You're Wearing THAT?

I was in a training last week with a bunch of (other?) ministers. One of them recounted a story that rocked be back on my heels and tuned me into an important anxiety I’m carrying. In pursuit of taking the lesson but leaving the story, I won’t recount it here, but the lesson I take is this: the church is always watching, and the church polices bodies. Even in our time, of pushing boundaries of gender, of pursuing and rejoicing in diversity of being and expression, the church is bound by a painfully narrow scope of what is and is not appropriate ways for its people to live in their bodies.

The church is not free.

I realize this is what scares me about parish ministry. I am nervous, I am downright frightened, of doing my best to live a free, spirit-filled life in pursuit of our collective liberation, and being told by the community I serve that I am simply too much—too big, too loud, too free—to be effectively used by God for good, at least as far as they are concerned. This is not a new phenomenon in my experience of Christianity: I was taught to dress and appear a particular way so I would not cause my brother to stumble. (I was not taught that an idea or approach like this renders me an object without consent or action in another human being’s actions, that these actions without my consent were felonious and with my consent were delicious if complicated, and that my brother should be responsible for his one behavior, and that he should seek my consent before he “stumbles.” None of that makes the lesson on purity training for young Christian women. It is a particularly insidious and harmful way of teaching young women to dissociate from themselves, to be afraid of their own bodies and their own sexuality, and it turns on blame, shame, and a pathological inability for the church to reckon with embodiment and sexuality. We can do better.) I learned to cross my legs at the ankles if i was wearing a skirt, and not at the knee, because at the knee someone might see too much of my leg and have unclean thoughts. I was taught to think of my body as a weapon, a tool of communication with others that I was always having to rein in, to holster and minimize. What do i gain from this? I guess that others can look at me and say they see God on my or in me or through me. Disappointing that they are unable to see this just by looking in my eyes, but that I have to tick boxes of an inventory—How Pure Are You?

I don’t encounter this purity policing in my yoga communities. No one has ever told me that my practicing In that tank top compromises their balance or focus, or their capacity to still their mind in seated subtle practice. No one has ever stepped to me and said that God laid a word on their heart that when I wear short shorts to class I distract the teacher and compromise his ability to deliver the Word, so I should change my wardrobe. No one has ever told me I was chanting the name of God too loudly. I’ve discovered a lot of freedom in this tradition, freedom to experience my body in its fullness, and to hold that fullness as a gift of God, as an expression of God: God is not small, Jess, why should you be small?

Don’t get it twisted: there is plenty of body policing in yoga. The ongoing question of whether one can practice ahimsa and also eat animals… which bodies are yoga bodies… what your modifications say about your practice… the purpose of brahmacarya as truly sexual control or abstinence versus moderation… is transformation possible… props: to use or not to use. (Eye roll.) This is to say nothing of teachers who are preying on seekers and who use their students and students’ bodies to meet their own needs and insecurities. There is also the capitalist phenomenon of how to dress for yoga that functions as a gatekeeper in some spaces. Yoga purity policing exists and it has its own inventory.

This body policing scares me about ministry. I have been in congregations that were restricted by rules of behavior: about dress and diet and appearance, arguing that “the world” should look at us and see us as followers of Christ. (Sad that the world would see that not based on the kindness and generosity, the forgiveness, the growth, with which we treat one another, but instead on our conservative values regarding hemlines and alcohol intake. ) I have a large personality. I no longer try to mitigate it. For folks who don’t know me—and for some who do—it has been a lot to process. I am my mother’s daughter: I know how to be politic and polite and appropriate, and often I find behaving that way means watering down the truth. I tattooed ahimsa (nonviolence) and sayta (truthfulness) to the insides of my arms so I would remember that each without the other is ineffective, though I often have trouble using them both in equal measure. But one thing I can’t control is how other people perceive me. Because I can’t control it, I often try to ignore it.

But the congregation is always watching. I remember, when Barak Obama was elected, I held my breath for years, waiting for some scandal to come out of the woodwork and destroy him and his family, and the pride and joy of black folks who’d elected him along with it. I remember thinking, this man has always, always got to be above reproach. These white folks will take any tiny, stupid little thing they can and use it to torpedo him. He cannot do anything wrong. I feel a similar sense of dread when I consider what it means to serve as a pastor in a church. Not that I can’t do anything wrong; I do a lot wrong. But instead, that folks might often perceive me as doing wrong even if I’m not, and my credibility will be completely compromised. My smile will be too full, my walk will be too provocative, my passion will be misread as rage, my ambition as aggression, and that will be the end of me. I cannot put a foot wrong.

Skating on thin ice.

Skating on thin ice.

One thought I’ve often had is how important racial reconciliation is in my own work. I think and talk about white supremacy and patriarchy in yoga spaces, and I talk about it in the church too. Often, it’s just conversations that I’m having in my head, at least right now, and occasionally in this space. But what I’m trying to say is years ago, when I had a come-to-Jesus moment sitting on a twin bed in an ashram in India, I asked God if helping white folks to reckon with their own whiteness was really, really the work I was meant to do. And she said yes. In fact she said, yes, girl, I already answered this question, you know what your work is. And now I find myself afraid to do it: afraid to step into a denomination that is largely white. I want to step into it because I appreciate its flat, democratic nature, although I dislike that that same nature can foster conservative, exclusionary values that center racism, control, and oppression over love and abundance. Point is, I’m choosing to try and practice life in ways that highlights the divisive, oppressive forces we operate in, so that we can tear them apart. This is difficult work. It feels particularly difficult for people of color, because we wind up dealing with emotional labor that isn’t ours. It’s a special kind of teacher we’re consenting to be. I don’t know if I want to do it. But I think it’s my work to do.

