlemen, my meat-loving hubby-to-be & i celebrated the pilgrim's arrival without turkey! we had yummy pumpkin soup, stuffed squash & baby greens salad. and some olive loaf bread. delicious. a no tofurkey.

true, it came at the expense of a ski trip to washington & a burned up apartment, but what are you going to do?

three cheers for a veggie thanksgiving!!

running & funerals

so i was running my usual route this morning, which takes me past a funeral home. today they were in a procession to the gravesite. i immediately flashed on my sister and i in the suburban last april as we drove to the cemetary with my grandma's coffin. the cemetary's on a major road (aren't they all in small towns?) and sits across the street from a menards and a target. people were just going on about their days..the absurdity, really, of watching these people just going in to buy some toilet paper and pens while we buried the matriarch of my family. kind of indescribable. and today i was that person--out for my daily jog, noticing the funeral flags on the car, wondering about the family.

its always startling when the tables turn.

the mystery of nuns

okay, another great book from the semester: the tulip & the pope by deborah larsen (but do larsen's a st. paul native who joined the BVMs in Dubuque, IA for five years: 1960-65. rocky years to be in a monastery.

the mystery of it all is shocking. before she joins, the life behind the walls is shrouded in this mystery...part of the appeal in joining was that she would get to know what was going on in this secret place. while she's in, her body is shrouded in mystery--she's got several poignant references to not knowing what her hair really looked like or what her shape really was. there's this funny seen where she & some other young nuns are crossing a busy street to go to a swimming class and, for expediency at the changing room, they have their pajama pants on underneath their nun clothes. she imagines what would happen in one of the pant legs were to unroll & if a man in a car were to see--it would probably be, she thinks, this scenario he would remember for a while--seeing a nun's body as somehow not perfectly kept. as she's leaving, she goes to marshall fields to buy some non-nun clothes & looks in a full length mirror for the first time in five years. she looks at her hands on the train back to st. paul and notices that they are no longer consecrated as holy. returning for a reunion, she has a sense of mystery about the nuns who stayed that surpasses the mystery of why women left.

so all this mystery around being a nun. should i write about that?

ayay!

p.s. shoes have arrived @ rei!

rising tide of rivers and catholicism.

i am not really sure how interesting it is of me to post about the random things i do here, but i really need to let folks know that this book is a great addition to anyone's nightstand or deskstack of books. john m. barry walks through, with great gusto and an interesting narrative tone, the build up to the 1927 flood of the mississippi flood and the dynamiting of levee in st. bernard parish. i mean, i'm not a good history book reader & this was a page-turner for me.

you can get it at amazon used for right around $5.

in other news, i'm less and less convinced that vatican 2 caused dramatic shifts in the catholic psyche. as a product of a good benedictine tradition, i have always heaped a lot of wonderful things onto vatican 2, especially to our very own virgel michel.

this week, we read a book called summer in the city (another great read, if you're coming up short!), which is an uber-sympathetic look at what i think is asset-based organizing in east harlem in the mid-1960s. so the nuns and priests do all these art programs, stun the world with their dislike of habits, etc. etc. but in 1964, there are major riots on the streets. the monsignor organizes a peace march and what do they do? pray the rosary. say rote prayers. offer mass. times get tough & people rely in these things.

there's a way in which i find it to be a beautiful irony--as much as the changes were being pushed for and at, documents and hierarchical meetings simply cannot switch a deeply ingrained catholic psyche.

now, please. don't read between the lines here some romanticized image of a pre-conciliar church. nonononono. the mission of the class is to think about these transitionary years where even the liberals were raised with a latin mass, novenas and the virgin mary. the push & pull is fascinating.

and, ladies & gentlemen, this was when our parents came of age. that, my friends, might be the most fascinating part of all.

peaceout, k.

p.s. shoes are on their way & i'm not sure how i feel about the (red) campaign. c'mon...shop at the gap & stop AIDS in africa? gimme a break:).

online shopping

my very favorite shoes in the world seem to be coming apart. one thing has ripped off all together, the bottoms are wearing down and the suede isn't really the same color i started with. i think its time to get new shoes...a prospect i dread.

