calamity's child

this is a thing of beauty, this letter [see below]. this genre i love the most – writers writing about writing – largely because the guidance people give about writing is really guidance about how to be in the world: instruction in really seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, feeling the world around us; ideas about how to organize our time so that we can give due diligence to our jobs, our crafts, our creative lives, our relationships, and to pleasure;  very reasoned ideas about how we can best communicate ourselves to other people – for developing clarity, intention, precision, and ultimately, meaning.

[also, do you know about this blog, letters of note? i've blogged about it before here. it is amazing! an archive of personal letters. one from yesterday was a letter from leonardo da vinci!]

one thing that strikes me about this letter especially is how close these guidelines are to ethical guidelines. “don’t use words too big for the subject. don’t say “infinitely” when you mean “very”; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something *really* infinite.” it is so close in meaning to this, on the middah of truth/emet: “do not allow anything to pass your lips that you are not certain is completely true.” i like so much that advice about writing is so obviously advice about living. say what you mean, and mean what you say. speak clearly and plainly; allow other people to hear and discern what is truly in your heart and on your mind.

from C.S. Lewis On Writing @ Letters of Note

(Source: The wonderful, C. S. Lewis’ Letters to Children; Image: C. S. Lewis at work, via .)

The Kilns,
Headington Quarry,
Oxford

26 June 1956

Dear Joan–Thanks for your letter of the 3rd. You describe your Wonderful Night v. well. That is, you describe the place and the people and the night and the feeling of it all, very well — but not the thing itself — the setting but not the jewel. And no wonder! Wordsworth often does just the same. His Prelude (you’re bound to read it about 10 years hence. Don’t try it now, or you’ll only spoil it for later reading) is full of moments in which everything except the thing itself is described. If you become a writer you’ll be trying to describe the thing all your life: and lucky if, out of dozens of books, one or two sentences, just for a moment, come near to getting it across.

About amn’t I, aren’t I and am I not, of course there are no right or wrong answers about language in the sense in which there are right and wrong answers in Arithmetic. “Good English” is whatever educated people talk; so that what is good in one place or time would not be so in another. Amn’t I was good 50 years ago in the North of Ireland where I was brought up, but bad in Southern England. Aren’t I would have been hideously bad in Ireland but very good in England. And of course I just don’t know which (if either) is good in modern Florida. Don’t take any notice of teachers and textbooks in such matters. Nor of logic. It is good to say “more than one passenger was hurt,” although more than one equals at least two and therefore logically the verb ought to be plural were not singular was!

What really matters is:–

1. Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn’t mean anything else.

2. Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don’t implementpromises, but keep them.

3. Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean “More people died” don’t say “Mortality rose.”

4. In writing. Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feelabout the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was “terrible,” describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was “delightful”; make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, “Please will you do my job for me.”

5. Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say “infinitely” when you mean “very”; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

Thanks for the photos. You and Aslan both look v. well. I hope you’ll like your new home.

With love
yours
C.S. Lewis

I have been away from the blogging for so long, and can’t give you anything too substantive today, but I want to leave you with these two  blog posts that I am completely obsessed with. They are both lists, both by Notable Literary Figures (Henry Miller and Joan Didion, respectively). Both offer two different, but equally important and compelling sets of rules. I am inspired by their conviction, brevity, clarity. By the ways that they are both clearly motivated by passion, diligence, and a willingness to be moved by inspiration. That with regulation comes space for whim — that is what I am looking for in my life: enough diligence and regularity that I have all the time and space I need to go where my heart leads me.

—

Henry Miller’s 11 Commandments. He wrote these while he was publishing Tropic of Cancer (1930s) and they are published in Henry Miller on Writing. I found them on Letters of Note (although inexplicably the post shows up on my Google Reader, but not on the blog itself. The internet is an elusive thing).

COMMANDMENTS

1. Work on one thing at a time until finished.
2. Start no more new books, add no more new material to “Black Spring.”
3. Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.
4. Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!
5. When you can’t create you can work.
6. Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers.
7. Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.
8. Don’t be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only.
9. Discard the Program when you feel like it—but go back to it next day. Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude.
10. Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.
11. Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.