If the parish is always watching, if as a pastor I am always under the gaze of the community I’ve been entrusted with serving, what they think of me intersects directly with my ability to do my job, not just to draw my paycheck, but to execute my vocation as a servant-leader within the community. Suddenly, my black body isn’t as neutral as the other white bodies in the pews, and not just because my hair is different or because I don’t look like the people around me. Behind the wheel of her own car, at the truck stop or gas station, in the classroom, in the pulpit, in the studio, or in line behind you, White Reader, the black woman’s body has some kind of meaning. You don’t read her as neutral, even if you think you do. Nothing she does changes how you read her. No amount of education or manner or purity or propriety will save her from the judgment, or indeed, the retribution, in your gaze.

If the congregation is always watching, are we watching when Jesus is crucified? Are we going to police Jesus’ body? (Perhaps this is why in protestant churches there is no bleeding, six-pack, scantilly-clad Jesus, there is only the torture device on which he was killed. His body is simply too much for us to take in, and if a replica of it were present, we wouldn’t hear announcements about the church picnic or the elders’ meeting, we’d be too distracted and given to “stumble.”) Do I really thinking Jesus cared at all about anyone trying to shame him for his nakedness while he was dying? Because let’s be real, that loincloth we all see, we put that there. Like all of us, Jesus died as naked as the day he was born, and if we can’t hold the reality of that, we really do need to do some reckoning about what it is to be in a body. First Corinthians says that the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. If we are policing bodies for purity or modesty, and ignoring their practice of connection, compassion, and of sacrifice, I think we’re missing the message.

So what do I do? What does it mean to teach, to serve, to abide and to listen, if I am trying to do so as a servant leader of God if on top of the complexity of that work, I have to navigate our racial (etc) identities and compensate for whatever one of us is projecting onto the other additionally? How do I make you less afraid of me, white stranger? How do I get you to hear me, fellow white parishioner? How do I hold space for you without abandoning myself, white teacher? And am I the one who’s doing all the work here?

This is a real fear. I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t think it’s as simple as cherry-picking a different denomination. Body policing goes on in black churches and denominations, too, and to paraphrase Tolstoy, each conservative black congregation is conservative in its own way. I’ll acknowledge my vantage point about this is narrow, and maybe there’s something to learn or see about this that will broaden my horizons, and if it doesn’t remove my fear, at least it will teach me to walk with it. I have my eyes open. I’m not looking away.

Let’s see.

Yogi’s First Sermon: The Open Table

The first thing I did at HDS on the first day of school was receive the Eucharist. I was fresh-faced and excited, and had barely slept the day before, and woke up the Tuesday after Labor Day ready to go. On campus there’s a chapel that’s a part of the Div School called Divinity Chapel, or Emerson Chapel depending on who you’re talking to: a centuries-old room inscribed with plaques and stained glass. A lot of Harvard is old-money sheen and intellectual artifice and impostor syndrome; but this room is legit. It houses prayers and meditations and contemplation, rituals and tears, remembrances and rejoicing. It is a place where you recognize the river of legacy that you’re stepping into as a Harvard Divinity School student. It vibrates in the wood and the air of this space. The Eucharist was not only a great ritual to practice at the start of my career as a student there, it was an incredibly healing practice. I’d felt so far from being able to take communion. It’s a ritual with a lot of baggage, and it was one I was brought up believing that I wasn’t good enough to engage in: my heart has to be right, I have to be clean, without any outstanding issues or conflict. If my balance sheet isn’t at zero, I’m playing fast and loose with the ritual, some have said to me. On top of which, so few of the churches I’d attended had observed it on a regular, so I felt not only emotionally far from the practice, but also practically far from it. But the gluten-free wafer I dipped into the wine and affirmed put me into my body, a precious space when you consider that school puts us in our heads, so much so that our bodies suffer for it.

A window in Divinity Chapel.

A window in Divinity Chapel.

I was grateful to be able to start my studies this way. As a yogi, the body is my way in. Physical practice is the key to spiritual experience and relationship for me. Sure, language is beautiful. I’m a writer, of course I love the poetry of prayer and scripture; but invite me to engage in a practice with my hands and feet, my limbs, my spine, my inhale and exhale, and I’m already halfway to God.

*

I have clear memories of the first church I attended with my parents as a little girl. It was a huge building, you know the way things are really big when you’re six or seven: there was green linoleum on the floor and forest green threadbare velvet lining the pews, and there were these massive organ pipes behind the dais. Above them there was a trompe l’oeil scroll painted high up on the cracked, plaster wall; on it was written in English Gothic letters, FAITH, WITHOUT WORKS, IS DEAD. JAMES 2:26.

Subtle, right? I would learn later about the Protestant connection between service to God and a strong work ethic; but as a girl I remember spending countless hours gazing at that wall and wondering how anybody got that high up to paint it.

So, one Sunday, I could tell something was happening because there was a kind of change in the energy up front. I peeked up and saw that the pastor was no longer behind the pulpit but was in front of the altar facing the congregation. He was standing behind a table tented with a white cloth, covering something, and he was flanked by black ladies in white dresses, tights, cardigans and white shoes: the nurse’s auxiliary, though I didn’t know what they were for, no one in church ever seemed particularly sick.

