She’s currently on a US tour, and made a stop just down the street from me last night. It was a lovely show -- not to mention tickets were a STEAL. Though my budget was glad she didn’t, she really should be charging much more for tickets to see her play. I highly recommend that you go see her when she comes to a town near you and that you buy lots and lots of her albums. We also got to see Pete Roe and The Smoke Fairies, who were both delightful.
Pete Roe -- His set was like stopping to hear some really good busking. Only on a stage instead of a subway terminal.
The Smoke Fairies -- You will either find their vocals lovely and calming, or you will be creeped the F out. There is no in-between.
Check out Laura’s website for touring info and to check out more of her music. To hear bits of one of my favorite songs, Darkness Descends, from her new album I Speak Because I Can, watch this video. (They tease you with it from the 20 second mark to the 1:00 mark, but get back to it around 1:45.)
Or I’m at least really giving it the ol’ college try. You know, I really didn’t want to let this Lenten book reading thing to turn into some kind of creepy Peter Rollins stalking blog, but seeing as how the evidence is already against me on this one I’m just going to go with it. At least for one more post. Going into this series I should have remembered (so I could warn you) that I generally have to fully immerse myself within another way of thinking or being to feel like I have any kind of a grasp on it, hence the incessant string of Peter Rollins related postings.
I’ve alluded to some deep internal change that has been happening recently, though they stem less from a recent discovery of something brand new than they are recent embrace and recognition and culmination of lots and lots of years of searching and hiding and suppressing and revealing. My journey with faith in God, or more specifically, my journey with a religiously sanctioned faith in God has always been…well…in a word you can say in front of your mother…difficult. It has been just over a year since I began the process of really and truly giving up on God. Not just giving up on a version of faith, or a particular worldview, but of clearing out that space inside myself that was dedicated to holding onto reasons for or against God. Labels like believer, atheist, agnostic, lost all of their meaning and I no longer cared which one of them I thought I might like to try to be since none of them fit very well on their own. Trying not to believe in God proved just as difficult as believing in God, so I decided to do neither. I decided just to stop. Giving up all of that allowed me space to get reacquainted with the self I’d buried under all those labels and boxes and rules. That space has allowed me to grow in ways I never expected, to find places inside myself long dormant, and I now experience more freedom, more creativity, and find answers on a much more regular basis. As wonderful as this new found freedom is, there are also many ways in which I am still finding my sea legs. Lots of wobbling around and losing my balance and trying not to get scurvy. Which is as awful as liberating. I am finding the Rollins stuff (books, lectures, ideas, etc…) to be really helpful in finding some of the language I feel like I’ve been searching for when it comes to Christianity, along with a some new ways to think about it that I could never have come up with. Plus, they’re PACKED with vitamin C. (Which is NOT some ‘vitamin C = vitamin Christ’ pun. I stuck it in there to resolve the scurvy issue. But my little clever writing mechanism isn’t so clever now that I’ve parenthetically explained it because I might die if that line were to be misread. Feel free to misread any of the other parts of this post, just not THAT part.)
The good news is that I’m not reading any more Rollins right now, I’ve moved on to Darwin. Yes, that Darwin. I may or may not write about it here, but you can rest assured that you won’t have to read anything else Peter Rollins related from this site. If somehow you’re not as f-ing sick of him as I am, you can get your fix elsewhere. I recommend here. The video below is 20 minutes long, but a summary of the ideas discussed during the Insurrection Tour.
My Lenten discipline 2010 is complete! I finished reading The Orthodox Heretic(click here to listen to audio files of Pete reading 2 parables and the book’s intro) and the seven supplemental parables on Saturday. On Monday night I sat in a pub in Nashville while Peter Rollins, Pádraig Ô Tuama, and Jonny McEwen, talked about doubt and Insurrection, and sang some Hymns to Swear By . If you are reading a really compelling book, my advice is to try and go hang out with the author and a couple of his friends shortly after you finish said book.
