so, I'll come out and say this: Christianity/disability = OTP for life.
Maybe I mean religion in general but I'm not going to assume I know other religions enough to make that judgment.
I know that a lot of disabled people are really offended by the idea that being around disabled people is a big spiritual lesson. But I feel that it is for me, and that being disabled is a big spiritual lesson, also.
So much of what we think we want and need, or need to be, are just things we've constructed. So when we can't do the things we think we must do, then we have to see that all of this is not objectively real. In the most terrible periods of my life, my eyes have had to unfocus to survive and it becomes all about color, sleep, crushes, laughing for a minute, the sky, finding something on the ground, really small pieces of Love.
As I have said, I can often hold on to what I'm told I need to be, which is I guess um--what an embarrassing phrase--my blessing and my curse, and I guess the curse of the "hf," the "barely disabled," the "invisibly disabled," blah blah blah. I don't have to let go of all of it although of course this puts me into a constant state of panic because holding on is almost impossible for me and I can feel myself almost losing it, and maybe I'll never let myself lose it, I don't know, or maybe I'll find a life that I can actually live.
I am glad that I have gotten to know people with severe and profound disabilities because I have learned that people who cannot do and/or have some of the things that are supposed to be mandatory are still people, and their life is still life; and then I see what's actually real, which is, you know, real life, not "success." So yeah. I have learned spiritual things from being around disabled people. Which I guess I'm not supposed to say. But it's difficult to avoid.
Something about being queer and disabled (and specifically Autistic) and Christian and semi-synesthesiac and whatever else is just that really brief connections and experiences always continue to exist for me after they're gone. I don't see there as being an end other than Love--many of the "means" are really that end, and the ends are just means to throw us into Love and sometimes tear us away. So I can keep my pieces of Love with me because I can always see them in time even when they are gone.
One of my classes in the UK was taught by a professor who kept making fun of Christianity and religion in general. She said, "You never see people wearing a gold electric chair around their neck."
Well, the thing about me is, of course I would. That's why I'm Christian. I know perfectly well that's what it is. And maybe being disabled has put me in this kind of twee-pop place of wanting to say, "Fuck yeah failure." Yes? Maybe?
Showing posts with label christian(s and ity). Show all posts
Showing posts with label christian(s and ity). Show all posts
22 March, 2011
22 February, 2011
religion, queerness, disability, background, and consent
I was at my college's queer/faith group today and felt kind of bad because I said something like, "I'm not from a religious background and I came to God through being queer so it's really weird for me when people see gay + Christian and imagine that I have some sort of conflict or that this has caused trauma for me." (Or even imagine that I realized those things in the opposite order from when I actually did.)
This seems really privileged as if I think that the reason people see gay + Christian and associate that with a really terrible set of experiences is just some anti-religion bias. I mean, the people who've said this to me are atheists so I do feel a little bit like they're stereotyping Christianity and religion in general and failing to understand that at its core there's nothing that would inherently be my enemy as a queer person. And I kind of like expressing how much that isn't my experience because my type of experience is so rarely expressed.
At the same time, it's a very rare experience. I grew up with liberal atheist parents and I go to a college that is primarily liberal atheist--that is a tremendous privilege for a gay person. So for me to be like, "Yeah, God and I are buddies, why wouldn't we be?" is kind of a dick move. It's actually kind of like the way I feel about queer people who have overcome certain things, that I can't overcome as easily due to being disabled, and act like all queer people can overcome those things.
I know a lot of people's experience is one of religion being forced on them. But mine is one of being expected not to be religious and even feeling uncomfortable as a religious person in the spaces I tend to be in, and once having someone compare the fact that I believe in God to unusual stuff I do that's related to my disability. Which is really not cool.
This also applies to disability. My disability has been (cognitively and emotionally) a huge barrier to my ability to participate in things like church--largely because church is unfamiliar. So I'm very jealous of my liberal atheist and otherwise non-Christian* friends who had a sort of upbringing where they were brought to church, confirmed, etc., and the fact that they went away from that wasn't such a big deal to their families but it was just kind of how they did things as they were growing up. Because that structure would have been really important and my life would be totally different if I'd had it. I'm really lucky that my dad is as supportive as he is or I would never have (finally) been baptized and would have even less experience going to church than I do.