These women started passing out trays to pews, which would travel down a pew—hand to hand, to hand, and then back to the next pew and hand to hand, to hand. They were the same silver as collection plates, but they weren’t collection plates; they were different. When the plate was in the row in front of us, I peered around a suited arm and looked. Juice! Little cups of juice! Yes! When that plate came down my pew, I was ready, and when my mother took a cup and passed it to my father, I reached for it.

You know how sometimes mothers can gasp in a way that will not only let you know that you are In Trouble, but will also suck all the air out of a room? Anyhow, she made this sound, and it scared me, and I yanked my hand back. She lowered her mouth to my ear and whispered, “No, Jessica, you can’t have any!”

“Why not?” I started to say, but she shushed me, and the plate continued its journey away from us.

Two minutes later, when the plate of broken saltine crackers went by, I knew not to reach.

In the car on the way home, my mother used the word “communion” to describe what had happened during the service, and said that it was for adults only, because children didn’t—and couldn’t—understand what it meant. She didn’t tell me what it meant: she didn’t explain sacrament or worship, the last supper, arrest, or crucifixion, not even in terms that a six-year-old could understand. She only told me that I couldn’t understand its significance, so I couldn’t share.

I can’t take any credit for this. This is almost certainly not gluten free bread. 😉

I can’t take any credit for this. This is almost certainly not gluten free bread. 😉

When we have something special, we treat it as such, right? You don’t rake leaves or shovel snow in your Marc Jacobs or Tom Ford; you don’t lift weights in your fanciest gown or best suit. When a thing is special, we use the kid gloves and the light touch. We limit access to it. Jesus was special, and the people close to him knew it, and all his life, they put up fences around him. They limited access to him. Jesus is Sunday-finest, not suitable for everyday use. Or is He? Is Jesus only suitable for some of us, and only some of the time? Do we do right by Jesus, or by each other, when we don’t share him?

*

When he was 12, and his family went to Jerusalem, Jesus separated from his folks and stayed behind in Jerusalem after his family left the city. After looking for him for three days, they found him in the temple sitting with the teachers, talking, learning, asking and answering questions. Now, I’ve let go of my mother’s hand and wandered off in the grocery store, but to go missing in a different city for three days?

Mary confronted Jesus about this, beside herself with fear and anxiety. And what did Jesus do? He clapped back at her: “Why were you searching for me?”, he said, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”[1]

I wish I would come at my mother with attitude after going missing for three days.

But Jesus knew what his work was. Not even his mother would keep him from his business, from being with the people.

During his ministry, Jesus’ disciples had a similar attitude with folks who would come to him, for healing, for forgiveness, for wisdom, for connection: the disciples were like his agents. “Yes, we’re all happy Jesus is here today, No, he doesn’t have a lot of time, please have your prayer request ready, 30 seconds only, no exceptions, no touching, no pictures, no eye contact, thank you. Next!”

But what does Jesus say? About healing the Canaanite woman’s daughter: I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel[2]. To his disciples who are holding back children who’ve come for blessing: Let the little children come to me and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of Heaven belongs[3]. To Peter about the “sinful woman” who washed Jesus’ feet and massaged them with oil: You gave me no water, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but she has anointed my feet with ointment[4]. Finally, to his students and disciples: whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple[5].

What is the cross that Jesus invites us to take up in pursuit of discipleship? It is an open table: unfettered access to the finest love, acceptance, nourishment, and generosity that is available. Jesus opened his borders. He tore down his fences. He used his body and his presence to give access to his love and nourishment. Through the Eucharist, Jesus bids us come into his presence and to be with his body. How does he do this? He gives us two actions: he breaks bread, he pours wine, he shares them, and says do this and remember me. This sacrament, this ritual, is one side of the blessing Jesus gives his followers before he is crucified. He also gives them a new commandment: love one another, he says, as I have loved you. On that fateful night, it was only a few of Jesus’ followers who were at the table with him. But Jesus knew then the connection between his bread as offering and his body as offering. He knew that to offer his bread and his body was to love his people; and this is what he asks us to do: to tear down the barriers to his table. To make him accessible to all.

Now, when I talk about opening the table, I don’t just mean practically. The table is where the work begins, not where it ends.

You are the open table.

The Eucharist is an embodied ritual: we use our voice to repeat language. We chew the bread; we feel the wine run down our throat. Our bodies get involved, whatever they are: more or less able, more or less aged, more or less free: we use our bodies to engage in a practice of God who came in a body. Some days, in the ritual, we might feel pious, or devoted, but some days we might be bored; we might be tired or distracted, fidgety or over-caffeinated, or angry or hurting. But we show up and we put our body on the line. We put our body in the shape and practice of the sacrament, and we trust the ritual and the touch of God to do their good work and have their way in us. Engaging our body this way, it invites us to pay attention. Jesus says, do this and remember me. Remembering is only the first part of our instruction. The real work in front of us as followers of Christ is to BE CHRIST in our world. We have to put our bodies on the line. Love one another, as I have loved you, Jesus says. We practice Communion not only to remember the sacrifice of Christ, but to be reminded to love as he loved. The power of this sacrament is that it is both a literal, embodied experience of Christ and a call to embody Christ for others. We are to show up, to put ourselves out there, to be the love, the generosity, the restoration and justice, the righteousness and the mercy, that Christ is for all of us.

If you are the open table, if you are the body of Christ to and for our community, are you putting your body on the line? Are you showing up, and I mean, really Showing Up, for those of us, for all of us, who need healing and nourishment from the body of Christ?