—

Joan Didion’s Packing List, published in The White Album in 1979 (the year I was born!) and posted on Keep It Chic

To Pack and Wear:
2 skirts
2 jerseys or leotards
1 pullover sweater
2 pair shoes
stockings
bra
nightgown, robe slippers
cigarettes
bourbon
bag with: shampoo, toothbrush and paste, Basis soap, razor, deodorant, aspirin, prescriptions, Tampax, face cream, powder, baby oil

To Carry:
mohair throw
typewriter
2 legal pads and pens
files
house key

This is a list which was taped inside my closet door in Hollywood during those years when I was reporting more or less steadily. The list enabled me to pack, without thinking, for any piece I was likely to do. Notice the deliberate anonymity of costume: in a skirt, a leotard, and stockings, I could pass on either side of the culture. Notice the mohair throw for trunk-line flights (i.e. no blankets) and for the motel room in which the air conditioning could not be turned off. Notice the bourbon for the same motel room. Notice the typewriter for the airport, coming home: the idea was to turn in the Hertz car, check in, find an empty bench, an start typing the day’s notes.

i have lived here, in this room, for 8 days now. my cat, burt reynolds (yes, indeed, that is her name), came here two days ago, and she has been jointly hiding under my bed and hissing at her new cat-mate, l. l is a very friendly cat. truth be told, so is burtseleh. but burt is a calico, and she is shy and protective. so mostly, these past two days, she has been growling. then peeking out from my tiny sunporch of a room, meeting l briefly again, engaging in some sort of hissing-and-growling fit, then running back to my room as soon as possible.

i feel like burt right now, in this moment. i can’t really tell when i’m hissing or growling or what, but there is a constant back-and-forth of grounding down, then moving out, confronting something unexpected and perhaps unwanted, hissing and growling at it, hoping it will go away, and running back into my quiet place. unlike burt, who will have to just adapt to her new reality with l, i hope that i don’t have to just open myself fully to the things that i’m encountering. because really, i don’t want them.

i was told last week that if having good trans politics was my bar for whether or not people were ok, i am setting myself up, since it will never happen. it made me so angry, and so sad. what? am i supposed to just suck myself up to the bullshit people put out there? no. and maybe there are parts that i do need to do better. like, maybe have more space for people to have errors and come back. but i’m not even looking for people to be perfect. i’m looking for people to try, to respect me, to not exploit trans experiences and trans bodies.

my home now, the one i live in, it is quiet. i live in the backest corner of the house, and the house is full of feminist queer gender variant people, and a lot of working class experience. it is nice to feel basic and seen and to have a moment of pause in here, outside of the world we all live in. i need to have some place to rest within a world that causes a lot of hissing and spitting.

but maybe, through it all, my heart will grow, too.

the free siddur project is new to me, but something of a godsend. i don’t read hebrew. have some basic recognition, can sometimes follow along, but have a hard time with it and absolutely need transliteration to be able to access prayer in services. thing is, i tend to like a fairly traditional service, and i like sim shalom, and it’s not really the case that congregations that use sim shalom have a lot of transliterations kicking around. also, i like to make things at home, and i don’ t have kol haneshamah to help me out, so the free siddur project is totally an amazing resource: there’s everything you could want, in both hebrew and transliteration. no translation, so that part of the accessing is still difficult, but it totally makes participation possible.

+++++++

i went to mincha with my rabbi on wednesday, to park slope jewish center. no transliteration for that, either, but i did ok in holding my own, and only once was i in the wrong place and standing when everyone else was sitting (lost in my own little world of prayer). i love the amidah. i can’t say it enough, i love the amidah. the thing that’s different about weekday services of course is that prayers of supplication and petitioning are offered up, as it’s “normal” time, not celebration time, like it is on shabbat. i like the attention to intent: if we are celebrating, don’t ask god for things. if it’s a regular day, it’s fine. even more than that, though, in one of the amidah prayers, there is this line that basically says: i tried everything else god, and now i’m asking you: please help.

this is how i think of intercessionary prayer. god just doesn’t come on in and work things out for us. no way at all. and so having that be the first step, totally doesn’t make sense to me. i understand the comfort of it, understand the inclination, but in terms of actual belief in god and what that means for my own actions and obligations, it just doesn’t make sense. so this pleading, this hit me hard. i tried everything else, god. and now i’m asking you. god is a last resort in terms of helpers. we look first at ourselves and our community, at the resources around us, at the things that we can do and changes that we can make, and then we ask god. largely, it seems, to console ourselves, and to connect when we are feeling sad and dire.