I’ve said much less than I’d intended to about the process of reading The Orthodox Heretic during the last month, quite honestly because the range and depth of emotion I’ve felt, coupled with all of life’s interruptions, did not leave me with much time to process all of that feeling into something concrete. I still struggle with complete sentences about the process and when I manage to get something out, it falls well short of the mark. (To which a very polite Peter Rollins can attest. Thank GOD there were other people waiting to speak with him so that he could make his escape.) Part of this struggle to communicate comes from the fact that the transformations or realizations or whatever that shifted inside me as I read are not just good ideas or interesting thoughts but are all part of a much deeper internal process. There are not many things that I can say that I believe in fully, but one of those things I believe is that everything in my life -- all that is internal and all that is external -- what I think, what I feel, what I eat, what I experience, is ALL very highly connected. My mind, body, and spirit (or inner self, or whatever you want to call it) are integrated in a way that I have never fully understood before, and I am currently steeped in the process of learning to balance them so as to allow them to work in unison. This means that where I would have formerly ignored certain aspects of myself, I am now slowly building muscle in atrophied areas. And this process is as horrible as it is liberating. On Monday, Peter said that doubt can be traumatic and I know for sure that some of what I am feeling is the undoing of some of the trauma from my Fundamentalist PTSD, while simultaneously learning the rhythm of new ways to live, think, and feel. I cannot write a straightforward critique or review of this book, because it refused to be approached that way. It is a book that when read as openly as possible, when experienced as opposed to deconstructed, will move you. It was incredibly difficult to let myself experience instead of immediately attack cognitively, though I found that when I took a few seconds before the daily reading to take a few deep breaths and clear out some space for it, I had a much easier time. And while I did not come out of Lent feeling pious, or deeply connected to Christ and his crucifixion or resurrection, it turns out that I did actually learn quite a lot. I am changed.
In an exercise of exhaustion sometime in the dark hours between Monday and Tuesday, as I lay in the hotel trying to calm my mind and spirit churning with everything the evening had dredged up, the unexpected tears I had suppressed on our walk out of the pub returned demanding to be reckoned with. Tears of anger, sadness, grief, unknowing, joy, certainty and gratefulness, not in that order but all mixed up together. I was escorted to sleep with the quite overwhelming realization that as hard as the work is, as awful as is can often be to question and wrestle with myself, and with faith, or with God, I was so very glad to be doing it and that there was really no other thing I’d prefer. In that moment, I knew those things as certainly as I know that I am alive. It was an altogether shocking though calming awareness. I’d not thought much about the gravity of that moment on my pillow, until my very emphatic singing along with Patty Griffin’s Mad Mission was abruptly interrupted by another wave of tears. The same deluge of emotions that had overwhelmed me before arrived again, thought his time they were accompanied by a much stronger presence of gladness. I realized that as mad a mission as it is to swim upstream through books and ideas that frustrate me, through this process of learning and thinking and growing and giving, my approach has changed from that of a victim toiling under oppression to a full sprint towards a tsunami. It’s a mad mission. Sign me up.
(I would have preferred just a simple clip of Patty Griffin singing this song, but I could not find one hence the kiwi cartoon. This is the only video that is not someone else attempting to cover the song. If you know of another good version online, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know in the comments.)
OK Go’s This Too Shall Pass video. I defy you to peel your eyes off of this.
And as a Lenten gift, I promise not to over-spiritualize this song for you AT ALL. Though I am biting my lip because look at that title -- it’s just asking to be combed for its spiritual application! Especially in light of my recent posts! I’m going to find a corner and breathe through it while you enjoy the video.
Yesterday I finished up the first third of The Orthodox Heretic, the section titled ‘Beyond Belief,’ and it is in that space where I still find myself – somewhere beyond belief. Many of the parables (at least in this section) are reworked from other stories you may already be familiar with, but it’s like looking through a kaleidoscope two clicks to the left of the typical story. Still recognizable, but with a twist. Lots of turning the story on its head so that you see God or faith in him through a different lens. As nice as it is to read a different perspective on Christianity, I still feel like I’m not quite clever enough to really get it.
I had this problem with Fundamentalism as well; church leaders would get up and preach from the Bible lots of things that wouldn’t sit well with me, but I didn’t feel like I could argue with them because I didn’t have a seminary degree, hell, I’ve never read the Bible all the way through, so who was I to tell them they were wrong? And I couldn’t usually articulate why they were wrong, I just knew it didn’t feel right, and asking questions only ever got me in trouble. It’s safe to say that I left a lot of Sunday and Wednesday evenings feeling stupid and frustrated and confused. I could never pray hard enough, or sing loud enough to understand or really believe in it all. The more altars I fervently prayed before, the louder I sang, and the more I pushed to personally experience God the way everyone around me seemed to be able to, the more silent the heavens.
