Category Archives: Politics and Culture

Lenten Reading: “The Passion of Christ: A Gay Vision”

 

 

gay_passion_cover

In Holy Week, which begins next weekend with Palm Sunday, Christians all over the world meditate on Jesus’s suffering and death. Catholics and some Episcopalians enact the liturgical drama of the Stations of the Cross, depicting the events leading up to the crucifixion. There are many ways to find ourselves in this story, a large cast of characters with whom to identify, both guilty and innocent. And sadly, there are many LGBT people who feel crucified by the church itself, cast out and forbidden to imagine a Christ who is for them and of them.

Douglas Blanchard’s 24-painting series “The Passion of Christ: A Gay Vision” stretches loving arms across this divide. A new book by Kittredge Cherry (Apocryphile Press, 2014) brings these images together in book form for the first time. Cherry, who curates the Jesus in Love blog about LGBT spirituality and the arts, here gives invaluable in-depth commentary on the paintings’ inspiration and their place in art history. Each chapter includes a prayer to say while contemplating the image, like a Stations of the Cross liturgy. Toby Johnson, formerly of Lethe Press and White Crane Review, closes the book with reflections on new directions in gay spirituality.

This suite of paintings is radical by virtue of its traditionalism. Inspired by 15th-century master Albrecht Dürer’s woodcuts of the Passion, and visually quoting famous works such as the Isenheim Altarpiece, these paintings boldly situate themselves in the mainstream of Christian iconography. At the same time, Blanchard transforms the meaning of those scenes by placing them in contemporary urban settings that include LGBT characters. The Jesus figure, a clean-shaven, simply dressed, handsome young man, could be (but does not have to be) read as gay. There is no doubt, though, that his followers include people of diverse sexualities, gender identities, ethnicities, and class backgrounds, while the crowds attacking him bear close resemblance to the hellfire-spouting protesters on the fringes of Pride marches.

I found this book very helpful for my own prayer life. I would love to have a stronger heart-level connection with the person of Jesus, but often struggle to connect with the ubiquitous beard-and-bathrobe representation of the Savior, which feels cliché and remote from my experience. I felt a stronger bond with Blanchard’s Jesus, who could be a divinized version of my imaginary gay best friend/novel protagonist, or simply a safe male friend and ally to my queer family. I also loved the depiction of the Holy Spirit as a female angel.

Whether or not I picture Jesus as the man in these paintings, this book gave me permission to imagine “my own personal Jesus” in the way that speaks to my soul. What makes him Christ is not his gender, his archaic clothing, or the straightness and whiteness that Western orthodoxy has attributed to him, but his works of love: speaking truth to power, creating community for outcasts, laying down his life for his friends. By that measure, the Jesus in this book is the real deal.

Get your copy here!

Watch the video “Introduction to the Queer Christ” at the Jesus in Love blog. It includes a selection from Blanchard’s “Passion” and other artists featured in Cherry’s book Art That Dares: Gay Jesus, Woman Christ, and More.

Queering the Tarot: Gender Roles and Diversity

I wrote last month about my new attraction to tarot cards as a source of archetypal images that nurture my intuitive side. My starter guidebook, The Tarot Bible by Sarah Bartlett, works off of the Universal Waite deck, the most mainstream and familiar version of the modern tarot. As I discovered at Namaste Bookshop, there are many fanciful variations featuring dragons, kittens, angels, scantily clad fairies, and other characters that wouldn’t look out of place on a 10-year-old’s diary cover. However, I wanted to begin my studies with the foundational set of symbols. There’s one problem, though:

Who are all these straight white people in my tarot deck?

It’s funny, because tarot seems so transgressive and anti-authoritarian to me as a questioning Christian, but coming from a media literacy/social justice perspective, it looks like a step backward. After all, the Waite deck is a mishmash of multicultural symbols compiled by 19th-century bourgeois Europeans. It makes sense that the deck would be peopled with British storybook knights, ladies, and peasants. Although charming, these illustrations can make me worry that I’ve traded the radicalism of Jesus for a white hipster card game.

The implied gender roles can also be confining. I’m drawn to the cards that combine masculine and feminine energies in one character, such as the female personifications of Strength and Justice, and uncomfortable with cards such as the Empress, which seems to essentialize womanhood as fertility, beauty, and nurturance. These are good qualities, but not ones that I have wanted or been permitted to express for a lot of my life, a mismatch that has made me feel like a failure as a “woman”.