+++++++

there is a tsunami warning in washington, oregon, california. it won’t be as bad in any of those places as it is in japan, guam, hawai’i, and all the little islands that have been washed over, and all the islands and land that are closer to japan. but my family are in seattle and san francisco, and i am scared, irrationally. i called my dad, and everything there is fine. next, calling m. i know in my heart that everything is ultimately going to be ok. but i have spent my life waiting for “the big one” that will send the west coast off into the pacific. my reaction in moments like this is not to thank god that i am 3000 miles away on the east coast and therefore 3000 miles away from volcanic plate techtonics and their accompanying tsunamis. my reaction is to be upset that i’m not there, too. not because i want to be in the action, but because i want to be with the people who matter so much to me, facing the earth’s whims together.

i haven’t edited and re-edited and re-edited a post as much as i did that last one ever. and still, there’s a piece that’s hanging over my head. but it deserves its own edification, it’s own entry.

you see, the thing about wallingford united methodist church was not that i needed to stuff myself and my theology down to be a member there. they are all active seekers, confused sometimes, athiest or agnostic sometimes, devout sometimes, traditional sometimes, eclectic sometimes, and on… they are like kolot in that way. they are firmly rooted in a tradition, but part of the beauty of these particular congregations is the space they give to seeking, questioning, and struggling.

the difference is this: the united methodist church is not committed to seeking, questioning, and struggling in the same way. there are articles of faith that you need to be able to sign on to to be methodist, to be christian. even unaffiliated christians, there are articles of faith. this is not as much the case with judaism. definitely, there are denominational arms of judaism that believe and act specific things and go about their judaism in specific ways. and definitely, there is the shema, the basic tenant of jewish belief. sh’ma israel, adonai eloheinu, adonia echad. (hear, israel, god is one, god is our god.) but still, even being religious is up for questioning within judaism, much less what that religiousity means. halachic judaism is different, but i do think that even many halachic jews would say that part of the practice of a jewish religious life is the theological struggle of belief and practice. we just are not all in the same place. and so, there is so much more freedom for belief. there is no one savior whom you have to believe in, there is no other person who’s going to take care of it for you. jews believe in people, also: whatever messiah may or may not come, it’s up to all of us to build the world-to-come, it’s up to all of us together, to be human together, to help each other to be human, to approach god together. we can’t do it alone, and its the centralization of god’s oneness that emphasizes our togetherness as individual people. so whatever i believe and struggle with, i do that in the context of togetherness as a jew. and while there might be jews who look at me and say, well, you are queer, you are trans, you didn’t convert orthodox, your practice of kashrut is so lax, you are not shomer shabbat, etc etc etc, you cannot possibly be a jew, well… for every jew with that perspective, there are other jews who say, no one does everything right, queers are a-ok, we can’t just let the rules of our tradition rule us without adapting them for our current age. that adaptation itself is such a central part of jewish religious practice, that it is absurd to single some people out for adapting the traditions to meet our humanity.

anyway, back to the point: kolot is an unaffiliated synagogue. it is intentionally unaffiliated. there is so much space there. all i have to do is be there and be in my life and my struggle and be in the community’s life and  the community’s struggle. i don’t have to make myself fit into the walls of what a denomination finds acceptable. and if, god willing, some day i am thinking more specifically about religious leadership, i’ll have to wrestle with this again: what denomination would take me, how do i make my beliefs and politics recognizable to a denominational body, especially around israel/palestine, queer stuff, anti-racism, class, and feminism?  but i don’t have to think about it now. because i don’t have to deal with denominational politics right now. because it’s kolot that i’m joining, as my pathway to judaism. my particularity on my way to the unity of judaism and jewishness. and that is why it’s so different for me. so much of it, most of it, is about my theology and practice being jewish already. but part of it, too, is about the space for individual and unaffiliated practice.

i went to the new/potential members brunch for my synagogue today. it’s weird to say that phrase, “my synagogue.” i spoke in my small group a little about how i had resisted coming to kolot regularly for a long time. it feels exactly like the church i was doing my ordination process in in seattle: comfortable and comforting, open, struggling to be just and caring and visionary, supportive in the hardest moments, liturgically challenging, commited to theological struggles and questions, has religious leadership that is invested in the lives of the community members, and really really queer. in a jewish context, it’s heymish. there’s no word in english that means the same thing, really, but both communities are like that. i was resistant because it just felt so much the same, and it was shocking to me. i didn’t know how to contextualize it, and it made me upset. i wrote off being a member of a community that feels like this when i left christianity. i was shocked to find a jewish community that feels so much the same, and i must say: i don’t know how to be a member of it.