i might buy these. what do you think? i have a coupon for 15% off & free shipping to my local rei store. any thoughts?

chalkboard paint

the farmers' market has taught me many things this season. perhaps one of the more applicable has been the discovery of chalkboard paint. that's right. in the picture here, i'm pointing to a wall that just 20 minutes before was "antique white." it is now ready to be used as a chalkboard. all with a bottle of spray paint.

that's right. i'm pumped.

tidbits from the catholic sixties

Traditional Latin Catholic Mass

on the last sunday of ordinary time, 1965, the mass was in latin--a form not all together different than this one my professor dug up from youtube. seven days later, on the first sunday of advent, 1965, it was in english. i can't really even imagine the drama of the shift. interestingly, my parents aren't sure they remember it being that dramatic of a shift in gears; both were surprised to learn that was the date. i suppose that a perhaps immature view of history is to look for dramatic fissures in time & place and to exaggerat them. But I'm not sure how much of an exaggeration it is to say this must have been like being rear-ended in the parking lot while you're on a cell phone.

my tendency here, i'm afraid, is to take too sympathetic a view of pre-conciliar devotions: to romanticize the devotions to saints and mary as something nice and, regardless of the theological implications, as real. which, to some extent, is an important perspective. don't get me wrong: i'm not in danger of wishing vatican 2 didn't happen. but i guess it seems more important to respect that my grandma, in a very real way, believed in the presence of st. jude as she combed through the house loooking for some lost item.

i do have to admit a certain amount of pride in being connected with st. john's and st. ben's as virgil michael is all over the place & their are veiled references to the "progressive liturgical reforms in the midwest"--sts. ben's & john's, bahbe!

happy friday. its finally fall here...smells so good. k.

remembering dreams

so one of my classes is called "psychoanalysis & character ethics" and we have launched in with freud's the interpretation of dreams. one of the things we're supposed to do for the class is to keep a "dream book" where we record dreams that we have.

sounds great, right? like an assignment to sleep.

well, its causing me this weird anxiety...like even if i go to sleep, there's something i'm "supposed to be doing." sheesh. but the other thing is that i actually very rarely remember my dreams. i like to think of myself as a sound sleeper. greg is the one with the crazy dreams.

so i've started sleeping with a notebook next to my bed & hoping that being startled awake by my phone alarm will spur on the memory of dreams. last night, it seems to have. but! i slurringly wrote out the dream and went back to snooze for a while. i've just gone back to look at what i wrote (because i actually don't remember the dream) & i can't decipher my sleepy handwriting. oh dear.

is there something i can eat to make me remember my dreams?

mississippi flood of 1927.

so i have begun. i have spent the large chunk of this weekend absorbed in a new series of books & ideas & vocab. one of my classes, understanding katrina: theology, ethics & praxis has launched with a reading of rising tide: how the 1927 flood of the missississippi changed america by john m. barry. really, a fantastic book about a natural disaster i don't think i'd even heard of before.

in reading it, i can't help but think of nina simone's mississippi goddam as i read about the emergence of the kkk, the efforts of white folks to fight for dignity of blacks for their economic interest, the role of ministers in leadership of the black community. its focus is on greenville, ms--one of the places hardest hit by the flooding. its a messy tale of fathers & sons, herbert hoover & politics, power dynamics & race relations. kind of seems to whisper of a scary post-katrina u.s.

okay, enough foreboding! here's what i'm taking this semester:

1. understanding katrina
2. justice & love
3. the catholic sixties
4. psychoanalysis & character ethics

i'm off to read more of the amazing martha nussbaum on the role of emotions in our ethical & moral lives.

peaceout, k.

oh...the lyrics to mississippi goddam:

The name of this tune is mississippi goddam
And I mean every word of it

Alabamas gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about mississippi goddam

Alabamas gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about mississippi goddam

Cant you see it
Cant you feel it
Its all in the air
I cant stand the pressure much longer
Somebody say a prayer

Alabamas gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about mississippi goddam

This is a show tune
But the show hasnt been written for it, yet

Hound dogs on my trail
School children sitting in jail
Black cat cross my path
I think every days gonna be my last

Lord have mercy on this land of mine
We all gonna get it in due time
I dont belong here
I dont belong there
Ive even stopped believing in prayer

Dont tell me
I tell you
Me and my people just about due
Ive been there so I know
They keep on saying go slow!

