I’m sure you all know some people who you just wish could have more than one body to live in, because they have so much good work to do in the world, they can’t possibly do it all alone.  Well, my eternal friend Liz is one of those people.

She suggested this video to me.  She prefaced it with the qualification that, of course, nothing is as simple as a 5-minute video can explain.  And still, the intersections of global poverty, American agriculture, and global capitalist markets need to be addressed from a comprehensive, systemic perspective.  There are many layers to this onion of a problem, and there’s not going to be one right way to slice it.  Whether you believe that less government regulation (in subsidies) or more governmental oversight (redistributing wealth) is needed, the bottom line is that what’s happening right now isn’t working for a majority of the people who work to get food onto our tables.

Oxfam has produced the following video that starts to unpeel some of the layers of the global food crisis, through advocacy around the US Congress’ upcoming Farm Bill:

According to the BBC, “To all intents and purposes the race for the Democratic nomination is over.”

And yet, the campaign drags on.

Rumor (i.e. mainstream media) has it that the Clinton campaign may be strategizing for an honorable exit, and how they do so may very well come down to the money (likely but unsurprising in this world).  The Clintons have loaned Hillary’s campaign millions of dollars - about $11 million total - and some speculate that it is likely her campaign will offer to Obama that Clinton pull out of the race IF his campaign pays off her debt.

Well, whether or not this is true, the very notion seems like an excellent tactic to discourage Obama’s fans from donating to his campaign, if they know their money is just going to go into the Clintons’ thick pockets.  Obama’s been raising lots of money because he’s reaching out to such a wide base, so it would seem that his team could cover the Clinton’s expense (though the money would be much better used as Clinton’s donation to getting Obama elected in the November election).  But if fewer people donate to Obama’s campaign, then it will be further fuel for the Clinton refrain that he’s losing support and the tide is turning.  Quite a pickle to create - but Clinton has shown that creating angst (if not voters’ support) is her campaigning forte.

Oh, Burma. Life just is never easy for you, is it?

Reports now indicate that as many as 100,000 people were killed by Cyclone Nargis, which hit this weekend. The death toll has just been rising exponentially from day to ghastly day.

And in the wake of the storm, the junta is letting some foreign aid enter the country, but is still insisting on holding a national referendum on a new constitution in five days. “Out of touch” only begins to describe their sinful lack of compassion.

Here’s my favorite quote from a BBC story, which pretty much sums up how political violence exacerbates (if not causes) natural disasters:

“Where are the soldiers and police? They were very quick and aggressive when there were protests in the streets last year,” a retired government worker complained to Reuters news agency.

There’s more from the BBC.

Oh, little bloggy, how long it has been since last I posted with you!  I am so sorry for my absence.  In my defense (or does this make me sound unfaithful?), I have been posting elsewhere.

But, ah, what good news brings me to write with you!  Another win for Barack Obama!  Yes, indeed, Guam has stood up for hope and against politicks as usual.  Perhaps it is no surprise that Obama won in Guam, since it is a territory that elects by caucus instead of by vote - that is, it is a state where people come together and talk about the candidates instead of slinking into a little booth where they can vote as racistly and sexistly as they want without prying eyes to see them (as in my state).

I am eager to see how the Clinton campaign tries to spin this loss.  Will she completely ignore the loss or will she dismiss the people of Guam as provincial bumpkins whose voice here shouldn’t count at all just because they don’t get to vote in the presidential election?  Can’t wait to find out!

These movies are not tickets to escapism. If you don’t want more proof that some people’s (too many people’s) lives are way too hard, don’t watch them. But you should watch them, and you should bring friends. And tissues.

LA MISMA LUNA (Under the Same Moon)

A mother and son through a week of their respective journeys to be reunited across borders, despite all who stand in their way (be they La Migra, exploitative employers, police, or even folks trying to help). Bonus: this film has one of the best nine-year-old actors I have ever seen.

STOP-LOSS

A soldier and his fellows as they return from Iraq to civilian life, only to find that the President has “stop-lossed” them, sending them back to Iraq, regardless of whatever they have to say about the matter.

These two movies deal with different communities facing different battles, and yet their core features, which make them great movies, are shared:

1. They’re both really good movies.

2. They have strong female characters.

3. They show that the government is not always our friend.

4. They pull you in one way and then another, ripping your heart along with you, so much that you never know just how things will turn out.