*(not that atheist=non-Christian but I'm thinking of people who are agnostic or "spiritual but not religious"--not people who have converted to another religion or heavily identify as anything.)
When I was a kid I had a babysitter who was Catholic and would pray with me when she put me to bed, against my parents' wishes. I'm extremely grateful for this because it gave me familiarity with prayer and the knowledge that it was an option. I still pray the way she taught me, every night. But I know what most atheists, and even many Christians, would think of her decision. And I don't know how to reconcile that with my gratitude.
I'm looking for a job next year and I'm interested in a particular facility for kids and teenagers with disabilities, which is Christian. It would be really wonderful for me to work in an environment that's Christian and I do relate being staff to being Christian (I don't mean this the way it probably sounds, but it's a huge other thing to talk about--it has nothing to do with me being better than the people I serve). But I feel creeped out also because, while they write on their website that the people they serve have a choice about being Christian or going to church, religious education, etc., they use the word "encourage."
In my experience, some people with disabilities have been taught to be compliant to the extent that if you "encourage" them to do something, or even ask them if they want to do something, they perceive it as an order.
I mean, I also have known people--and actually, this doesn't just mean more severely disabled people who I've been staff for, this also includes me, and maybe this includes me more than anything in terms of religion--who have a very hard time saying they want to do something, asking to do something, even saying "yes." My camper Stephen from this summer would say no to everything, including things he had previously shown he liked; after bringing up the subject again and again, you might be able to find out whether he really didn't want to. Sometimes this didn't work and you had to put him in a position where he had to make an effort to opt out, instead of to opt in--this was generally how you found out for sure what he really wanted.
I'm not saying this in terms of the facility, because that word encourage really does bother me and I'm not applying there until I can figure out what it means. But when it comes to religion, I am a great deal like Stephen. Which is very confusing for me and which, I'm afraid, often results in me saying things that ignore the very nonconsensual and/or negative history that a lot of people from my communities have with religion.
This seems really privileged as if I think that the reason people see gay + Christian and associate that with a really terrible set of experiences is just some anti-religion bias. I mean, the people who've said this to me are atheists so I do feel a little bit like they're stereotyping Christianity and religion in general and failing to understand that at its core there's nothing that would inherently be my enemy as a queer person. And I kind of like expressing how much that isn't my experience because my type of experience is so rarely expressed.
At the same time, it's a very rare experience. I grew up with liberal atheist parents and I go to a college that is primarily liberal atheist--that is a tremendous privilege for a gay person. So for me to be like, "Yeah, God and I are buddies, why wouldn't we be?" is kind of a dick move. It's actually kind of like the way I feel about queer people who have overcome certain things, that I can't overcome as easily due to being disabled, and act like all queer people can overcome those things.
I know a lot of people's experience is one of religion being forced on them. But mine is one of being expected not to be religious and even feeling uncomfortable as a religious person in the spaces I tend to be in, and once having someone compare the fact that I believe in God to unusual stuff I do that's related to my disability. Which is really not cool.
This also applies to disability. My disability has been (cognitively and emotionally) a huge barrier to my ability to participate in things like church--largely because church is unfamiliar. So I'm very jealous of my liberal atheist and otherwise non-Christian* friends who had a sort of upbringing where they were brought to church, confirmed, etc., and the fact that they went away from that wasn't such a big deal to their families but it was just kind of how they did things as they were growing up. Because that structure would have been really important and my life would be totally different if I'd had it. I'm really lucky that my dad is as supportive as he is or I would never have (finally) been baptized and would have even less experience going to church than I do.
*(not that atheist=non-Christian but I'm thinking of people who are agnostic or "spiritual but not religious"--not people who have converted to another religion or heavily identify as anything.)
When I was a kid I had a babysitter who was Catholic and would pray with me when she put me to bed, against my parents' wishes. I'm extremely grateful for this because it gave me familiarity with prayer and the knowledge that it was an option. I still pray the way she taught me, every night. But I know what most atheists, and even many Christians, would think of her decision. And I don't know how to reconcile that with my gratitude.