But thats just the trouble
Do it slow
Washing the windows
Do it slow
Picking the cotton
Do it slow
Youre just plain rotten
Do it slow
Youre too damn lazy
Do it slow
The thinkings crazy
Do it slow
Where am I going
What am I doing
I dont know
I dont know

Just try to do your very best
Stand up be counted with all the rest
For everybody knows about mississippi goddam

I made you thought I was kiddin didnt we

Picket lines
School boy cots
They try to say its a communist plot
All I want is equality
For my sister my brother my people and me

Yes you lied to me all these years
You told me to wash and clean my ears
And talk real fine just like a lady
And youd stop calling me sister sadie

Oh but this whole country is full of lies
Youre all gonna die and die like flies
I dont trust you any more
You keep on saying go slow!
Go slow!

But thats just the trouble
Do it slow
Desegregation
Do it slow
Mass participation
Do it slow
Reunification
Do it slow
Do things gradually
Do it slow
But bring more tragedy
Do it slow
Why dont you see it
Why dont you feel it
I dont know
I dont know

You dont have to live next to me
Just give me my equality
Everybody knows about mississippi
Everybody knows about alabama
Everybody knows about mississippi goddam

shameless promotion

i would like to draw your attention to the right-hand column over there...you see it: blogs i like. i am extremely biased, but i happened to find today's post on "barbagazie" extremely funny. if you go, click my link here and then look at the top of the page for the tap entitled "blog." i'm still laughing.

in other news, i voted in the primary election for the democratic candidate for governor & it looks like my man deval patrick will hold a spot on the ticket on nov. 7 alongside the proposal for whether or not grocery stores should be allowed to sell beer & wine (interestingly, this initiative has policiticized my local liquor store--the have a big NO out on their sidewalk already!).

shopping period continues here. have been to about 8 classes and its only day 2. this is both a nightmare and a dream come true!

to continue the tangential nature of this post, i'm also thinking about this pope and islam thing. my friends here are blasting the pope for being kind of short-sited in choosing his antecdote. i read the whole speech (posted @ bbc) & am not sure the intention was at all offensive & am kind of surprised at the extreme reaction. yes, i'm stunned myself: i feel rather sympathetic to the pope. ack! what is the world coming to:)? interestingly, i shopped a class with a guy named francis schussler fiorenza (the husband of elisabeth) who was a student of joseph ratzinger's. he said the text of the lecture is a form used often by ratzinger in the classroom--using a story from a perhaps unrelated or sometimes obscur setting to frame the conversation.

and so the vatican trudges on. sometimes i feel sorry for them & their sense of being other worldly & their lack of ability to be so.

okay, i'm waxing tired here. as with being at the mall, shopping takes it out of me!

peaceout, k.

and so it begins

ladies & gentlemen, faithful blogreaders...i'm back.

let me catch you up, in brief, on my life: in the past three weeks, i have:
1. dropped out of my student teaching program/commitment
2. switched back to being a student at hds
3. quit two jobs
4. gained one roommate
5. said yes to the man i love

all it all, its been a wonderful and hectic start to the 2006-07 school year!

i have recommitted myself to studying ethics this year, in hopes of further uncovering a passion for this stuff that i began to scratch the surface of last semester. i'm looking forward to a bunch of classes that i'll be "shopping" next week, so a full list will be posted next week (i know, i know...you can hardly wait!).

in the background, i've been wondering about this stage of life i'm calling "26." while i hopefully await turning 27, anxious to be done being 26, i do think this is a particularly interesting time of life...transitions abound, big decisions lurk at each corner and emotional stability encounters new and great challenges. i like being 26...its teaching me lots of things. and, heck, i'm past the halfway point, so i'll keep enjoying this crazy agestage. but if you're finding 26 to be a specially funky age, let me--i always enjoy the commiserate!

i'm happy, too, to be back at the blog. peaceout. k.

my toothpaste meets my grad school.