I’m a big fan of queer-identified writer Beth Maiden’s Little Red Tarot website. In an archive post from 2011, “Passivity and Activity – the High Priestess”,  she wrote:

“It’s only laziness that keeps us believing such things [active versus passive] are related to masculinity or femininity. My big bugbear with tarot is when I find it clinging rigidly to silly gender stereotypes, but actually, the more I study and learn, the more I realise tarot itself can totally elude those types of restrictive ideas–it’s only in interpretation that we get taught what is ‘masculine’ and what is ‘feminine’ as a shorthand for the qualities we assign to each.”

Her analysis explores how the two priest figures in the Major Arcana, the High Priestess and the Hierophant, can reverse our gendered expectations:

“By exploring the inner world and dedicating herself to understanding what is ‘behind the veil’, she shows courage, she encourages us to do some seriously hard work. Being quiet and listening to our inner selves does not equal passivity! Meanwhile the Hierophant receives knowledge from books/tradition. It’s not about thinking for yourself with this card–so in what way is this active?”

Now what about those white Disney princesses? A post from 2010 on the Integrative Tarot website questions whether it’s possible to have a multicultural tarot. We mustn’t simply repeat the Eurocentrism of the original tarot creators by appropriating Native American or African cultural symbols, as an overlay on what’s still a fundamentally Western feudal iconography (knight, page, queen, king, swords, etc.). The discussion in the comments is also worthwhile.

The Pagans of Color website recommends some decks with more inclusive imagery, though many of these are not readily available for purchase. The multicultural Daughters of the Moon goddesses deck looks intriguing.

Of course the one I really want is Lee Bursten and Antonella Platano’s Gay Tarot. Perhaps the Hierophant in this deck took Beth’s criticism to heart, since he’s breaking with tradition by officiating at a same-sex wedding!

Fear of the Daemon: Art, Faith, and Resistance to Inspiration

As my religious priorities shift, I’ve tentatively become more open to New Age concepts and practices that I used to fear were “anti-Christian”. One of my artistic mentors is someone who rejected his homophobic church upbringing and found body-soul integration through Wiccan and pagan beliefs. I’m not drawn to this path at the moment, but I crave a similar release from the eros-repression and psychological splitting that seem inherent in Biblical tradition. The anxiety and hypervigilance of my PTSD have become so tedious, and my impaired connection to Spirit is such a source of grief, that I’m willing to try anything safe and legal. Hypnosis, past-life regression, spirit guides, medical trials of magic mushrooms?

Yes, Cartman, but I’ll take it.

So that’s how I found myself surfing paranormal psychologist Dr. Charles T. Tart’s website about psychic powers. I followed a link from Trauma Information Pages, a useful site collecting scientific papers about the biology of PTSD and effective interventions.

I was drawn to an article called “Psychics’ Fears of Psychic Powers” because, well, fear is my thing. It’s incredibly hard for me to open up to the divine, however I conceptualize it, due to years of engulfment by an abusive parent. I found this article enlightening and reassuring, because the people interviewed did not necessarily have a trauma history, but still contended with all the same sources of resistance. I saw great similarities, not only to my faith struggle, but to the artist’s fear of inspiration. In all these scenarios, we hesitate before opening to unknown and potentially disruptive energies, yet long for the deeper truth that can only be accessed through them.

Some of the fears mentioned in the study:

“Who knows what you might be opening up to? It’s a loss of ego.”

“Once I get out there, will I be able to return?”

“In doing a reading you’re giving someone a large amount of power to validate or invalidate you. That’s scary!”

“Fear that if you do get through to [the] other side you will be unalterably changed.”

“…When you start to get into other realities, to make more profound changes in yourself, then what validates your reality? You can’t even trust the support of the people you’re with, that you love, because what differentiates that from a cult? You’re far from the realities of your culture! What feedback can you believe?”

“You may get so ‘high’ from psychic spaces that when you go out into the ordinary world you aren’t discriminating, you’re too accepting, and that can get you into trouble.”

“A fear that you won’t be able to express your experience.”

“A fear that you will be able to express it, but it won’t make sense to anybody.”

Those last two quotes particularly sound like the script that runs in my head when I’m writing fiction. (Not poetry, for some reason; maybe I don’t write my poems for anyone but myself, so I don’t care if they’re understood?) Overall, this paper helped normalize “psi” and other spiritual explorations for me. They’re part of the same psychological and energetic reality as creating art, which is something I have no choice but to do. So I guess my decision has been made.

New Poems by Conway: “Sleep Deprivation” and “City Elegy IX”

My prison pen pal “Conway“, who’s serving 25-to-life for receiving stolen goods in California’s notorious Pelican Bay facility, tells me that not much is new about the New Year. His early release petition hearing has been deferred yet again, till February. Keep him in your thoughts.