While I definitely don’t have the same sense of ‘wrong’ inside when I read these parables, I do have the same sense of still not somehow being enough for all this God and faith stuff. I don’t get it. I can’t wrap my brain around how renouncing my faith equals finding the deepest faith. I have been in aggressive renounce now for quite awhile, and while I do feel better on several levels, I don’t feel like anything that looks, or smells, or quacks like faith in God exists, let alone goes any deeper than before. I don’t understand how to affirm God by denouncing his place (an idea Pete Rollins quotes from Dietrich Bonhoeffer). I feel like the minute I stopped believing that Jesus could make my life better was the minute I started healing. It was the minute things started changing in my life in a positive, healthy way. I don’t know how to reconcile that with faith in anything other than myself because it wasn’t Jesus, it was me. Believe me, I am still dealing with some Fundamentalist residue that reminds me to tread lightly here so as not to lose any hope of salvation for a moment of blasphemy, but this is how it looks from where I’m standing. And if God IS being more affirmed by all this, then he’s still not telling me about it.
Clearly, my critiques of this book are not going to be clean-cut, academic, or even very linear. They’re going to be messy, and sloppy, and emotional because this is what my spirituality, or journey towards spirituality, or whatever it is, looks like right now. Also, I feel like I should mention that even though this book may seem as if it is the bane of my spiritual existence, I’d highly recommend it to anyone, especially Christians.
Because, at least for the duration of Lent this site is already perilously close to a Peter Rollins stalking site, I thought I’d mention the I Believe in the Insurrection Tour happening this spring. There are only a few dates for this, and attending will likely require you to travel several hours crossing several state lines.
As I continue to do my Lenten readings in The Orthodox Heretic, I find myself growing increasingly irritated. Which may actually be a good sign, a sign of growth or movement or change…I dunno. But it’s pissing me off. Which is probably also a good thing, but I’ve been so pissed off with faith and God and religion for so long that I’m getting bored being mad even though I can’t seem to be anything else. Maybe it’s just that I’m in the collection of parables in the book called ‘Beyond Belief’ which seems to be where I live most of the time anyway, and I’m itching to move past it? Or perhaps something is rooting its way to the surface? Something I think I’m totally over, when in reality I’m not so much? Whatever the hell it is, it’s annoying the crap out of me. And it’s making me weepy. And punchy. And a little more volatile than usual. Posting in the middle of these feelings may end up being regrettable, but I am tired of trying to make faith seem nice and good and right when it rarely feels that way to me. And if I haven’t made it clear enough yet, this is a rough moment. All of this also explains why I’ve titled this I (Might) Believe in the Insurrection. Because maybe I don’t. Maybe I won’t think there’s anything worth fighting for. I’m still going to drive 5 plus hours to get myself to one of these events though.
The task today does not lie in some naive attempt to return to the early church. The church before Constantine. The church before Platonic philosophy. The church before Paul. The church before… For these moves fail to bring us back far enough.
Rather we must call a new army of agitators into being. Dissidents courageous enough to return to the event that gave birth to the early church. A new breed of individuals brave enough to turn back so as to advance.
Through a provocative cocktail of incendiary theology, haunting soundscapes and musical lament Peter Rollins and friends will offer an invitation to set forth on this perilous return. A return that will strip everything from us, incinerate everything we hold dear and inaugurate a new year zero.
In short, this Easter Rollins and friends set out to remind us that belief in the event of Resurrection means nothing less than participation in an Insurrection…
16th March, Belfast
31st March, Austin
1st April, Birmingham
2nd April, Atlanta
3rd April, Nashville
5th April, Charlotte
6th April, Washington DC
7th April, Boston
9th April, Grand Rapids
11th April, Greenwich
Information concerning venues and times will be posted in the coming months.
Joining Peter will be the poet/singer songwriter Pádraig Ô Tuama and the artist/DJ Jonny McEwen. Pádraig will be launching his first solo album Hymns to Swear By on this tour and has previously contributed to the ikon album Dubh. He has been the artist in residence for Corrymeela and is a published poet. Jonny specializes in developing immersive ambient soundscapes and creative audio montage. His latest album is entitled Fractured, broken and Beautiful. He is also an accomplished painter whose works can be found in many significant public and private collections.
Warning… this tour involves the use of strong language and ideas that may be unsuitable for those easily offended.
Last night I stayed up really late. I thought it was because I wasn’t tired, but as I get further into today I realize that I was really just trying to put off the coming of today. Which I know doesn’t make any real sense. But today is the beginning of Lent, and day one for me of reading The Orthodox Heretic. My plan is to do the daily readings in the morning before I’m wound up or tired from the events of the day, and thus far, I’ve stuck to that plan. For some reason I’ve decided to read the book first and the supplemental Lenten readings last. This morning I reread the introduction as well as the first story.