so check this out. the co-founder of tom's of maine (tom) went to the div school and graduated in 1991. this is the kind of value-based work i'm talking about!

he just donated a bunch of money to the school to fund a position called the reinhold neibuhr professorship. now, this is fascinating. if i have this right, this neibuhr brother left the FOR in favor of a so-dubbed "christian realism." i don't know where tom comes down on that particular issue, but thinking about the realism of his products is intereresting. i do need to read more neibuhr. he's one of those guys like hegel i have read about 50 pages of, but he is referenced quite often. either everyone else has read all of their work or are better bluffers or regurgitators than myself.

have been thinking about taking a pottery class. what do you think? get back in the sr. denis mold? sheesh. maybe no one here will threaten to break my little cylindars (its in moments like this that i wish blogspot had a spell-checker...)

have not registered for it yet, but am planning on taking a class with THE gustavo guitierrez this summer...now, yes, his gender theory is generally nonexistent, but his liberation theology makes me excited. 2 weeks in july at BC.

the end of the semester leaves me wanting. i forgot this. all that pushing for the end of papers, of stress, of running ragged (though, i am proud of myself for sleeping at least 6 hrs all year almost every night!). it leaves me sad and not quite sure what to do with myself. am eating a lot of ice cream (mint chocolate chip's been on sale...yum!) thus, the blogging, perhaps. g's got a great photo job @ a newspaper, but he's got the evening shift. good for the professionalism. bad for my twiddling fingers.

okay. need to hone some hobbies. peaceout, k.

done!

that's right...take a bow, folks. we here at hdiv are done. assuming all my papers pass the bar, i'm a MTS2. wahoo!

crummy.

i'm getting sick. bring on the oj! c'mon veggies! grapefruit & oranges are my new best friends. c'mon team, hang in there. fight those viruses for just two more night...go team!

important

a health warning:

when surfing around on the internet while you should be writing a paper, make note of what time it is when you get off-track. that way, when you look up and realize you have been putzing around for 20 minutes, you know that. i find this preferrable to the vague sense of being lost in ether-space for an unknown amount of time.

shays' rebellion

that's right, friends. shays' rebellion--that agrarian uprising in western massachusetts that some say hurried the formation of the 1787 constitution & pulled george washington out of retirement. of this rebellion, jefferson, writing from france, said, more or less "a good revolt is good for a country now and then."

and the religious landscape of the day is fascinating--complete with the state-sponsored congregationalists! what? separation of church & state? not in 1786 massaschusetts!

crazy slowing going am i

dear mojo:
i need you. i know you have been overworked for the last six weeks or so. you deserve a well-earned vacation. yes, of course.

but, dear mojo, i need you to come back. you see, i am in the library silently exploding because my mojo for papers is GONE and i have a good 1 and three-quarters to go. its going to be a long week without you...and bound to be a disappointingly unsuccessful time in my life.

i am sorry that i have been on you for so long. but summer is around the corner and if you could just rescue me for 6 days, i will be eternally indebted.

please, mojo, please.
sincerely,
k.

moving right along...

ah, the feeling of having two papers (of 4) turned in is not quite the exuberence i expect to feel next week at this very moment, but i'm getting there. happily, the stack of books i have to return to the library is larger than the one i still need to comb through. a good sign, my friends. a good sign.

the paper of the weekend is a commentary on the very intriguing book pictured here--the ethics of memory by an israeli professor at the hebrew university in jerusalem, avishai margalit. while his book is broader by scope than by depth, its a fascinating 200-pg read. he distinguishes between ethics & morals saying that ethics is the stuff of "thick relations"--those people in our immediate lives: family, close friends, immediate community members. morals is the stuff of "thin relations" which encompasses all of the rest of humanity.

i think the thing i'm going to tug at his is argument about "moral witnesses" which he says are people who describe how it is to live in evil; not just that evil existed. they, he says, have a special role in "uncovering evil" and offer a sober hope that is realistic. and they must have survived. so while anne frank is definitely a moral witness to the holocaust, she is not what he calls a paradigmatic moral witness because she died. people like marian in the aforementioned "a jew among the germans" are.