5. Some of the saddest characters are the ones I would least expect.

6. They give glimpses of worlds rarely portrayed with such richness in movies: the nuts and bolts of the US economy in the former, the mortar fire on the ground in the Iraq war in the latter.

7. They both present the real life decisions we have to make (or we don’t have to make - in which case, we should be wondering why we don’t).

8. You should really see them both. But maybe not on consecutive nights - I speak from experience on that.

On the anniversary of the war, the BBC runs the history of the US and UK peace sign, which started as a symbol for nuclear disarmament:

And back in Chicago, my family and fellow congregants take to the streets with their own peace signs:

Yet again, we mourn this hellish incarnation of war. This war is on Iraq, and it is showing yet again why all war is humanity’s great sin.

Here are some pictures: one sign from today’s rally at San Francisco’s Civic Center (put to good use); the other sign from the two-way protest at Berkeley City Council a few weeks ago (the one where the Lafayette Flag Brigade deigned to enter Berkeley city limits in order to sing patriotic songs (poorly) and make it known to anyone who would listen that they didn’t like the Berkeley City Council’s decision to support the Code Pink protests at the Berkeley Marine recruiting station; in response, ‘Code Pinklets’ (as the Flag Brigadiers called them) and folks from the World Can’t Wait campaigns staged a counter-protest; I’ll let you guess which protest this sign is from).

The pictures below are from the memorial vigil at Grace Cathedral. As an acolyte passed among the crowd dispersing incense, clergy from various faiths (among them Christian, Buddhist, and Jewish) read off the names of victims of this war on Iraq. We crowded around them, standing among pairs of shoes placed on the cathedral steps.

The effect of the shoes was profound. I appreciated the somber tone of the vigil, even while my soul is fed by the liturgy of street protests just as much. The memorial vigil allowed me a few moments to pause and try to really remember the loss, as Jesus urged us to do as his disciples.

I imagined the people who, but for being murdered by this war, might have stood there on the steps filling those shoes. There would have been hundreds of them, thousands, hundreds of thousands - the actual number don’t really matter when mourning. Too many. I wondered if they would stand in those shoes staring out from the steps, as the shoes were pointing, facing the world with accusing eyes, or if they might turn around and listen to the prayers being spoken from the top of the cathedral steps.

With the lessons from my Swedenborgian friend still fresh on my mind, I understood for the first time the concept of angels, at least as she describes them: the disembodied presence of those humans who have died but are still among us. And even though fear (and its companion, hatred) was the source of their deaths, these angels only love, and ask us to remember.

I also knew that a pair of shoes was not nearly enough to remember the complexity of even one single person lost in this war. Standing next to my partner and amongst many of my dear friends, I felt just how much effort it would take to properly remember anyone so dear to me as them.

Shoes were not made to memorialize murders; they are not strong enough to bear the burden. But they are an important start.

Click here to test your vision.

Little sister reviews new Paul Hawken book, Blessed Unrest.  (Personally, I prefer Jill’s writing to Paul’s, but Jill’s writing about Paul isn’t half bad.)

February 2008

This week at my seminary is not only Valentine’s Day but “V Week,” a celebration of all things vaginal. The (ahem) seminal event of the week was the performance of The Vagina Monologues on Tuesday night. And any of you in attendance there will have gotten to see me leave the page to traverse the stage.

The director of the Monologues, Kelly Williams, invited me to present the monologue, “Reclaiming Cunt.” As she pointed out, I might be an apt choice for the piece, because of my intimate yet complicated relationship with language. The motivation to reclaim the term ‘cunt’ is respect for words and the power of language, coupled with the re-prioritizing of the bodies those words exist to represent.

I have discovered that, sadly, I am unique in having grown up sheltered from the word, from either its liberated or oppressive incarnations. My sister confirms that ‘cunt’ was not a part of our family’s or hometown’s vocabulary. When I first really heard the word ‘cunt,’ I heard it in my college’s liberatory, feminist context, where it was a word of empowerment. There, I wasn’t exactly reclaiming the word, but claiming it for myself for the first time.

It made sense. The word ‘vagina’ originates in the Latin word for ‘scabbard’ or ‘sheath’ (i.e. for a sword). It’s named not for its crucial function of birthing babies, not for its function as an ‘out hole’ for monthly blood, not for its potential to provide its bearer with sexual pleasure. No, it’s named for what it does for the penis.