I'm looking for a job next year and I'm interested in a particular facility for kids and teenagers with disabilities, which is Christian. It would be really wonderful for me to work in an environment that's Christian and I do relate being staff to being Christian (I don't mean this the way it probably sounds, but it's a huge other thing to talk about--it has nothing to do with me being better than the people I serve). But I feel creeped out also because, while they write on their website that the people they serve have a choice about being Christian or going to church, religious education, etc., they use the word "encourage."
In my experience, some people with disabilities have been taught to be compliant to the extent that if you "encourage" them to do something, or even ask them if they want to do something, they perceive it as an order.
I mean, I also have known people--and actually, this doesn't just mean more severely disabled people who I've been staff for, this also includes me, and maybe this includes me more than anything in terms of religion--who have a very hard time saying they want to do something, asking to do something, even saying "yes." My camper Stephen from this summer would say no to everything, including things he had previously shown he liked; after bringing up the subject again and again, you might be able to find out whether he really didn't want to. Sometimes this didn't work and you had to put him in a position where he had to make an effort to opt out, instead of to opt in--this was generally how you found out for sure what he really wanted.
I'm not saying this in terms of the facility, because that word encourage really does bother me and I'm not applying there until I can figure out what it means. But when it comes to religion, I am a great deal like Stephen. Which is very confusing for me and which, I'm afraid, often results in me saying things that ignore the very nonconsensual and/or negative history that a lot of people from my communities have with religion.
03 October, 2010
so, while I'm being gooey on the Internet, who wants to make a line drawing of one of these carvings so I can get a tattoo of it?
(I'm not sure which one I want.)
I know this is pretty obnoxious, but it occurred to me that people can be pretty nice/strange online so it might be worth a try, also the only people who ever comment here are in fact the very two people who I already know can draw and wanted to ask, but I was like maybe that's obnoxious, so let's do it passive-aggressive style instead.
To explain why this is a GREAT tattoo, I will make a list:
1. these carvings were made by Christians back in the third century when Christianity was still awesome. I identify as Christian without the last 1700 years.
2. Jonah obviously represents me being a JACKASS and never standing up for myself or other disabled people and how God will send a whale to eat me if I keep on like this (but if I'm lucky it will be a whale depicted by a third-century Christian who doesn't know what a whale looks like, awesome).
ETA: I actually don't really want this tattoo anymore so if you are one of the people I was trying to harass into drawing me a picture, don't worry about it. You have your life back.
(I'm not sure which one I want.)
I know this is pretty obnoxious, but it occurred to me that people can be pretty nice/strange online so it might be worth a try, also the only people who ever comment here are in fact the very two people who I already know can draw and wanted to ask, but I was like maybe that's obnoxious, so let's do it passive-aggressive style instead.
To explain why this is a GREAT tattoo, I will make a list:
1. these carvings were made by Christians back in the third century when Christianity was still awesome. I identify as Christian without the last 1700 years.
2. Jonah obviously represents me being a JACKASS and never standing up for myself or other disabled people and how God will send a whale to eat me if I keep on like this (but if I'm lucky it will be a whale depicted by a third-century Christian who doesn't know what a whale looks like, awesome).
ETA: I actually don't really want this tattoo anymore so if you are one of the people I was trying to harass into drawing me a picture, don't worry about it. You have your life back.
02 October, 2010
Why God won't heal amputees
(I already posted this on my tumblr, so I apologize for anyone reading it twice. I just figured since I wrote two tumblr posts on it I could combine them into one regular-length post.)
It’s funny because I think why won’t God heal amputees? is a really important question but not for the same reason the people at the website think it is.
(First of all you’re assuming that the only possible God is a God who answers prayer at least some of the time. This is obviously not true--and in fact I don’t believe in “the power of prayer” in the mainstream Christian sense, so I am not arguing completely from my own point of view--but I’ll let it go for now.)
1. Presumably you don’t think that if someone prays for something that’s obviously really bad, the fact that it doesn’t come true proves the nonexistence of God. I think most people who believe in the power of prayer wouldn’t be swayed by someone saying, “I prayed to God for my ex-boyfriend to be in a car accident and die, but it didn’t happen!”