We Are the body of Christ. We must Be and Do Christ here, in our world, right now. What does that look like? Maybe we provide lead-free water for every child in every city; maybe we stop deforesting; maybe we deliver graduates from soul-crushing debt; maybe we provide addiction recovery instead of racist, punitive sentencing mandates; maybe we abolish prisons, and maybe we create and protect reproductive justice for all who want it; maybe we stop putting children in cages; maybe we reunite children and parents and we invest in communities.

Whatever it is, we make it. We give and receive the openness and welcoming, we offer and humbly seek from one another, the love and forgiveness that Christ personified so fully in his life and ministry. We take up the cross of presence: we love fully and fiercely. We put our bodies on the line. What obstacles have we created to the love of Christ? In what ways are we avoiding, or disobeying, his command to love one another? Who are we starving instead of feeding? From whom are we hoarding the sustaining love and grace of Christ? For us to be Christ, we must act, we must undo the obstacles of fear, defensiveness, of anxiety and oppression that we erect to being and showing the love and grace that Christ has shown us, and that he calls us to show everyone. Every One. By being Christ to one another, we don’t just create space and access to the sacrament of the Eucharist; we manifest and share the transformative power of the love of Christ. By embodying Christ, we tend to the body of Christ.

 


[1] Luke 2:49

[2] Matthew 15:24

[3] Matthew 19:14

[4] Luke 7:44-46

[5] Luke 14:27

She Said Yes

tw: intimate partner abuse, sexual assault, racism

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It was maybe, five or six years ago? More? I remember it was a sunny day. My husband, brother- and sister-in-law and I were all at some art museum in the South Bay. I don’t really remember the art. I remember the sun, because Chicago is cloudy most days from November to April, so it was likely during a holiday we were visiting, and sun was a gift.

And I remember the gift shop employee.

A white woman, in her late fifties, with dyed hair cut into a stylish but unfussy pixie. Lots of glittery jewelry. Rouge, and mascara clumping in the corners of her eyes.

I remember something tugging on my ribcage-length locs.

I turned, and she was staring at me like I was the $400 geode bookends in the display case or something. I rolled my eyes. “Yes, this is all my real hair,” I replied to her unanswered question. We talked over each other—or rather, she interrupted me—to compliment me on my hair. I weary of white people and their morbid-cum-fascinated curiosity with the black body; but I am a woman, and I was raised in the Midwest, and I was taught not to make waves with white people, that being agreeable keeps you alive, AND, I’m with my in-laws, a well-meaning but unsteady relationship even on the best of days, so I have to behave. I asked her if she wanted to touch it. She tossed a comment over her shoulder and walked away, and only then did I realized that she had. The tug I’d felt had been her long, lacquered nails in my hair.

Do people touch your hair without asking? Do perfect strangers feel no compunction about laying their hands on your body, to test the veracity of what they perceive, or because they’re enthralled, or appreciative?

I still fantasize about unloading my rage on her, about getting loud and telling her how utterly inappropriate it is for her to yank on the hair growing out of my scalp, even if she thinks it’s beautiful. I am a person. I have a body. I exist in my body because God wanted to incarnate in my particular way, and for whatever reason, I consented to be a part of that, and my parents made me. I do not exist to entertain or be used by anyone for anything. When people like this woman lay hands on me without my consent, they demonstrate they don’t actually see that I exist as a person, with thoughts, desires, needs, agency. They treat me like a doll, like a toy she can pick up, play with, and set down. I am inanimate. If I am so inanimate that I can be pulled and tugged like a pickaninny doll, then what else can people do to my body? Can they assault me? Can they rape me? Can they shoot me while I’m surrendering? Can they tie me to the bumper of their pickup and drag me through the streets?

Let me be clear: I would not have been happy to let her touch my hair. I know a lot of white women, and I love most of them, and I struggle with being the (only?) black woman they know with interesting (is it? for just being itself?) hair and some of them want to coo over it and remark about how long it’s gotten and how I care for it and… you know this narrative. So I can’t even say that I would have felt differently if she’d asked. Probably not. But if she’d asked, it would have shown that she saw me as a person, and not as an object. She would have given me the opportunity to consent to a physical, hands-on relationship, even one that lasted for five seconds. She would have given me the right to consent. She would have indicated that she understands that I have power over my own body and how it interacts with others, and she does not.

She would have recognized me as alive. As apart from her and the world that bends to her will.

She would have seen me.

*

A friend and fellow healer learned that I wrote a paper this semester about the Virgin Mary and the Hindu Goddess Sita, and the role that consent plays in their narratives. She asked me if she could read it, and on the off chance that anyone else is curious about it, I told her I would post a portion of it here, and not send her the whole 12 pages. I won’t past the whole 12 pages either. It’s… it was really interesting to me that this young, unwed woman who’d allegedly been raised to be a holy person in the temple her entire life was given the opportunity to consent to her role in the entree of Christ to the world. God knows about consent: if God asks Mary’s consent, what’s our excuse for not asking one another? Additionally, Sita is held up as this long-suffering wife who lets her husband, Rama, throw shade and cast judgment on her fidelity, her strength and her morality repeatedly. But when I shift my lens a little, I can see that Sita consents to this behavior, especially when I consider the way she goes out.

It was a fun paper to write. It would have been even more fun if I’d felt free to write the way I like to, and I wish I’d had the energy to really make it as strong as I can imagine it could have been. I’m writing a lot at school, which feels incredible, but there’s a fair amount of expectation for that academic voice, which feels stilted and artificial. It feels absent audience and I feel constricted by it. I got an A minus. It’s a decent grade, I guess. It’s a bit sticky to know that it wasn’t my best work and to have that confirmed, yep, strong, but not quite the thing. I haven’t done much rewriting for this audience: I have tried to sand off a bit of the academic edges, but you might not recognize my voice.