when i left wallingford united methodist church, it was mainly because my sense that the denominations stance on homosexuality (“self avowed and practicing homosexuals shall not be ordained by The United Methodist Church”) wouldn’t be changing anytime soon, and i wasn’t willing to struggle to make my theology smash down into something that would be acceptable within methodist christianity if the church couldn’t even bring itself to treat me like the human that i am. it hurt the first time i went to kolot. it broke my heart. it felt exactly like wallingford, except that i could be all the parts of myself, and i don’t have to mash my theology into anything. it can be exactly what it is.

my call to congregational leadership is still there, alive and active. god only knows if anything will ever happen with it. but my heart is thawing some from the really serious damage that was done the day that i decided to leave wallingford. do you know what it is like to have a whole denomination that you are ready to commit your life to tell you, fairly unequivically, that you can only be there if you stuff yourself down deep inside and never let it show? to try to mash your theology into something recognizable for the sake of doing the work you are called to do, only to be told that you have to be closeted and partnerless to be able to even do your heart’s work?  and to have a congregation willing to fight the denomination with you because they care so much and believe in you so much? it feels so much worse than bad. so much worse than the worst heartache than i’ve experienced in the breakup of a relationship. so much worse than when i decided i wasn’t going to talk to my mother anymore. these were the people i had chosen. when i told them i was leaving, it was the hardest thing i have ever done. i can’t imagine doing anything that hard again. god forbid i ever have to.

it was right, to leave. it was unquestionably right. i am not going to hide myself, and i don’t believe in jesus or christian salvation, and didn’t even when i was pursuing ordination. there were too many compromises, too many sacrifices.  that congregation, though, they wanted me. they wanted me and i wanted them, and i wanted to lead a congregation like them. i want to lead a congregation like them. my heart aches to think of joining kolot, a little like i’m betraying wallingford, this congregation that i left 10 years ago, that i will never go back to, that is not even in my tradition anymore. i gave up on being a part of a community like this on the day i left wallingford.

but here i found myself, in the living room of a member’s brownstone in brooklyn. very, very ready to join. happy, if a little shocked, and feeling out the edges of this latent and unexpected reprise of my sadness about wallingford. i had given up on being a part of a community like this. but not because i didn’t want it. i gave up on it because i didn’t think i was going to find it without conditions. i don’t know kolot enough to know what the particulars are, but i know that i don’t have to mash myself into anything to be theologically acceptable. and i know that i don’t have to do any intense calculus about who knows what about my sex life. it has taken me a lot to come to this point, to be able to let myself seriously consider joining this shul, this community. but i deserve it. i deserve to be a part of a community that clearly cares about each other so much. we all do. my heart is breaking, and thawing, and healing.

why can’t give love one more chance?

’cause love’s such an old-fashioned word
and love dares you to care for the people
on the (people on streets) edge of the night (people on streets)
and love dares you (people on streets) to
change our way of caring about ourselves
this is our last dance
this is ourselves
under pressure

thanks, bowie, for always bringing it home, and reminding me what it’s all about

there is no snow day, but i am taking one anyway: when i walked to the b/q at 8 this morning, it was off, so i came home, stripped to my leggings and put on a hoodie and legwarmers and beanie, and i’m here for the day, reading for school, writing for my book project, and dreaming of the mushroom bourguignon i am making for dinner. i am thinking about the next couple months ahead of me, my new life with my schoolschedule, mussar and its time requirements, and still am thinking about joining a justice and jewish thought reading group. probably it’s a bad idea, time-management wise. but it seems like such a good group, and the religiousness will give me sanity in the midst of my first ever non-religious-studies degree program. we will see. it seems at this point easier to drink some more coffee, stare at the snow and be thankful i don’t have to touch it until it’s time to go to the store for mushrooms and wine, and write.

