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)