Meanwhile, he’s writing lots of poetry, and creating artwork for a book project commissioned by another reader of this blog. I’ll share full details when it’s published.

The poems below made me think about the normalization of torture. With 2.3 million Americans in prison, many suffering under conditions like these, can we call ourselves a free society?

Sleep Deprivation

It made no difference
how busy the hours had been, or
who I’d communicated to
through the unseen voices on this tier
while sipping a lukewarm cup of mud,
even if it took thirty minutes of pushing
the hot water button on the stainless toilet’s sink.

The only thing that made a difference
was that section door.
It opens so loudly, I had to wonder
if it hadn’t been devised on purpose
by some lousy crumb, to be that damn noisy.

It crashed open around midnight
reminding me with its rudeness
that I’m still locked in this concrete box.
By myself.
With no way to open this heart or door locks.

To remind me that I was alone.
The cop walked a flashlight
searching for eyes to shine in
as keys uselessly jangled songs
step up and down the stairs
then exit.

As the sounds of persistent doors
rattle away again
then, creeping silence forced its way back in.
I could only hope
that the return of the intruder
would find me safely wrapped
in slumber’s silent headlock.

Long enough
to be recovered before daylight
to be upright and shuffled
among the chained population.
Not that much of anything was happening.
But, if something did,
it’s best to be prepared for whatever.

The legacy of intrustions
of clinking clanking conclusions
schedules of the return
by someone I do not know
someone who would never say hello
but someone I swear I will not forget.
At least until I fall back asleep.

I was too much awake in lonely thought, in this empty cell, to surrender.
Or, to recover from the intrusion of lonesome desire.
So, I listened in to the section doors open and close
as time prowled around in this pen of lonely people…

****

City Elegy IX

The streets have been my cathedral
I stole through the nights, searched and crept
Trying to find a truth I could accept
In the streetlights’ dance, of taking a chance;
To be burned beneath the sidewalk of not.
This seemed to be all, that a living wage bought.

Now this soul’s been stripped naked for years…
Rewinding each skyless night
Counting myself alone
Stuffed into this squeeze of unknowns.
Enduring this endless crush of bones.
While gun towers cast their scorns
Sheltered beneath those barbed wire thorns
Flinging the sting, off the point
Of their meaning; A meaning I must endure.

So, now that I know the score,
I’ve lost any right to be more,
Than the rumbled crash, and groan
Of steel doors. As they rattle (in threat)
On every closing report. Exposing intent–
From a contempible court.
Like a jester unsprung, itching to finger someone.

This soul still recalls, all of its flaws…
My conscience remains true, above false.
Forged in this furnace, of doing hard time.
Refusing to drop, even one dime. That’s why–
These vents are still blowing in grit, as
I’m flat on my back, in this land of unfit.
And those amber lights. It should be no surprise,
They keep catching me spotting for spies.
But those yellow lights’ glare, man!
That’s always been there. I know better
Than to expect any slack. So–
I’m standing here staring right back.

If this truth contains proof…
Somewhere existing, at my vision’s edge.
Between the silence, as my voice fell out alone. (Or so I had thought.)
It wasn’t until your voice was hurled
In the wind at the top of the world.

So what, if everything’s changed. (Alright.)
Those memories shared, have still stayed the same.
They remain soft as the breeze–
In my city’s warm summer nights…

Pink Link Roundup: The Struggle to Affirm the Feminine

As I wait this week for “Santa” to deliver another load of toys for my little man, I’m pondering the devaluation of femininity that stubbornly persists in the two realms where I spend much of my time: parenting and gay male fiction.

Over his short lifetime, the Young Master has already been gifted with a set of golf clubs, two baseball bats, two footballs, three soccer balls, and a set of footie PJs absurdly captioned “Tough Guy”. Only Mommy defied convention and bought him a Barbie, whose favorite activities seem to be dancing and farting. Meanwhile, the toy catalogs crowding my mailbox proclaim, “Gifts for your little princess and action hero!” Inside, I might see photos of both boys and girls playing with sports equipment, science kits, and wheeled vehicles, but the mini kitchens and vacuum cleaners are pink-trimmed and only advertised with girls in the pictures.

Some progressive parenting organizations talk about this problem, but their strategies focus more on including girls in “boy” activities than removing the stigma of girliness. The Center for Commercial-Free Childhood, for instance, does good work keeping advertising out of educational environments, but their “worst toys of the year” list almost always includes my old friend Barbie, because she supposedly makes girls ashamed of their bodies. No, patriarchy does that; pretty women (real or imaginary) are just being who they have a right to be.