*

One wonders if Mary knew fully what she was consenting to when she told Gabriel Yes: had she known how hard Jesus would be tested, gossiped about, persecuted, had she known the gruesome nature of his suffering and death, would she have chosen to be his mother. Not only must she suffer the trauma of watching her child be put to death, but before he even arrives, there are narratives of hers that illustrate the complex and unpleasant experience she has for being chosen as Theotokos. In the infancy gospel of James, Mary repeatedly forgets that she is carrying Jesus, and is subject to mistrust, judgment, and anger from Joseph, as well as judgment and a test of her fidelity from the priests at the temple. [1] In Surah 19 of the Qur’an, Mary delivers Jesus alone, in great pain, under a date palm and wishing herself dead.[2] Luke conveys none of this suffering in his gospel, but if we create a narrative based on the composite of these three accounts, we can see that Mary’s consent was a loaded act, charged not only with potentially Jesus’ suffering, but her own. Aaron Riches makes a case for the risk that Mary undertook in her consent to herself, as well as what makes Mary’s consent so powerful in Jesus’ life: “Mary’s fiat does not merely consent to all that will befall the Son; but more, her fiat fully participates in all that will befall the Son: the dregs of his deprivation, the bowl of his staggering and the suffering wound of his cruciform way.”[3] While not convinced that Mary knows Jesus’ fate in the moment of her consent, I can concede that the consent Mary offers puts her in considerable risk in her own context: Mary was a young woman, unwed, an ethnic minority in the Roman Empire, and the risk of being found out to be pregnant could have cost her her life.[4] In consenting to the will of God, Mary was consenting to having her own life be changed by God. She was creating space for the sacrifice of Jesus, and she was also making herself a kind of willing sacrifice: consenting to suffering, but by the birth of Jesus, also consenting to a role in the world’s redemption.

In this way, Mary is a promise kept that was broken in previous generations. She “is the embodiment of the faithful remnant of the people of Israel.”[5] Luke’s narrative affirms this: it is the only version that both empowers Mary with consent and with the Magnificat, a song of praise for how the world will be set right by the result of her consent, namely, the birth and life of Christ. When visiting Elizabeth, who is also pregnant by the hand of God, Mary says, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant… [T]he Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.”[6] In choosing Mary as his delivery method for Christ, God has “scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts,”[7] has “brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”[8] What a legacy of justice and righteousness Mary has become a part of through her consent. This passage goes a long way toward affirming the idea that Mary’s consent, though fully her own, is affirmation and restoration of a line of prophesy that was made with the nation of Israel: “the Annunciation is the paradigmatic icon of the creaturely act of receptivity to the divine call, which means that Mary’s fiat fulfills the Abrahamic response [of Genesis 22].”[9] Not only is Mary’s consent a clear moment, but its consequence reach back into the past, as well as into the future of Jesus’ life, and the lives of his followers. Her consent is powerful.

Sītā’s consent is more complicated. Like Mary, consent in Sītā’s narrative results in her surrender, in Sītā’s case, to the will of her husband, Rāma. However, unlike Mary, Sītā is not uttering a clear, emphatic Yes in her own story; instead she is often protesting, but at the same time is surrendering to the task asked of her. One of the most pivotal scenes wherein Sītā is put to the test to see if she will consent is in the Trial by Fire, the Yuddha Kandha of the Rāmāyana. After having been kidnapped by the demon king Rāvana, she is rescued and returned to Rāma, his brother, Lakṣmana, and his royal court. However, Rāma is not happy to receive her. He believes that Sītā has been unfaithful to him while she was hostage, and he spurns her devotion. Rāma tells her, “‘Since, however, your virtue is now in doubt, your presence has become [..] profoundly disagreeable to me… I do not love you anymore. Go hence wherever you like.’”[10] He banishes her from his sight and his kingdom, despite her fealty and fidelity.

Sītā has perhaps only one way to act from here: to grant Rāma’s wishes and leave. Sītā does not do this; again, like Mary, Sītā defends her fidelity and her devotion. “‘If I came into contact with another’s body against my will, lord, I had no choice in this matter… My heart, which I do control, was always devoted to you.”[11] Bereft as she is, Sītā does not see departing from Rāma as a real option: for to do so would be to confirm the suspicions about her that seem to have swayed Rāma to this point. Her commitment to their relationship is so complete that if Rāma does not want her, then she can see no other way to live. She asks Lakṣmana to build a pyre and steps into it. Is this Sītā’s choice? It is arguable that Sītā cannot consent because she is coerced into an act like this. But when we look at Sītā’s story in full, we will see that even this act is a choice that Sītā makes. Even in this, she consents to Rama. Her choice to have a funeral pyre build before Rāma and his court is a kind of consent in her behavior: she is continuing to consent to her husband as the lord of her life. The pyre serves as a witness to her honesty and as a testament to the tapas of her fidelity and virtue. Before stepping into the fire, Sītā utters, “‘Since my heart has never once strayed from Rāghava, so may Agni, the purifier, witness of all the world, protect me in every way.’”[12] It is clear that Sītā believes the fire is will bear witness, will exonerate her fidelity to Rāma. She is not committing suicide (an act often maligned, specifically in this context, where women taking their own lives by entering their deceased husbands’ funeral pyres is a practice named for Sati); she is purifying her witness to her own truthfulness. In a sense, by entering the pyre she is “doing what she wills”, which is what Rāma has asked, but also, she is continuing to maintain her devotion only to her lord, Rāma. While this is not the clear, emphatic Yes that Mary gives, it is an important act: like Mary, Sītā surrenders in this choice. She defends herself and her virtue, and then she offers herself to the fire to prove herself…