i was 16 when i first felt what i have described as a “call.” in my case, it’s a call to congregational leadership, to a kind of life in which my work is hinged around prayer, liturgical life, community building, and activism (to bring about the world to come, olam haba). i was in spokane, wa, and i knew some, but little. i knew what i wanted to do and be, but didn’t know that others were doing it. didn’t know that there was a whole world of other people who were congregational leaders doing multi-issue, multi-generational, multi-everything community organizing in a religious context. my mind was blown when, 3 years later, i came to san francisco as part of MoSAIC, methodist students for an all-inclusive church, which i co-directed; glide memorial church was doing an incredibly large-scale version of everything i had ever dreamed of. a hugely diverse congregation doing both reforming and radical work, they have housing programs and anti-oppression analyses within a multi-racial and multi-classed congregation. they were stunning. i wanted to be the pastor there.

i haven’t really been near glide memorial since then. i come to the bay once every 2 years or so, don’t often have reason to be in the tenderloin. but d works there now, in the tenderloin, and so i found myself walking past glide memorial when i was walking around waiting for him to get off work. it hit me hard, this building that represented so much of who i wanted to be at 19, that still contains the most basic form of the kind of work that i want to be doing in the world. this kind of organizing and caring and service provision doesn’t really exist in judaism, though: social services run through jbfcs’s, not through congregations, and its rare to find congregations that have shelters, food programs, services that support the folks who are most directly impacted by the failures of capitalism in our world.

i have this idea that somehow i’ll end up where i need to be in the future. maybe it’ll be that i’m content as a therapist. maybe i do spiritual direction work in a synagogue. maybe i’ll finally get there one day, years and years from now, and will figure out a way to be in congregational leadership. really anything can happen. but what i’m struck by right now as i’m sitting in this cafe across from delores park, writing about resources for religious TGNC-identified people, is how very, very consistently i come back to this path. i prefer to be writing and thinking about religion and practice. i make the most sense to myself and feel calmest and most centered, and most capable of change-making work here. i have to learn to honor that at some point, right?

the bay has me feeling more grounded than ever, right now. anchored to my past, looking forward into my future. who knows the path i will take, but it is nice to feel like my labyrinthine path is getting me somewhere, eventually.

it is new years and i’m sitting in my bff’s apartment on an aerobed across from the women’s building in the mission, in san francisco. i spent my nye making shabbes and eating thai and playing rockband 3; it was so low-key and even. it was my first time being one of few jews in a room: me, my housemate, and her partner (who lives here in the bay). two of us are converts, one is a rabbi. everyone else was a west coaster and indifferent at best to ritual. my bff is anti-ritual, but pro-angel cards, which is a tradition we have in my house where we pass around angel cards while singing shalom aleichem and then say who our angels are after we welcome the angels in. the angel cards say things like “creativity” or “patience” or “playfulness.” there were no angel cards tonight, but there was shalom aleichem which my housemate encouraged us to sing because she knows i love it so much. and i do. the tune is beautiful, the words are beautiful, the intention is beautiful. i like the pause in the blessing over lights, wine, and bread to welcome in angels and intention. it was weird to be the three of us doing this, because it’s shabbes and new years and we wanted to bring in the new years with shabbat. but it felt also, indelibly, right.

i love san francisco. i’ve resisted moving here for years, wanting to save something that felt so easy and comfortable for vacation. i am over the resistance now, though. i just want to be back on the west coast. back where there is enough humidity to always be able to breathe and for my skin to be comfortable, supple, and not itchy from the dry-as-hell winter. back where there are mountains and penninsulas and rocky coasts and fault lines and volcanoes. back to where there are hours long drives to get out of the state. back to where it is cheaper to see my family. i don’t know how, or when, i will get here, but i will. and then i will be one of few jews for a long time. hopefully by then i am comfortable in my jewishness, able to lead kiddush, able to know the prayers in my heart and muscles, able to hold this space on my own.

the new year: it is one of 5 for me now (rosh chodashim/nisan 1, selichot/elul 1, rosh hashana/tishri 1, tu b’shevat/shevat 15, secular new year/january 1) . it feels both meaningful and momentous, and mundane, and the mundanity of it all makes it more special to me. new years in the bay is remarkably chill. a few fireworks here and there. a few sirens here and there. a few cars here and there,. a few people here and there. festive, but not crazy, and everyone i was with wanted to be in bed by 1230. it is pleasant, and serene, and feels like a very honest way to bring in the new year: intention, fun, care.

i am looking forward to this new year, to seeing what lays ahead for me, and for us all. happy new year!