I recently rediscovered this 2013 post from Christian feminist and fiction writer A.M. Leibowitz’s Unchained Faith blog, “The Meaning of Pinkhood“:

The Big Questions that always come up are: Why can’t they market toy stoves and tea sets in neutral colors?  Why can’t doll clothes come in blue as well as pink?  Why can’t I find a boy doll?  Why can’t Barbies utter oddly specific action phrases when you push a button on their backs?  Why must all Legos be placed in the boys’ section?

Meanwhile, I’m asking an entirely different set of questions.

Why can’t boys own a full set of My Little Pony figurines?  Why doesn’t Batman say, “Give me a hug!” when you press a button?  Why isn’t it okay for a boy to be featured on the toy stove box, even if it is pink?

We’ve gotten very comfortable asking why the girls’ aisle is hosed in pink and frills while the boys get action and adventure.  We intentionally choose to shop for our daughters among the Legos and Monster Trucks and superheroes.  We’re okay with urging our daughters to try out sports and climb trees and wear any damn thing they want to…

…It seems to me that the reason for this is that we like the erasure of cultural femininity more than we like the erasure of cultural masculinity.

Cultural femininity is seen as weak and bad.  How many of us have gone from feeling stifled by the lack of options to feeling guilty that we still want some (or most) of those feminine things?  How many men feel like they are less, somehow, because they have traits usually associated with women?

It took me a long time to accept that I like the color pink and that I like stories with a little romance.  I sort of felt like I couldn’t even enjoy a Disney princess movie without having to examine its problematic elements first.  This erasure of anything culturally feminine means that in order to survive, I must become more like a man.  But if I become more like a man, not only do I destroy that which is considered feminine in myself, I also end up being told that I actually want to be a man!  Or I’m a bitch or a ball-buster or some other negative term for a woman who isn’t “woman” enough.  Yet if I give up and go home, then my femininity makes me invisible again.  We often don’t have the option of being both culturally feminine and strong…

Go read the whole post. It’s a keeper.

This leads into my other gripe, the misogyny problem in fiction about gay male love. As Gail Dines says in her feminist critique of porn, under patriarchy women are categorized as either “fuckable” or “invisible”. Since, by definition, M/M is about men preferring men to women, the female characters are not “fuckable” in any way that matters to the hypothetical reader. (Because there are no bisexuals out there, right?) I’ve read some novels in this genre with no female characters at all, and some where the women are grotesque caricatures–pathetic fag-hags, smothering moms, ballbusting exes. Neither of these scenarios reflect the real world, where men of all orientations are embedded in a community of female friends, colleagues, and relatives. Ken Murphy’s Sharing Heart is a pleasant exception.

By contrast, Tim Bairstow, whose first novel The Shadow of Your Wings was a gorgeous bittersweet tale of gay Christian self-acceptance, cruelly betrayed his female readers with What Do You Want for Christmas?, where he misses no opportunity to mock the loathsome plus-size body of the hero’s clueless girlfriend. Their sex scene is fat-shaming horror reminiscent of Beowulf in the clutches of Grendel’s Dam.

I think some gay male writers are projecting their shame onto their female characters. They are passing on the legacy of whoever bullied them for being a “sissy”. If you’ve ever watched the old Showtime series “Queer As Folk“, did you notice how the unlikeable gay male characters were portrayed as effeminate weenies, while the protagonists were hyper-masculine studs? Sexism and homophobia are variations on the same awful theme. Women’s love for M/M fiction has the potential to build alliances against oppression, which makes it all the more hurtful when the gender wars resurface there.

Googling “M/M misogyny”, I came across this insightful post by Damon Suede, a gay man who writes romance: “Worse than a girl, better than a woman“.

…Not to say that gay romance is inherently misogynistic, but rather that it seems that much of gay romance writing expresses a deep mistrust and offers harsh criticism of traditional female roles. The girls that heroes are “worse than” seem more like the stereotype of girlhood, and the women that these “better” male/male couplings supplant are the traditional ideas and roles with which women are saddled.

Fans of the genre often remark on their impatience with female characterization in traditional romance fiction… joking that “two hot men are better than one.” But the role of female characters in gay romance remains a bit of a briar patch. Often female characters are not only subordinate in gay romance fiction, they are downright marginalized, lobotomized, or demonized because they serve in roles.

On one hand, it makes sense that in focusing on men who love each other and have sex with each other, that ways of introducing drama and conflict would often rely on the familiar soap-opera tropes of divorce, infidelity, family rejection, single parenting. Many of these situations involve women by default.