Mary and Sītā both undergo a span of challenge in their narratives: … Mary… is plagued by forgetfulness, she travels a long distance while far into her pregnancy, and significantly, she repeatedly has to defend her virginity to her husband, as well as to priests in her community. Similarly, Sītā is repeatedly tested and challenged by her own husband, Rāma. After being rescued from her kidnapper, she is scorned and spurned, and whether by command or because she feels she has no other recourse, she consents to immolate to prove her fidelity and purity. Rāma accepts her back, but after a time he allows his pride and insecurity to make him believe that Sītā is not devoted, and again, he casts her out: he charges his brother with taking her, pregnant with twins, into the wilderness and abandoning her near an ashram. She is left to roam the wilderness and to birth and raise her sons alone, and a sadhu discovers her and takes her into the ashram. This sustained testing shows both women’s strength. Despite humble circumstances, and indignities and humiliations leveled at them, both women choose to consent in such complex circumstances.

Sītā’s narrative takes a turn in a different direction, and her consent leads her away from Rāma. Rāma once more orders Sītā back to his court, to swear that her sins have been cleansed and that she is blameless. Rāma is attended by Sītā and her twin sons, as well as by many sages who bear witness to Sītā’s purity and fidelity. When it comes time for Sītā to speak, while honest and without reproach, her tune has changed. Sītā is no longer willing to remain steadfast by Rāma’s side while he judges and mistreats her.

When Sītā, who was clad in ochre garments, saw all those who were assembled, she cupped her hands in reverence, cast down her eyes, and lowered her face. Then she spoke these words: “As I have never even thought of any man other than Rāghava, so may Mādhavī, the goddess of the earth, open wide for me.” And as Vaidehī was thus taking this oath, a miraculous thing occurred. From the surface of the earth there arose an unsurpassed, heavenly throne… Then Dharaṇī, the goddess of the earth, who was on that throne, took Maithilī in her arms and, greeting her with words of welcome, seated her upon it.[1]

Like with Agni in the Trial by Fire, Sītā asks the Divine Earth to respond to her as a witness to her behavior and purity of heart. For the first time in the story, Sītā leaves Rāma. She says, No: she no longer consents to being mistreated or mistrusted. She knows her strength and fidelity, and she will no longer consent to Rāma making her prove herself over and over or doubting her and so casting judgment on her based on the gossip of his people or his own insecurities. Much like the dutiful wife she is, when she has had enough of being mistreated, she goes home to her Mother, the Earth. As one of Madhu Kishwar’s interlocutors puts it in an interview, “… her appealing to Mother Earth to take her back into her bosom should not be interpreted as suicide. It is a statement of protest, that things had gone beyond her endurance limit. It amounted to saying: ‘No more of this shit.’”[2]

Though Sītā’s consent—to essentially continue to receive the mistrust and doubt of her husband, as well as to engage in his tests of her fidelity and her mistreatment repeatedly—looks different than Mary’s willing consent to be the mother of God and to undertake all the suffering contained within—of having her virginity tested and doubted, as well as outliving her son—both women practice consent as surrender. They choose to allow what befalls them to stand, unless or until they no longer choose to, in Sītā’s case. Consent is in both narratives an act of surrender. Consent is not a passive way of being; both women are moving toward a thing. If we consider the Wheel of Consent as a kind of model for their behavior, we might place Mary in the “Accept” quadrant in the lower right corner. Mary gives herself over and accepts the Holy Spirit to her, and in this way, she consents to be Theotokos. Sītā’s role places her in the “Allow” quadrant, the bottom left: Sītā allows Rāma to misjudge and mistrust her, to the point where she consents to self-immolation to prove herself worthy of him; she allows him to banish her, pregnant with his own children, from his kingdom, into the wilderness. She routinely protests her innocence and faithfulness, but she never considers leaving Rāma, faithful to him in her heart and in her actions, even when they are apart. Ever the devoted and dutiful wife, Sītā allows Rāma to think the worst of her.

Both Mary and Sītā have power in these circumstances. Even Sītā, who seems powerless in her case, is choosing to consent. It would be easy to portray Sītā as victim. In an ethnography of the role of Sītā in popular culture by Kishwar, one woman interviewed says that while Sītā is an ideal wife according to Indian societal norms, that, “[Sītā] should have rebelled more. She should have refused even the first agniparīksha.”[4] But our frustration with Sītā is part of what makes consent so compelling: her consent, even to mistreatment, is what empowers her in this narrative. Though Rama does not know or acknowledge it, Sītā has as much power as he, power over her own willing presence in his life. She chooses to surrender herself to his (mis)treatment of her, until she decides she has had enough. Sītā’s final refusal and departure is vital to the Rāmāyana: this is the moment that shows all her longsuffering was not just by her husband’s will, but by her own. Power was in her hands the whole time.