‘Cunt,’ on the other hand, is a cognate with such happy words as ‘cunning,’ ‘kind,’ ‘country,’ ‘ken,’ and ‘kin.’ It has resonance in the names of goddesses like Kunda and Cunina. According to Barbara G. Walker, it was a title of respect for wise women in pre-modern times. As Jon Harvey points out, before the 17th century, it wasn’t considered the slur it is some places today. And, yes, it sounds a bit more empowering to have a ‘cunt’ on your body than a ‘va-gi-na.’

To step back another level, though, we can use cunt to explore the power of words themselves. Why does this one little word, this simple collection of four innocuous letters, have so much power in our societies? Is the word ‘cunt’ used as a slur because of its own connotations or because it equates the one called a ‘cunt’ with female genitalia – and if the latter, why is that a bad thing?

Words might not break bones, but they can leave lasting damage in subtler ways. The contexts in which words are used matters. Who it is speaking the word matters, too. There are plenty of spaces I don’t need to reclaim the empowering essence of a word like ‘cunt;’ there are plenty of people who don’t need to ‘reclaim cunt;’ and this is crucial discernment to engage in.

But we must also prioritize in our care the bodies those words refer to. I get a little worried when debates start focusing on what words we call certain people, instead of the ways those certain people are being treated in the flesh. The uplifting of bodies should run alongside, not counter to, the liberating of our language. Reclaiming words can be part of the process of increasing respect for the beings those words represent. For example, the phrase ‘running like a girl’ shifts from insult to praise when we break out of the assumption that girls are less athletic than boys.

And so I choose to claim (or reclaim) ‘cunt,’ while playwright Eve Ensler reclaims ‘vagina.’ And I hope our feminist work can be done together, whatever we call our body parts, for our common goal of ending all violence against women’s bodies.

——————–

I have an interesting relationship with the Monologues. I performed in them twice at my college (which dates me, I know). And I was never completely comfortable with them – not because they were too edgy for me, not because they went too far in their feminism. Rather, I thought they were a little mild, and I was disappointed that they have come to be THE feminist event a community must perform. They are limited in that they are, despite their origins in interviews with various women, filtered through the voice of one woman: mono-authored monologues. Some of the characters and lines leave me with questions: what’s so ‘random’ about being adopted? Why are the older women’s experiences funny, while the already-empowered younger women’s experiences the ones we’re supposed to relate to? And, come on - why bother getting so smitten with ‘vaginas’ when it’s c-u-n-t CUNTS! that we should be celebrating?

But my conversations with folks of all genders involved in the show reminds me how needed the Monologues’ message still is. One (ahem) fellow Vagina Warrior shared some of the responses she got when she tried to sell tickets to the show to colleagues: two men offered her money just to STOP saying ‘vagina,’ while another bought a ticket for his wife to see the show, making sure to have the excuse of babysitting that night so that he wouldn’t have to attend the performance himself. And I am reminded that just last year, a performance of The Vagina Monologues was billed as “The Hoo-Haa Monologues” because of the theater’s squeamishness about the show’s eponymous focus. If some folks still haven’t gotten from ‘hoo-haa’ to ‘vagina,’ the move from ‘vagina’ to ‘cunt’ may be a long way coming.

As we know well at Pacific School of Religion, everything has its own context. ‘Hoo-haa’ might seem a preferable, respectful term when the alternative is a derogatory use of the word ‘cunt.’ But usually, the joking phrase of ‘hoo-haa’ would be better replaced by the physiologically accurate word ‘vagina.’ And for many of us, both of these would be better replaced by the reappropriation/reincarnation/resurrection of the honorific veiled within the curse word ‘cunt.’

——————–

Some day, the body parts that birth new generations and stimulate sexual delight will be fully honored, along with the body parts that watch for trouble and see visions of the future, the body parts that knead bread and cradle dying loved ones, the body parts that tread miles and are washed by a Messiah who stoops down with towel and basin.

Some day, we will see that just as humanity cannot thrive while any member of it suffers, neither can a human body thrive while parts of it are disparaged. Some day, when cunts are honored, all members of the body will rejoice together with them.

And it will be the work of bold feminists, such as those bringing V Week to Pacific School of Religion, who will birth that new day into being.