It stands to reason: if you want to introduce an infant character, who is the mother? If your hero is divorcing someone, who was she? If his parents appear, who did the childbearing? The core relationship in gay romance fiction is between those two (or more) fellas. By necessity, women in these stories tend to slide into the ruts of sympathetic friend or castrating bitch. Over and over in gay romance we see shrieking harpies angry at their betrayal by “the degenerate faggot(s)” in their life and kooky, supportive gal-pals who want to watch television while they snuggle sexlessly on the couch with their hot-but-unavailable BFF.

Totally logical, if the female character is nice she supports that manlovin’ and cannot and would not intrude with her own sexuality. If she’s not nice, intrusion is the order of the day, complete with near-rapes and/or tantrums and/or recrimination because the evil female always wants to wreck the protagonist and anyone else caught in the self-righteous heterosexist crossfire.

It’s hardly surprising. The sexual charge in gay romance is by definition situated between the male protagonists, so the women at their margins run the risk of disrupting the dynamic at the genre’s core. What’s the simplest solution for an unsteady author?: female characters must be defused, desexed, or dismissed… either as unattractive castrators or as loving-but-nonthreatening bystanders.

Damon, you’ve persuaded me to buy one of your novels on my Kindle. Then I’m going to write an alternate ending to Bairstow’s What Do You Want… where poor “Sally” has a telekinetic meltdown à la Carrie and drowns all the wankers in her vaginal blood.

Merry Christmas, bitches!

Poems from Pamela Uschuk’s “Blood Flower”

Pamela Uschuk is a shamanic poet, invoking the spirits of animals, mountains, and forests, to heal a world that humans have spoiled with war and greed. Her latest collection, Blood Flower (Wings Press, 2014), also gives a voice to her family’s ghosts, starting with her Russian immigrant ancestors, and moving on to her late brother and first husband, who were permanently scarred by their service in Vietnam.

I love the specificity of the nature images in Uschuk’s writing. These are not stylized, sentimental birds and flowers. They are “cliff swallows taking needles of twilight/into their open beaks, stitching/sky’s ripped hem.” They are the “red velvet vulva of roses” and “yellow ginkgo leaves/waxy as embalmed fans warm[ing] grave stones”. I can believe that they are just as real as the scenes of atrocities that surround us in the news media. Their beauty pulls a bright thread through the darkest stories she tells.

Among her many accomplishments, Pam is the editor of Cutthroat, A Journal of the Arts. Three of the poems in this collection won our 2011 War Poetry Contest at Winning Writers. She has kindly allowed me to reprint two more poems from Blood Flower below.

BLACK SWAN

Inside the photo’s tapestry, your silk sleeves
don’t reveal the slit wrists of madness
or the raw cortex of gang legends I loved—
police bullets slugging your car’s backseat
over my father’s young head as you ran
whiskey from Canada for the Purple Gang.
No one talks about your stints
in Joliet and Jackson Prison after you roped
concrete to a corpse you sank in the Grand River.

Who was he, Grandfather?
I feel cheated. Kto vui?
Who are you? I cannot find
your pauper’s grave.

Like Bogart’s in a film noir
your mouth is a tightset scar.
Did it elide vowels
fluid as trout in a cold stream
tearful over the Firebird’s Tale, or sneer
remembering your father’s ultimatum—
     leave Russia or join the Tsar’s army—
after your tantrum murdered his valet?

Charming pariah pitched across the Atlantic’s green remorse,
you vowed to send back your first son. But,
what promise did you ever keep?
Ellis Island misspelled your name,
deloused you like everyone else.
Russian was the official language
in your American house built with secret
hideaways beneath hollow attic steps, false
bedroom walls, as you tithed
gang money to Orthodox priests.

Grandfather, what purpose can you discern
now your entitled eyes are soil,
your heart going to anthracite?
Through the ghosts of your manicured hands
that never picked up a hammer or saw
pierce my curious roots.

Even in this distant pose, you glide,
the gorgeous black swan that rules
with fierce stiff wings
curled above a charred back, terrorizing
mallards with his hiss—
irresistable bully of the pond.

Cursed by indelible longing
for birch groves, balalaikas, whirling
Mazurkas, despite a day like today when the earth sinks
to its hips in the rare currency of peace, when
chickadees and finches bask
in the season’s final leaf-lit fling,
when squirrels nap after cannonballing
walnuts to the yard, when
nothing,
     nothing in particular
disturbs one molecule of the afternoon,
you smothered your future in Grandma’s yellow kitchen.

What is it in this decaying loam
that makes me cry? What impossible longing,
deformed as swallows reflected in a gazing globe,
when sun seems to illuminate the most stubborn shade?
The same chink in the genes?