2. Disability is part of Creation. God won’t heal amputees, and won’t heal many other PWDs, because without disability life would be really stupid and boring. Just because someone thinks they should be non-disabled doesn’t mean they should be, anymore than someone who thinks their ex-boyfriend should die in a car accident is actually right.
The End.
some other responses: The Thinker
Wheelie Catholic (who also points out how offensive the whole website is to PWDs)
And, also:
when I was a kid, I used to have this book Always Wear Clean Underwear, which I think my parents got me because they were atheists but I was really interested in religion which they weren’t super happy about, but I think they got accustomed to it and realized they should try to make me be the kind of religious person that atheists can still get along with. So they gave me this book which was written by a rabbi and mentioned God and praying a little bit, but was mostly just a funny book about how to be a good person.
There was one part in the book where he described hell as being a place where a bunch of hungry people are sitting around a table piled high with delicious food, but when they reach out and pick up the food, their arms won’t bring it back to their mouths. Then he described heaven the same way. Since you are not eleven years old, I bet you can figure out the surprise ending: in heaven, everyone feeds each other. I know this is cheesy but I like it.
I think this also applies to our regular, pre-afterlife life, and can pretty easily be related to the question that atheists think is going to really stump religious people: “But are you saying that GOD CREATED DISABLED PEOPLE?? HOW COULD THAT POSSIBLY BE TRUE??”
Okay guys, let’s think about this. Disability is socially constructed. “Socially constructed” doesn’t mean that disability isn’t real. It’s super real. But it’s real because people who look and act different are discriminated against, and people who have different needs don’t have those needs met.
You, yourself, going around saying, “but look, if God really is so great, why did He create people who can’t do all the stuff that I think people should be able to do? Why doesn’t He cure them?”—you yourself have the power to cure all the disabilities in the world, by treating disabled people as equals and trying to help everyone get what they need, and encouraging everyone you know to do the same. You could actually be curing disabled people right now, but instead you’re making a dumb website where you try to use a cliched idea of disabled people to prove a point.
It’s funny because I think why won’t God heal amputees? is a really important question but not for the same reason the people at the website think it is.
(First of all you’re assuming that the only possible God is a God who answers prayer at least some of the time. This is obviously not true--and in fact I don’t believe in “the power of prayer” in the mainstream Christian sense, so I am not arguing completely from my own point of view--but I’ll let it go for now.)
1. Presumably you don’t think that if someone prays for something that’s obviously really bad, the fact that it doesn’t come true proves the nonexistence of God. I think most people who believe in the power of prayer wouldn’t be swayed by someone saying, “I prayed to God for my ex-boyfriend to be in a car accident and die, but it didn’t happen!”
2. Disability is part of Creation. God won’t heal amputees, and won’t heal many other PWDs, because without disability life would be really stupid and boring. Just because someone thinks they should be non-disabled doesn’t mean they should be, anymore than someone who thinks their ex-boyfriend should die in a car accident is actually right.
The End.
some other responses: The Thinker
Wheelie Catholic (who also points out how offensive the whole website is to PWDs)
And, also:
when I was a kid, I used to have this book Always Wear Clean Underwear, which I think my parents got me because they were atheists but I was really interested in religion which they weren’t super happy about, but I think they got accustomed to it and realized they should try to make me be the kind of religious person that atheists can still get along with. So they gave me this book which was written by a rabbi and mentioned God and praying a little bit, but was mostly just a funny book about how to be a good person.
There was one part in the book where he described hell as being a place where a bunch of hungry people are sitting around a table piled high with delicious food, but when they reach out and pick up the food, their arms won’t bring it back to their mouths. Then he described heaven the same way. Since you are not eleven years old, I bet you can figure out the surprise ending: in heaven, everyone feeds each other. I know this is cheesy but I like it.
I think this also applies to our regular, pre-afterlife life, and can pretty easily be related to the question that atheists think is going to really stump religious people: “But are you saying that GOD CREATED DISABLED PEOPLE?? HOW COULD THAT POSSIBLY BE TRUE??”