David Kinsey writes, “Sītā’s self-effacing nature, her steadfast loyalty to her husband, and her chastity make her both the ideal Hindu wife and the ideal pativrata [devoted wife]. In a sense Sītā has no independent existence, no independent identity.”[5] This would certainly be an easy point of view for us to take, but it erases the presence and importance of Sītā’s consent. If Sītā is, as Kinsley labels her a few pages later, an intercessory for Rāma, then she must be able to see both herself and Rāma as individuals. Even as her actions and choices are to prioritize Rāma and the unitive space of their relationship, the Srī/Viṣṇu connection of which Rāma seems repeatedly to be reminded, Sītā is able to recognize herself, at least in some part, in order to try and intercede for others. In the Srī Guna Ratna Koṣa, we read a verse wherein Srī acts as an intercessory: “Mother, Your beloved [Viṣṇu] is like a father/ yet sometimes His mind is disturbed/ when He also becomes a font of well-being for totally flawed people;/ but by Your skillful words—“What’s this? Who’s faultless here?”/--You made him forget,/ You made us your own children, You are our mother.”[6] Here, Srī (Sītā) reminds Viṣṇu (Rāma) that he is not without fault, he has also made mistakes, and because of this, should be more gentle and gracious with his children. This verse reminds us of the way in which Sītā functions for her devotees, “not approached directly for divine blessing but as one who has access to Rāma, who alone dispenses divine grace.”[7] In this way, as an intercessory, Sītā is quite like Mary, who also intercedes for her people. “[Mary] has become the mother of all Christians and all human beings… Assumed into heaven, she intercedes constantly for her children…”[8] Mary and Sītā both function as intercessors: their acts of surrender, their acts of consent, are what make their ability to seek favor with the Gods on our behalf possible.

What do we discover by reflecting on surrender as consent? Sītā and Mary have both functioned as models, particularly for women, of purity, blind devotion, and receptivity; often, these ways of being have been used to control and dominate women. Says one of the contributors to Kishwar’s work, “Even if the whole of society is bad, a woman can live a good life as long as she has a good husband. But if her husband turns out to be bad, there is no place left for a woman.”[9] But if we consider that consent is a choice—a moving toward, an action—and not a passive reception, we discover strength and agency examples to draw on. There is great power in consent, not just in what it makes possible for others, but for the sense of self-direction, and of relationship that it creates for the individual. Mary shows that consent allows us to be active participants in relationship with God, in the transformation of our own lives, and in the lives of others. Sītā shows that we are strong enough to consent to suffering if we believe that the suffering is somehow in service of our will or in service of something good to which we’re willing to subject our will; but we are not the victims of the whims of a God who seeks to cause us suffering. We control our consent and our refusal, and when we want to stop, we stop.

*

The footnotes don’t translate well, but I’ll add a bibliography for you to check out if you’re really curious.

*

It’s interesting to write a post like this during Advent: a season I’ve only observed—and that only by thinking about it and connecting to some resources that have offered great content for reflection—for the first time in my life this year. A season of repentance and reflection, of darkness and anticipation, of knowing that the birth of Jesus is coming and trying to get right in order to be ready to receive him, even though we don’t have to “be ready,” we just have to receive. I heard a sermon recently that compared POTUS to King Herod, and talked about how this weak, squeaky, smooshy-faced, brown-skinned baby came into the world as an absolutely political story. A religious (and ethnic? debatable?) minority in occupied territory who was only able to exist without being killed because another country allowed him and his parents to traverse their border, in attempt to escape an insecure, neurotic, racist, despotic national leader who actively plots to destroy his opponents so he can stay in power. In the midst of all this, a teenage woman told a strange, supernatural visitor that God could have his way in her life. In a not-too-distant religious tradition, a woman in relationship with a man who was nervous about his status, who surrounded himself with people who would validate his uber-masculinity and who routinely treated his partner like inconstant, lying garbage, (projection, arguably) his wife, a divine being of the Earth herself, kept saying Yes, kept giving her man time and space to try and work out his issues, because she knew she could handle it. These aren’t women who are small and polite, meek and accommodating. They’re women who know the value of their word.

This season, I feel tired. And angry. And weary of being nice. I am impatient and frustrated and sick of having to argue for my right to exist. I want to shout at people, to curse people, I want to fight.

I need help.

So what do I need to consent to? So often, Yes looks like moving forward for me. Is it an act of surrender right now? What do I do?

All I can think to do right now is to keep looking toward brave women, articulate, thoughtful, compassionate, who aren’t afraid to speak up, who aren’t afraid to set boundaries, and who know the value of consent. In the classroom, on the mat, in the street and online. I’m watching. Listening for the yes and the no.

p.s. bibliography

Bible Gateway. “Bible Gateway Passage: Luke 1 - New Revised Standard Version.” Accessed December 10, 2019. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+1&version=NRSV.

Boff, Leonardo. The Maternal Face of God: The Feminine and Its Religious Expressions. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987.

Clooney, Francis X. Divine Mother, Blessed Mother: Hindu Goddesses and the Virgin Mary. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Goldman, Robert P., Sally Sutherland Goldman, and Barend A. van Nooten, eds. The Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki: An Epic of Ancient India, Volume VI: Yuddhakāṇḍa. Critical ed. edition. Princeton University Press, 2009.

Kinsley, David R. Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu Religious Tradition. Hermeneutics: Studies in the History of Religions. Berkeley, [California]; Los Angeles, [California]; London, [England]: University of California Press, 1986.

Kishwar, Madhu. “Yes to Sita, No to Ram: The Continuing Hold of Sita on Popular Imagination in India.” In Questioning Ramayanas: A South Asian Tradition, n.d.

“Mariam,” Surah 19.” In The Study Quran. HarperOne, 2015.