okay. it will be an exciting weekend...wahoo! if you call me, chances are extremely high i'm at the library with my wireless card disengaged for the good of my sanity. though greg & i do have a date tonight.

finally, a call for help: i am looking for a moment in u.s. history pre-Reconstruction where class & religion intersect with that moment. any ideas, i am game. that's right, ladies & gentlemen, i'm going to be legally permitted to teach this subject one year from now. scary, i agree. k.

procrastination prognosis

check this out: Federation of Mass. Farmers Markets. i am going to be the market manager at union square's farmers market this summer. wahoo. if you're in the massachusetts area, come by and get your veggies & fruits starting june 10th: 9-1pm each Saturday!

he says i'm a crack head

so...here's the thing. i like the idea of school, but the reality of writing finals is not nearly so fun. i'm just getting going on a paper about the social trinitarian doctrine of jurgen moltmann. i don't know if its because i have to read him in translation (from german), or if he really is just heideggarian-like in his writing, but sheesh! i mean, i tell myself just to read the page, and it all goes haywire.

let me be more productive. his project is to think about how the trinity can be relevent to christians. so...he wants to think about the persons of the trinity as model of human relationality and communion (koinonia). he argues that our monotheism is modeled on monarchy and then when augustine started with the unity of god and moved to the trinity of god, he got us in the west off on the wrong foot. now, that is an argument imbeddd in the 19th century d'regnon paradigm that, unbeknownst and unintended by d'regnon, kind of maligns the West and the East, drawing too thick of lines. but, augustine does start from unitiy and argue to three. moltmann thinks that inevitably limits the human capacity for threeness. so, he wants to assert what he sees as the Eastern way of thinking and argue from threeness to unity. in this thinking, then, humans are challenged to community in modeling divine unity.

he reads the new testament as the history of jesus and the holy spirit as active in the world. the three of them enact love in the world. and it seems like part of moltmann's argument is that if love is in the world via the trinity, then humans have the tools necessary to enact this.

that seems very nice. but would gregory of nyssa or augustine even recognize what he writes as the trinity? maybe not. but who cares? well, sarah coakley does.

okay. clearly, more thinking is necessary. more later. k.

now entering...

dear loved ones:

okay. it has begun. reading period and finals are upon me--four papers to write in four weeks. let me apologize in advance for any of the following:
1. ignored phone calls (though i did finally change my greeting)
2. excessive emails
3. the related demand for email replies
4. boring blog posts
5. rants about papers and their topics
6. finals-induced low self esteem
7. and to the coffee farmers of latin america, i am sorry for my overconsumption

regular-scheduled kate will return around 5pm friday, may 26th.

i hope your mays are lovely and i look forward to hearing about them!
much love,
k.

greg & activism surges

this is greg (that's right, i did make him that pink hat...per his request!). greg moves to my town tomorrow--wahoo! he's splitboarding in this picture. of the many things i am looking forward to, he's the cook of our duo and i anticipate some good eating with him in my immediate life.

in other news, people are rallying around darfur, walk-outs are well-planned and getting publicity , immigration rallies abound. the progressives seem to be back in the game. way to go, team.

good night, gma.

as i pack for sodak, i am struck by a vague sense of place. i have no desire to live in sodak ever again, but there will always be something about it. i head there under sad pretenses tomorrow morning, but there is always a nice thing about going there. flying over that quiltlike landscape speaks to me in a way i am often startled by. i know that land, i understand its quirky people (well, usually...).

as a very junior member of my family's entourage of cousins, no one will invite me to write the obituary. but i have been writing it in my head for about nine months. let me try to capture it here.

the town of hecla, sodak canceled the girls' basketball team during gma's senior year of high school. she always said they didn't know what they were talking about. to know grandma was to be taken into her world--one full of candy bowls and piano renditions of "five foot two & eyes of blue" and often surprising stories and, of course, a kind of encompassing love. she had a funny way of telling each grandchild that we were her favorite one...our age.

in the awkward moments of making new friends, i have somteimes drifted to a story about grandma playing the piano for silent films. i know only pictures of grandma from those days, but to hear her tell it, she was quite spitfire. boys on the couch before grandpa came 'round, basketball teams, bossing her siblings around.