Okay guys, let’s think about this. Disability is socially constructed. “Socially constructed” doesn’t mean that disability isn’t real. It’s super real. But it’s real because people who look and act different are discriminated against, and people who have different needs don’t have those needs met.
You, yourself, going around saying, “but look, if God really is so great, why did He create people who can’t do all the stuff that I think people should be able to do? Why doesn’t He cure them?”—you yourself have the power to cure all the disabilities in the world, by treating disabled people as equals and trying to help everyone get what they need, and encouraging everyone you know to do the same. You could actually be curing disabled people right now, but instead you’re making a dumb website where you try to use a cliched idea of disabled people to prove a point.
05 September, 2010
The Bible is always saying that you should hate the world and sometimes I feel like hating the world is a way of better loving it. And hating people is a way of loving them better. Being focused on your own pleasure from other people, being afraid of having conflict with the people you love if you don’t do what will make them like you in the short run, is really a way of guaranteeing that the love you experience with them is not real.
My dad and I got to go to my dad’s friend’s church which I really love. The priest was a gay person and he mentioned his coming out process in his sermon. I’m always disoriented when people assume that being queer and religious is some sort of conflict for me. And I am also disoriented I think when queer religious people hold opposing views, having relationships and being open in secular environments, but still kind of acting as though they think homosexuality is wrong when they’re in religious environments. I would not be with God if I was straight I think. And I really fear the loss of God now that I’m in an environment where my sexuality is not such a big issue, because being an oppressed minority breeds hatred—and by hatred I mean the disconnect from immediate gratification and easy connection that causes you to detach enough to treasure everything and try to be consistent and decent in your actions.
It is really frustrating that Christianity is so based in community because it makes it hard for me to do things like go to church because I have so much anxiety about groups. So I wouldn’t say that having autism is helpful to me in the way that being queer is, or if it is it equally helps and hurts me—because autism is a little like the kind of hatred I’m talking about, the tendency to focus seriously on details instead of being caught up in your impression of what’s really going on. And that is I think a gift. But the anxiety stuff is a huge problem and I just feel shitty when I think of all that people have gone through to be Christian when I can’t even talk to people and initiate actions enough to be baptized, which consequently makes it hard for me to make myself go to the church in Oberlin because I can’t take communion, blah blah blah. I pray a lot on it and all but I guess your own mind is the hardest thing to fight.
My dad and I got to go to my dad’s friend’s church which I really love. The priest was a gay person and he mentioned his coming out process in his sermon. I’m always disoriented when people assume that being queer and religious is some sort of conflict for me. And I am also disoriented I think when queer religious people hold opposing views, having relationships and being open in secular environments, but still kind of acting as though they think homosexuality is wrong when they’re in religious environments. I would not be with God if I was straight I think. And I really fear the loss of God now that I’m in an environment where my sexuality is not such a big issue, because being an oppressed minority breeds hatred—and by hatred I mean the disconnect from immediate gratification and easy connection that causes you to detach enough to treasure everything and try to be consistent and decent in your actions.
It is really frustrating that Christianity is so based in community because it makes it hard for me to do things like go to church because I have so much anxiety about groups. So I wouldn’t say that having autism is helpful to me in the way that being queer is, or if it is it equally helps and hurts me—because autism is a little like the kind of hatred I’m talking about, the tendency to focus seriously on details instead of being caught up in your impression of what’s really going on. And that is I think a gift. But the anxiety stuff is a huge problem and I just feel shitty when I think of all that people have gone through to be Christian when I can’t even talk to people and initiate actions enough to be baptized, which consequently makes it hard for me to make myself go to the church in Oberlin because I can’t take communion, blah blah blah. I pray a lot on it and all but I guess your own mind is the hardest thing to fight.
02 May, 2010
Church at home
When I was a kid I was afraid of the sound of flushing the toilet. I'd run out of the bathroom as fast as possible, without washing my hands. When I got older I was expected to wash my face and use an electric toothbrush but the electric toothbrush especially upset me too much.
Normally I'm okay. But the worse things get, the less I can handle the sound and feel of the electric toothbrush. Also, I find church to be very scary, as I've mentioned several times, so the worse things get, the more I become this little unhygienic person skulking around my dorm on Sunday morning, with very dirty hair and very dirty teeth (or, possibly, trying to get into the bathroom when no one else is there so I can jump around while brushing my teeth to distract myself from the toothbrush overload).