Martin, Betty. English: Graphic of the Wheel of Consent with Shadows. April 15, 2015. Betty Martin. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wheel_of_Consent.jpg?fbclid=IwAR1XoKtf7HrfAg7ZulYLMJAWEkX2RXb9oK2nsWRs9cOpV-mqrGOLEIQqd9c.

Miller, Robert J. The Complete Gospels: The Scholars Version. 4th ed. Salem, Or.: Polebridge Press, 2010.

Riches, Aaron. “Deconstructing the Linearity of Grace: The Risk and Reflexive Paradox of Mary’s Immaculate Fiat.” International Journal of Systematic Theology 10, no. 2 (2008): 179–94. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2400.2008.00352.x.

“The Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki: An Epic of Ancient India: Uttarakhanda.” Accessed December 12, 2019. https://muse-jhu-edu.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/chapter/1899977.

Tulasīdāsa. The Ramayana of Tulsidas. [1st ed. Calcutta: Birla Academy of Art and Culture, 1966.

“What Consent Looks Like | RAINN.” Accessed December 10, 2019. https://www.rainn.org/articles/what-is-consent.

Yarnold, Edward. “The Grace of Christ in Mary,” n.d., 10.

An Open Letter to My Bestie, Adam Grossi; or HDS 2011 Final Exam, an excerpt

Here’s a part of my final exam for Early Christian Bodies.

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Part two: One text (25%) Imagine you are explaining this course to someone who has no background in early Christian bodies. They ask you to share one primary source text that will give them a snapshot of this class. In around 750 words, explain what text you would choose, what you think it would convey to your friend, and what it would not capture in terms of this course’s ideas, themes, or questions.

An Email from Jess to her best friend and teaching partner, Adam

Hey Adam,

There is So. Much. To say about this place. It feels like Oz: lots of glitz and spectacle, but also you suspect that most everyone is under a kind of spell… More soon, I promise. BUT. I am loving Early Christian Bodies.

If you read one text to help you get what this class is doing, I’d suggest 1 Corinthians. It blew me away. I’d just thought that Paul was a misogynist bossing people around (another religious hand-me-down from my mother: SO many of those coming up!). But I was wrong: he’s trying to help folks figure out how they live—as individuals and in community—now that they’ve decided to change their lives by becoming Christians.

Remember that point when you got really into yoga, and started reading the Yoga Sutras[1], and were ready to turn your life inside out practicing the yamas and niyamas[2]? And you were trying to figure out how to eat so you would be observing ahimsa[3]—did you really have to become a vegetarian?—and also what did it really mean to practice brahmacarya[4], was it abstinence or just moderation: remember all that? This text is like sitting down with a good—not perfect, but good—teacher who meets you in that headspace and gives you the straight talk about what practice is. “Okay, so being a yogi is and isn’t like before. Is smoking weed and eating cheeseburgers everyday really going to move you toward samadhi[5]? Would you instruct your students in this life?” It’s a book on how you treat your body as a Christian. Really compelling. Paul admonishes them for being too attached to who baptized who, which sounds like that bitchy lineage talk you hear from some yogis; there’s language about food, and sexual immorality. But it’s not rigid, it’s not dos-and-don’ts. Yes, there’s the chapter that EVERYONE reads at their Christian wedding, but in context, it’s saying that it doesn’t matter how many spiritual gifts you have, if you can’t love one another, you might as well be pissing in the wind. We’ve seen this, right? Siddhis[6] are all well and good for parlor tricks, but if you’re abusing your students who cares that you can astral project?

There’s a lot the letter leaves out: the way ancient bodies are gendered, or misgendered, and it’s pretty wishy-washy on freedom and slavery and equal rights. Hence fundamentalists using it as an excuse for abuse. But when you look closely, it’s… powerful: all of this as a response to Jesus. It’s amazing that one man had so much sway over so many hearts and minds, and at the same time, the early Christian experience just sounds so tortured. I feel for these early Christians. This miraculous man came and showed people how to love and forgive, and all any of his early followers can think about is if they’re suffering enough to be like them, whether they should stay virgins their whole lives. Can they have sex like the pagans or wear what pagans wear or eat what they eat. It’s like embodiment (and in this way it’s a bit Tantric) is this great veil of distraction that they can’t see past, that has them all tied up. It’s the worst and they’re just all so hungry and desperate for Christ to return and free them all form the hell of having to exist in a body.

I don’t know how much the world has changed in two thousand years. Sure, we have computers in our pockets, we’ve seen the edges of space, we can smash molecules into each other. But we’re still flummoxed by sex and power and how not to treat each other like crap. Thinking about how these things functioned in ancient (western) societies changes how you see them when you look at contemporary society.

It’s certainly lit a fire of compassion inside me. As frustrated and short-tempered as I get with Christianity, it’s as confused and frustrated—and immature—as it was in the early common era. But it also makes me want to write, to help and teach and say, y’all need to get better at this. This is not what it means to walk with Christ. We can do better.

It’s nice to read text that lights a fire under your ass like that. And that was just from the New Testament.

I miss you. More soon,

Jess


[1] A seminal yoga philosophy text attributed to Patanjali written and compiled around 5th Century CE.

[2] The first two “limbs” or paths of yoga, that correspond to observances of behavior.

[3] The first yama, meaning nonviolence or non-harm.

[4] The fourth yama, meaning abstinence, or literally to walk with God.

[5] The final limb of yoga, complete absorption with Divine.

[6] A siddhi is a kind of spiritual gift or ability that is cultivated through extensive, deep practice, enumerated in the Yoga Sutras.