It is heavily overcast today. The wind is raw and penetrating. I sit at my computer feeling mildly off. Chills, low appetite, headache, and very little interest in anything to do with going outside or thinking hard. ---not the best recipe for graduate level studying. Ah well.
Greek has shifted from fun to scary. I'm hoping it will shift back once I shake this bug. I can't digest new thoughts easily. It gives me sympathy for students that struggle with learning more than I seem to.
It's funny how often, when I am sick, I cannot imagine feeling better. I am sure that THIS time, I will stay sick forever. So I have no idea how I will finish this term, let alone the whole four years....
Last Thursday, professor Hegedus handed out a sheaf of information on how to do our term papers. As he was going through it, he paused and made a firm statement about gender inclusive language. The seminary has a policy of reflecting complete inclusivity, and he will take marks off of our papers for not using inclusive language---even if we simply forget or don't realize our style is not inclusive. My eyes went wide with wonder.
This is SO cool. It gives me shivers. A gentle hero. The whole school not only allows me here, but fights on my behalf for my inclusion.
Somewhere around Friday I went into an emotional tailspin. I haven't quite regained my usual equilibrium since Thanksgiving stirred up all the spiritual losses. Huge, painful memories, and issues with my denomination of origin that continue to be re-injured. Nearly every contact with official representatives brings with it revictimization. Big clumsy arrogant idiots. They have no idea.
Thanksgiving service was yet another death blow. I had asked myself, "How bad can it be? It's a festival service." I looked forward to time in the beloved Chapel, seeing the faces of my former fellow congregants, and singing the favourite holiday hymns.
Well, the opening prayer, read from the new liturgy, was in the vein of "we are nothing but evil and only You are good and please make us pure so we come be with you in heaven...."
Our former pastor used to pray from his heart, without reading. Right there, straight and honest and true.
The "we are nothing but evil" emphasis that the new pastor favours makes me feel like vomiting. It is re-victimizing. I believe that we are not evil, nor are we good. Everything good is from God, everything evil from hell; that's straight from Swedenborg. And God's love is NOT conditional. He is present right here, right now, despite my impurities; which, by the way, I can never quite be free of, not being God and all.....
So closeness to God is not conditional based on being made pure! "When you are pure, then you can be close to me."
That's a parent who won't hug a child because the child needs a bath, or worse, has scrapes and scratches with ground in dirt! "Ew. Go get cleaned up, then I'll hug you."
Maybe God draws us into His lap and holds us and tends the wounds Himself! Hello?
Overemphasis on God's Divinity keeps Him remote, and keeps us as groveling, fearful, shame-filled serfs. Is that the relationship of a Father with his children?
(As an aside, I freely acknowledge my heavy use of the male pronoun here for God. And this, after my rant about using gender inclusive language. Here is my position. I grew up with "He" and "Him" for God, and the picture in my mind gives him a gentle father/brother face. I know and believe that God is all, that male and female are made in (his) image. But I am incapable of picturing an androgynous divine being at this time and I find the constant use of He/She cumbersome. Until we have a pronoun for God that keeps God human yet excludes gender, "he" is going to have to suffice.)
So there I am in the chapel, deep in. Six people would have to stand and twist to let me out. And I'm right up near the front. So I stay. So then I see that the brand new liturgy has gone back to Thee and Thy in the order of service! What is going on in our church head office? What ARE they thinking? How on earth is this new? Are we really back to thinking that King James peasant English contains some mysterious holiness in and of itself? In its original intent, that translation was meant to bring the Word down into intimate personal language for the common people. Thee and Thy were not formal, but intimate! The use is now utterly opposite its original intent. What is the deal about keeping God at arms length?
I am so done with that organization.
It may have been part of why I had such an emotional week. More loss. More reminders of loss.
New word: "orthopraxy"
It means, how you live your religion.
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