she never made me eat food i didn't want to--none of that "eat grandma's food because she made it for you" sort of business. she always told the story of how i had, just short of 2 yrs old, pointed to my coat, asking her to take me home from the hospital where they were poking and prodding. she would tell me in secret i was her favorite grandchild my age. she would play "five foot two & eyes of blue" on the piano with such vigor that i could not wait until i reached the designated height & was a little sad to reach 5'3". i have a funny memory of the trackmeet she & grandpa sat in the lincoln watching me run around that track eight times, often in back, from the street. she loved fur coats. she hated swimming, but raised 6 kids & countless grandkids on the lake. she always felt so bad that i was allergic to ming toy. she had bottomless candy bowls. she could cook, to my mom's relief. she often told me she was praying the rosary for me. she was a force of nature--played hostess even from her wheelchair. sometimes i think she was the embodiment of a tough prairie woman; even down to her last days, it seems. matriarch could not have found a better resting place.

of course she was many things to many people. sister, mother, aunt, friend, gram. she has watched so many of them go before them. she joins them now. i knew her as grandma.

inie turns 95. no kidding.

tomorrow is easter monday (rather, marathon monday as the bostonians have it known). but a bit more importantly, it is my grandma's 95th birthday. she's still keeping people entertained in watertown, sodak...fewer hours a day than when i first met her, but with none the less vigor. three cheers for grandma!

interesting sidenote: its also my dad's birthday. she always says that he was the best birthday present she ever received. ah.

happy 95th, grandma. nee nah noo. k.

a jew among the germans

i just finished watching this documentary for a class called "a jew among the germans ." if you have an hour, its well worth the watch. its from frontline, pbs.

k.

marches

A friend of mine participated in Boston's march for immigrant justice yesterday and sent out these pictures. I found them quite moving.

k.

smoking near doors.

what if i could walk around with this sign around my neck? or attached to my book bag? would people who are smoking stop walking near me? would they stop crowding around the doors i am trying to use while holding my breath?

hey...i understand it's an addiction. and i am happy to look around and see that smoking is way less cool than it was even five year ago. but it's still gross. and just because you have to smoke outside does not mean you are not clouding my lungs with your yuckiness. i drink enough coffee to poison myself, thank you. i don't need your 2nd hand carcinogens on top of it.

it's a beautiful day out there--stop ruining it with your smokiness. haven't you heard: white, whiter and whitest teeth is the new hip thing. try that on.

kelly!

this is my very lovely sister, kelly. she is a proud kindergarten teacher.

she was the first person to ever post on this blog. she is #3 in my phone and i call her during the day even though she is not in my phone company network. that, my friend, is love.

peter & paul

i like the words to this song i just discovered:

“peter said to paul, you know all those words we wrote are just the rules of the game and the rules are the first to go. paul said to peter, you gotta rock yourself a little harder; pretend the dove from above is a dragon and your feet are on fire." --"girl in the war," josh ritter

richard o' st. victor

so here's the thing about richard st. victor (it'd be funny if he looked like the guy on the cover of this book, huh?). at least according to g. zinn, he's writing in the 12th century as one of the 2nd generation leaders of his monastery in france and at a moment in history when people, apparently, felt a real need to organize and systematize how contemplation works. he is concerned to relate imagination, reason and faith, it seems. starts to sound a bit like ol' thomas aquinas who, really, does not end up having much respect of my new friend rsv.

okay. so, in what zinn guesses is rsv's more mature work, rsv wants to think about how we can think about the trinity. its interesting that he leaves this final systemization of this squirrely doctrine to the end of his life. he tells us he wants to use reason to explain the trinity but only proceeds to show the necessary plurality of god's personhood. he uses beautiful community-oriented language that leaves me thinking he's more concerned with teaching his community how to live in love and charity than anything else. its almost like the trinity becomes a metaphor for how we ought to live in charity together.

but that's not completely fair because he continues to detail how supreme goodness shows trinity, happiness declares trinity and then glory confirms trinity. agh...this obsession with threes! starts to make me think the conversation ought to be more anthroplogical/cultural than theological! anyhow, to return: it seems necessary to lay out the top two ways that rsv sees contemplation happening:
#5: "above reason, but not beyond reason" &
#6: "above reason & seemingly beyond reason."