I have been trying to shrug off the heaviness I feel today, but I can’t fully escape it. I blame it on not getting enough rest. I blame it on carbs. I blame it on the weather. I blame it on anything to satiate the weight of the moment. Really though? I’m scared. I am terrified. I can’t quite articulate the ‘of what’ part yet, but I’ve felt it before. I felt it 8 months ago when I picked up and promptly put this book down the first time. I’ve felt it when I’ve read or heard other thinkers re-imagine Christianity. And as much as I’ve felt those brushes with freedom, those moments of finally being able to take full deep breaths, finding those moments of home for my soul, those moments have always been followed with a feeling of sadness or fear that isn’t only mental or emotional, but for me very physical. I feel a very physical weight that is almost a presence. Something as tangible as it is elusive. I am carrying it again today.
Part of me has labeled this already, has given it an origin, a quick problem for me to solve. Those are never the answers. Those are never the resolutions. They are the distractions. They keep me from doing the work, from finding the source. Lent this year will be as physical for me as it is mental, emotional, or spiritual. I’m not really sure why this component is important, but I can’t seem to get away from it.
There is still time to order the book from Paraclete Press to participate in this Lenten practice.
Lent. The Lenten Season. It starts tomorrow (Ash Wednesday, February 17th). I didn’t grow up in a faith that paid much attention to the liturgical calendar, so I have this ideal in my head of this season. It is one in which we deprive ourselves of something (usually food related) in order to relate to suffering of some kind, whether it be the suffering of Christ leading up to his crucifixion, or the suffering of other Christians around the world who do not enjoy the religious freedom we take for granted, or even to remind us of our own possible eternal suffering had we decided not to follow Christ culminating in a great sense of piety and deep gratitude for Easter Sunday and the Day of Pentecost. But even though I’ve been “practicing” Lent for the last several years, it has only ever served to make me realize just exactly how deeply confused and angry about faith I am on the inside. One year I gave up Lent for Lent, but since my confusion and anger and hurt wasn’t about Lent itself, that act didn’t relieve me as I hoped it might.
I’ve had this book on my nightstand for roughly 8 months or so. It’s called The Orthodox Heretic and Other Impossible Tales by Peter Rollins. I was excited to order it, I was excited to get it in the mail, I was excited to read it, and then I read the introduction and the scaffolding holding up the loose frame of what I thought had to be my faith folded under the weight of it. I was stunned. My excitement hasn’t disappeared, in fact it was so powerful that I put the book on my shelf and haven’t touched it since. And for once I’m not being sarcastic. In my attempt to figure out faith, and God, and religion I have had to shelve things for awhile in order to heal or rest or figure out what exactly I am really seeking. I’ve had brushes with new ways to think about faith that absolutely feel like home for my soul, but at the end of the day I am still too bound by what or how I think I’m supposed to believe, and my redemptive imagination isn’t strong enough to reconcile the two. The introduction to this book was one of those places that felt like home.
A few weeks ago, I came across an invitation to read The Orthodox Heretic one chapter a day during Lent. I signed up to do it just before I remembered how deeply I’d felt the damn introduction! (The introduction. Those pages at the front of the book that most people skip. Yeah.) I was stunned. I was speechless -- which I know, isn’t a stretch for an introvert -- but the level of comfort was paralyzing. I have come a long way out of the anger and expectations I’ve carried under years of fundamentalist belief, but I still have no idea what to do when I come across something that makes so much sense to me it feels like I’ve been trying to verbalize the same thing for as long as I can remember, and so I typically freeze. I freeze because I don’t want to replace one fundamentalism for another, and the muscle memory that tells me to do that is still strong. It is however, loosing its grip.
Because the book is seven stories short, Pete Rollins and Paraclete Press are offering supplemental chapters when you purchase the book from Paraclete’s website. (Your order confirmation page will contain a link to the supplemental stories.) Once you order the book the 7 extra parables will be available to you immediately, so you can start with this Lenten practice right away, giving your book time to travel.
(For all my Portuguese-speaking readers, these subtitles are for you! Ahem. I couldn’t figure out how to embed the videos found here and at theooze.tv)
I know I’ve posted a couple of Pete Rollins-themed things already, and you can count on at least one more because I plan to write either about this experience as a whole, or about the parable that had the most impact on me. Or possibly both. Or I’ll post every day about it and never shut up about it and turn this site into some kind of weird Christian celebrity stalking site. That last part is pretty doubtful, but never say never, right?
Thanks to Paraclete Press for the supplemental parables. If you aren’t doing something else for Lent already, order the book and join me. Or let me know what it is that you do during this season -- how is it meaningful to you? -- do you do it out of guilty habit or do you look forward to it each year? -- maybe you’ve never celebrated it?