Ya Ruskaya, Grandfather; look at the icons I keep—
an inlaid jewelry box from Siberia,
Minsk enameled knives,
the Orthodox cross or your portrait
arranged before the samovar
I carry from house to house.

Thirty-three, you died at thirty-three, syllables
shrill as ax blades sunk into a maple tree,
the same age as your savior
when he was crucified. Horosho.

Grandfather, tell me what fist beat
blue as lacy veins
trapped in our temples,
when you reached for the oven door,
blew out the pilot
     to suffocate our lives?

********

REMEMBERING THE TET OFFENSIVE AS TROOPS SHIP OUT FOR A U.S. ATTACK ON IRAQ
for Roger C. Frank

A fighter jet etches ink white as sperm
on the stark sky while January troops deploy
from Camp LeJeune, just like my first husband
did in 1968 on his way to Viet Nam
to wipe the Commie Gooks off the map.
Before he could spell Khe Sahn, think
massacre, he was machine-gunned
then bayoneted, left to die two days
in a jungle valley of shimmering green bamboo
near the clear stream he couldn’t reach
before the chop chop of the Medevac arrived.
One of three survivors of a whole company
of young marines slaughtered, he wanted to toss
the Purple Heart in the trash.
I remember during the long Michigan winter
his night sweats, the way
he’d shout the apartment walls awake, shake
to the screams of his buddies as they choked
on their own blood, clotted by indifferent flies,
some disemboweled, legs,
arms, faces blasted as frosted poppies.
He’d point to the mean hieroglyphs of red scars,
a pinched cummerbund of bullet
and stab wounds cinching his waist,
then ask me, new bride, too young
to be a Sphinx, the riddle I couldn’t reason out.
What was this for? What for?
as he headed to the kitchen for anesthetic beer,
the amber mattress of whiskey straight.
In three years he joined his company underground.

He was handsome, gung-ho like these teen soldiers
interviewed on CNN, cocky
as oiled M16s, proclaiming
their belief as each generation before them
that they will fight the war to end all wars.
Behind them, wives and girlfriends wave
small American flags that break
in the brittle wind.

Holiday Videos: “Joel the Lump of Coal” and More

It’s beginning to look a lot like…whatever winter holiday you celebrate! Here are some videos to get you in the mood.

This Hanukah song and dance medley is joyful and stylishly performed. I was almost certain I recognized the location as midtown Manhattan, but the YouTube credits say Daley Plaza in Chicago. No wonder I always felt at home in the Windy City.

Contemporary glam-rock band The Killers, better known for singing about obsessive love and murder, made this goofy yet ultimately profound video, “Joel the Lump of Coal“. This might be my favorite Christmas song of the year. I dislike the child-shaming moralism of the Santa myth, which has taken over a holiday that’s supposed to be about God’s forgiving and transforming love. The ending of this song made me think of Jesus’s words, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.”

Celtic folk band Nowell Sing We Clear performs their signature song “Chariots” in this video, a rousing welcome for the Prince of Peace. Lyrics by John Kirkpatrick below.

O Shepherd O shepherd come leave off your piping
Come listen come learn come hear what I say
For now is the time that has long been forespoken
For now is the time there’ll be new tunes to play
For soon there comes one who brings a new music
Of sweetness and clarity none can compare
So open your heart for the heavenly harmony
Here on this hill will be filling the air

REFRAIN:
With chariots of cherubim chanting
And seraphim singing hosanna
And a choir of archangels a-caroling come
Hallelujah Hallelu
All the angels a-trumpeting glory
In praise of the Prince of Peace

See on yon stable the starlight is shimmering
And glimmering and glistening and glowing with glee
In Bethlehem blest this baby of bliss will be
Born here before you as bold as can be
And you’ll be the first to hear the new symphony
Songs full of gladness and glory and light
So learn your tunes well and play your pipes proudly
For the Prince of Paradise plays here tonight

Bring your sheep bleating to this happy meeting
To hear how the lamb with the lion shall lie
It’s mooing and braying you’ll hear the song saying
The humble and lowly will be the most high
Let the horn of the herdsman be heard up in heaven
For the gates are flung open for all who come near
And the simplest of souls shall sing to infinity
Lift up and listen and you shall hear

The warmonger’s charger will thunder for freedom
The gun-maker’s furnace will dwindle and die
And muskets and sabers and swords shall be sundered
Surrendered to the sound that is sweeping the sky
And the shoes of the mighty shall dance to new measures
And the jackboots of generals shall jangle no more
As sister and brother and father and mother
Agree with each other the end to all war

As a candle can conquer the demons of darkness
As a flame can keep frost from the deepest of cold
So a song can give hope in the depths of all danger
And a line of pure melody soar in your soul
So sing your songs well and sing your songs sweetly
And swear that your singing it never shall cease
So the clatter of battle and drums of disaster
Be drowned in the sound of the pipes of peace

A Long-Overdue Education in Racism: Where to Begin?