these two are almost a dialectic which humans must (and, through much disciplined contemplation are able to) move between in order to catch a glimpse of trinity.

it also seems that the creed of Athansius falls in the realm of #6. the legitimacy & problematic nature of that is a far different paper.

so...what if rsv's real intent here is to push at #5 as far as it bumps into #6, though they are necessarily like the human/adam and god--ever and infinitely connected, though never touching. its like the two cherubims that are metaphors for each of these: the look to each other, holding these tensions, looking for ways to achieve both/and.

ah, the mystics. beautiful and confusing and startling all in one. kind of like the trinity.

wounded knee: the museum

i don't know where i have been, but my stops in wall, sd have never included this museum. really. if the actual exhibits are anything like the website, its a must see. the website, alone, is pretty great, educational and a feat of flash web design.

(in other news, i, clearly, have figured out how to do pictures.)

restoring bike kharma

this is my new bike. good ol' raleigh green (which took me all the way from raleigh, nc to washington, dc) was hit by a car while parked in a silly location

important side note: do not lock things to light posts. ever. not even near hdiv school.

cheers to spring and biking! get out that non-wd40, lube up the chains and ride. if you happen to ride east and land in beautiful somerville, call.

feist

thanks to monica, i have discovered and fallen for feist. you can fall too: several of her songs are here. yum...hope you enjoy! i am.

i love the vague appropriateness of my horoscope today.
Pisces
A certain situation is trying your patience, but just when you think you can't take it anymore, you get a second celestial wind. The stars even let you see some humor in what's going on, and that makes all the difference. (courtesy of Yahoo! horoscopes).

recent pluralism work

quickly, my recent pluralism project work:

Gamma Gamma Chi, the first Muslim sorority in the U.S
& Snapshots of Muslim Women's Leadership.

spring's arrival & memories memorialized

okay. so i may be jumping the gun a little bit (what is with all of these military metaphors on this blog?), but i do think spring has arrived in somerville! good thing, too, because my coatzipper is broken and my elbows need to bend freely, without mountains of layers.

it appears spring will be wonderful here--crocuses (is that the plural?) are up, daisies sprouting and lilies on their way. yum!

and, of course, it is my spring break...wahoo! i am just gearing up for this week's paper--i know, you're waiting in suspense. here's what i'm thinking: what would it mean for sodak to have a memorial museum to native americans in the vein of the holocaust museum? what kinds of memories? what is the relationship between collective and individual memories? how much should and would shame figure into something like that? and guilt? is there a possibility of good and bad shame? guilt? what would the goal of something like this be? to inspire some sort of action? simple awareness? what should the goal be?

also following closely are questions about who the audience is; who should be allowed to make final decisions about the format and how information gets included or excluded. i will have to think carefully about how and if to include these questions. funny...so often i am making decisions between broader questions and more detail questions. this is just one more example.

any thoughts or ideas are more than welcome. also, gushing over spring expected!
paz, k.

bonhoeffer reprisal

here's a funny new thing about having a blog. during the day, i'll notice things that happen and i think to myself: make a blog about that. so its funny, there's a new kind of awareness that comes. i kind of like it.

i heard this beautiful man named don swearer speak (the director of hds' center for the study of world religions) from personal experience about how holds the tensions between his academic and spiritual life. he read this heartwrenching poem from dietrich bonhoeffer (written from prison before being killed by the nazis for standing up to them):

Who am I? They often tell me
I stepped from my cell’s confinement
Calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
Like a squire from his country-house.
Who am I? They often tell me
I used to speak to my warders
Freely and friendly and clearly,
As though it were mine to command.
Who am I? They also tell me
I bore the days of misfortune
Equally, smilingly, proudly,
Like one accustomed to win.

Am I then really all that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself?
Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
Struggling for breath, as though hands were
compressing my throat,
Yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
Thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness,
Tossing in expectation of great events,
Powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
Weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
Faint, and ready to say farewell to it all?

Who am I? This or the other?
Am I one person today and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
And before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army,
Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?
Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, 0 God, I am Thine!
March 4,1946

dan mckanan had me read some of his stuff during my thesis prep. i just didn't get it (i have, admittedly, been much helped by a recent and fantastic documentary about bonhoeffer's life). i just like it. its compelling. i should read more bonhoeffer. i am happy to be reminded what brought me here--this blending and weaving of peace studies and theology that has never been as distinct as the two titles on my undergrad degree suggest.

swearer ended his talk by suggesting that academics and spiritually need not be polar opposites which we are always trying to hold in tension. i agree...for me, they feed much more into each other than that.

all the talking about tensions and paradox! has someone written a theology of paradox yet?

peaceout, k.

divinity of mary?

el virgen, mary, has always been a slightly odd part of Catholic teaching to me. as a child, i remember, vividly & repeatedly, being told that no matter what protestants say, we do not worship mary. we respect her role as a mediator between god and humans. but she is ever-human. first among humans, maybe. but still human. i mean, that is kind of funny in light of the fact that we have a fully developed (complete with centuries of fighting) doctrine of mary without original sin. why does that not make her some sort of super-human?

am i trying to posit a deified mary into catholicism? well, no. not really. i just wonder if hints of it are not all ready there, but we are so afraid to have (a) female images of god or (b) anything to destabalize the blessed trinity. or maybe i am just reading the tradition wrong, which, though very possible, disappointing in light of the aforementioned paper.

i started this class with a difficult time wrapping my brain around the idea of bodily gods and goddesses which hinduism is far more embracing of that roman catholicism is. i worked rather fervently in early years in college to rid my mind of the default male god enthroned in robes and goldenness. having done so, i find myself hesitent to employ any bodily images of gods or goddesses and feel much more comfortable with nature metaphors.

what, then, to make of mary and these beautiful hindu goddesses? what do they mean for each other? in some ways, i want the hindu goddesses to push mary to claim her divineness. but more broadly, i want them to help each human recognize the spark of divinity (watch out! my gnostic, deemed heretical by the vatican, tendencies arise here!) in each of us, in ways that encourage us to be better at being human.

i watched this documentary today called "faith & doubt at ground zero" (worth the see--its at pbs.org, frontline did it) wherein this woman, a holocaust survivor, said, "all i have seen of humanity is evil. what am i supposed to think about humans after all of this?" i want to give her a way to see more than that, to seek that spark of divinity. and if the goddesses and mary can help me do that, i am willing to take them into how i think about the world. if not, i am, frankly, less interested.

i am, as often i am, reminded of rene mcgraw's probing question during our "philosophies of violence & nonviolence" class that kept me going amid the war that sprang from 9/11: "how, then, ought we to live?" is it really possible that my entire educational experience (and, arguably, life) be framed around this question? i'd like that.

peaceout. kate

spring, 2006 class lineup

here's what i'm taking this semester. if anyone has any final paper topic suggetions, i am open to them!
of course, there's the aforementioned (1) hindu goddesses/virgin mary: an experiment in comparative theology
(2) trinitarianism & anti-trinitarianism: the christian god in dispute
(3) colloquium in religion & secondary education
(4) fear & memory: ethical & religious perspectives (my fav!)
(5) classics and contemporaries in comparative politics (auditing)

seems to me the major difference between grad & undergrad may be the length of the course titles.

introducing: my blog

i am procrastinating. perhaps that is a terrible way to start any new endeavor. but, really, to blog is to write and i want to practice writing. funny, then, that i don't want to practice using next week's hindu goddesses/virgin mary paper.

anyhow: welcome to my blog. it is my attempt to practice writing, to journal, to think things through. you're welcome anytime....maybe even when you're procrastinationg. i have no idea how this will go or how regular. i'm not really quippy like other bloggers i have read, so have low expectations, folks.

onward and upward. well...maybe forward and keep trying is what i want that weird army thing to really say. more later, but they made me post one before i can even preview this silly thing. also, i promise to never use gross fonts (a la times new roman or courier). and if you happen to think this one is gross, i am open to suggestion. promise.

peaceout, k. (aka. hdiv)