As my readers doubtless know from the national news, the killing of unarmed African-American men and boys by white police officers has sparked protest movements across the country, challenging us white Americans to confront our participation in a racist law enforcement system.

On Aug. 9 in Ferguson, MO, Officer Darren Wilson shot unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown; the grand jury declined to indict Wilson on Nov. 24, even though the conflicting testimony about what happened during the police stop would seem to warrant a jury trial. On July 17 in Staten Island, NY, police stopped Eric Garner for allegedly selling contraband cigarettes. Officer Daniel Pantaleo used a chokehold on him that was banned by NYPD rules, suffocating the unarmed and asthmatic Garner. Last week the NY grand jury declined to indict Pantaleo.

Meanwhile, on Nov. 22 in Cleveland, OH, a cop shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice for playing with a toy gun at a playground. Twelve years old. A toy gun. Just think about that for a moment.

These are just two of the many unarmed black men and boys who are killed by the police each year in our “post-racial” society. Activists on Twitter have been posting their names in hashtags but can’t even keep up.

I honestly have not known what to write about this because there isn’t much I can say except “FUCK” and “I’m sorry”.

I’m not bringing this up now to get cookies for being an ally (a title I still have to earn). It’s just reached the point where not saying something would be a sign of not caring. As a white person, I have the dubious privilege of prioritizing other issues. But I don’t want to get off the hook.

I know how much I appreciate it when men believe women about sexism, or when people who’ve had normal families work to overcome their misconceptions about trauma survivors. In doing activism around the issues that affect me personally, I’ve gotten a glimpse of how it feels to suffer from other kinds of prejudice. I want to turn that empathy into effective action, and that starts with listening to African-American voices.

So I’m using the rest of this post to recommend some of the books, websites, and Twitter feeds that are helping me begin my education in racism and racial justice. Please feel free to share your own favorites in the comments.

Important advice: If you’re new to this issue and decide to check out these blogs and Twitter feeds, don’t jump into the conversation right away. Spend a good amount of time just reading and learning how this community sees the world, whether or not you agree. Remember that people are the experts on their own experience. No one is right all the time, but people of color have better attunement to racism than white people do, because they’re on the receiving end.

Books

Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (The New Press, 2010)
Civil rights law professor lays out a devastating case that the criminal justice system created by the War on Drugs is rigged against men of color, at every stage from stop-and-frisk to sentencing.

Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist (HarperCollins, 2014)
Witty novelist and pop-culture critic explores the intersections and contradictions of our cultural myths around race and gender.

bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (South End Press, 1981) and All About Love: New Visions (William Morrow, 2001)
hooks’s passionate first book argues that black women have been doubly marginalized by white feminists and by black men trying to gain status in a patriarchal society. The first chapter, describing the systemic sexual abuse of black women under slavery, is harrowing but a must-read. All About Love is an incisive and uplifting book that proposes that real love is inseparable from justice, seeing and being seen authentically.

Websites

Colorlines is a daily news site about racial justice issues in politics, the arts, and the media, offering award-winning original reporting and news analysis. (Twitter: @Colorlines) Check out this article about how white Americans can unlearn racism.

The Crunk Feminist Collective features black women writers on topics such as media representation, discrimination and micro-aggressions in the workplace, police brutality, and abuses in the criminal justice system. (Twitter: @crunkfeminists)

Dear White People is the Tumblr companion to the 2014 movie, an excellent satire about black students at an elite university and the different strategies they use to navigate around cultural stereotypes and double standards. A book is forthcoming.

Gradient Lair is a womanist blog about black women and art, social media, social politics, and culture. (Twitter: @GradientLair and @TheTrudz)

Political Jesus is a multi-authored Christian theology blog with interests in social justice, science fiction, pop culture, and racial issues in the church. (Twitter: @Political_Jesus)

Twitter

@Karnythia (Mikki Kendall, fiction writer and blogger at hoodfeminism.com)

@ProfessorCrunk (Brittney Cooper, columnist at Salon)

@TaNehisiCoates (Ta-Nehisi Coates, columnist at The Atlantic, author of their 2014 cover story on slavery reparations)

@TheFerocity (Saeed Jones, poet and Buzzfeed LGBT columnist)

@TressieMcPhd (Sociology professor at Emory University, writes about racial issues in academia)

@WritersofColour (Media Diversified, a UK think tank tackling the lack of diversity in media)

Poetry by Robert McDowell: “The Promise of Hunter’s Moon”

Poet, activist, and spiritual workshop leader Robert McDowell sent out this powerful poem in his e-newsletter to commemorate the International Day to End Violence Against Women (Nov. 25). McDowell’s work focuses on actualizing the sacred feminine to bring about gender equality and reconciliation. He has kindly allowed me to reprint it below.

The Promise of Hunter’s Moon
by Robert McDowell

At some point we’re all coming back as birds.
We’ll begin in the muck, unrecognizable, stinking,
Until creatures with hands or tools for hands
Scoop us up and start squeezing and pulling.
Suddenly there we are, unmistakably beaked,
Straining against thin leather thongs that someone
Had the good sense to tie around rocks and our twiggy legs.
It’s a good thing, this confinement, because free
We’d rip and tear apart anything we could reach.
The things with hands, or tools like hands, feed us
A mixture of water and the blood of the beheaded,
And with this inside of us we develop fast,
Looking more like giant birds you’d recognize
By the minute. Our feathers grow black and glossy,
And the thicker they become the meaner we feel.
When they just can’t grow anymore they fall out.
Our featherless bodies are disgusting to touch,
Hideous to behold. Where once we were murderous,
We grow timid under the mirror-hot sun. Then
More feathers appear, small, white feathers,
Beautiful, snowy plumes that dazzle in moonlight.
When we’re ready she comes. Out of the sea and sky,
Out of the barren ground she comes. Astonishing
Is her loveliness, perfected is her power.
She rises and walks among us as we bow,
Obedient, peaceful, and so in love.

New Poem by Conway: “Smell”

My prison pen pal Conway reports that the hearing on his petition for early release has been delayed until December, crushing his hope of being reunited with his family for Christmas. It’s been over two years since California voters passed Proposition 36, which was supposed to roll back the harsh sentences imposed on nonviolent offenders under the three-strikes law. This Nov. 14 L.A. Times article suggests the state is dragging its feet on releasing prisoners because the Department of Corrections benefits from their underpaid labor:

Federal judges on Friday ordered California to launch a new parole program that could free more prisoners early, ruling the state had failed to fully implement an order last February intended to reduce unconstitutional crowding.

The judges, for a second time, ordered that all nonviolent second-strike offenders be eligible for parole after serving half their sentence. They told corrections officials to submit new plans for that parole process by Dec. 1, and to implement them beginning January.

“The record contains no evidence that defendants cannot implement the required parole process by that date, 11 months after they agreed to do so ‘promptly,'” the judges wrote in Friday’s order.

Corrections department spokeswoman Deborah Hoffman said the agency would comply with the order.

But the federal judicial panel did not take action on other steps it had ordered California to take last February. Those include increasing the sentence reductions minimum-custody inmates can earn for good behavior and participation in rehabilitation and education programs.

Most of those prisoners now work as groundskeepers, janitors and in prison kitchens, with wages that range from 8 cents to 37 cents per hour. Lawyers for Attorney General Kamala Harris had argued in court that if forced to release these inmates early, prisons would lose an important labor pool.

Meanwhile, my friend Conway keeps his soul alive through creative writing. In addition to poetry, he is working on an autobiographical novel about growing up with his brothers and sisters in a gang-ridden neighborhood. I think he could be the next S.E. Hinton! I was struck by this poem’s taut rhythm and rapid-fire rhymes and wordplay.

Smell

This is the smell of a cell…
This is the smell of rust and dust, and sometimes lust.
Plus it’s the smell of double bar-locks, block and blocks, of towers
and useless clocks. If you don’t know what time it is, oh well!

Could it be the smell of a dirty-ass sock, or worn-out useless
fruitless talk? But still, it’s a voice you feel you might trust.
Not that, oh no!
This is the smell of nothing good. No pleasure, no sound,
nobody around to be found, nowhere to go.
Nothing to show, for all the shit you now know.

This is the smell of a place where no one belongs, but still
we’re stuck here. Because the court insists we’ve done something wrong.
This is that place where they’ll put you away, to serve
day after day. And you’ll rust in the smell of the dust and decay.

This is the smell you will always smell, unless
they tell you “your smelling is finally done.”
In this smelly assed life, that’s good for no-one.
This is the smell of no place to be, this is the smell I see.
This is the smell of just one prisoner’s tale.
This is the smell of that living hell.
This is the smell that I smell.
This is the smell of jail…