Oh right! So, because of not going to church, I was thinking maybe I'd try to write religious stuff here on Sunday. I tend to think that I was better on God stuff when I was thinking about it in on my own instead of feeling that it had to be about other people, or specifically about social structures. I almost feel like developing the idea that I had to go to church is one of the biggest mistakes I've ever made. I can probably count on all my digits the amount of times I've gone to church since I made that decision two years ago, so it's just a way of making myself feel like a failure because church is hard for me.
So:
I’m glad I’m Christian because other religions don't have room for what a major shit I am.
I believe certain things about God. Specifically: I am NOT good enough. Something needs to take me over. Terribly. Always.
It’s not about sitting around and whining about how I’m not good enough. I think of it as being a lot like disability. My sin is not a tragedy. It’s also not nothing. Something has to be done about it. God is my assistive technology.
Normally I'm okay. But the worse things get, the less I can handle the sound and feel of the electric toothbrush. Also, I find church to be very scary, as I've mentioned several times, so the worse things get, the more I become this little unhygienic person skulking around my dorm on Sunday morning, with very dirty hair and very dirty teeth (or, possibly, trying to get into the bathroom when no one else is there so I can jump around while brushing my teeth to distract myself from the toothbrush overload).
Oh right! So, because of not going to church, I was thinking maybe I'd try to write religious stuff here on Sunday. I tend to think that I was better on God stuff when I was thinking about it in on my own instead of feeling that it had to be about other people, or specifically about social structures. I almost feel like developing the idea that I had to go to church is one of the biggest mistakes I've ever made. I can probably count on all my digits the amount of times I've gone to church since I made that decision two years ago, so it's just a way of making myself feel like a failure because church is hard for me.
So:
I’m glad I’m Christian because other religions don't have room for what a major shit I am.
I believe certain things about God. Specifically: I am NOT good enough. Something needs to take me over. Terribly. Always.
It’s not about sitting around and whining about how I’m not good enough. I think of it as being a lot like disability. My sin is not a tragedy. It’s also not nothing. Something has to be done about it. God is my assistive technology.
30 March, 2010
Good Behavior and Psychoanalysis
Jelly told me about this person named Smockity Frocks who is a Christian homeschooling blogger and apparently never heard of disabled people before in her life. She took her post down and replaced it with a link to Autism Speaks (of course, because it's better to eradicate people with disabilities than treat them with charity and understanding) but it's cached here: http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B5C2Ta2YGCfTYmRhOTliZTUtNjQ5ZC00MmNjLWJmYzItNWU5MjNlYzU4ZTc3&hl=en
Basically, her post was about how she was at the library with her kids, READING THE BIBLE (for some reason that's my favorite part), and this other kid was waiting for the computer that SF's daughter was using. The other kid got very frustrated by waiting and started flapping her hands and saying, "I'm being really patient," to which her grandmother would reply, "Yes, you're being very patient, soon you'll be able to use the computer." So SF made a post about how no one understands how to treat kids anymore, and this kid was majorly spoiled and wasn't actually being patient at all, or something.
Then a bunch of people commented on it and were like, "This kid obviously has ASD and you fail at being Christian." Smockity Frocks was like, "Well, her grandmother should have made her read a book instead." Then the other people said, "That might not have worked with a kid who has ASD," and it all climaxed with Smockity Frocks declaring, "Well, YOU'RE not being very Christian YOURSELF, because what if I have a disability that keeps me from being able to tolerate kids who are BRATS??"
Oh, boy. There is a collection of response posts here from people whose kids have disabilities: A Message for Smockity Frocks. I haven't read them all but I like Kristina Chew's post a lot. Jelly also wrote a post, which is really good: Oh the joys of judgmental people. From my not especially thorough skimming, it seems like Jelly is the only ASD person who has written a post.
This was striking to me because I've been having a lot of trouble with waiting lately. I've said I've been having shutdowns but that's not really true because they're not really a state of bluntedness or distance, which is how I think of shutdowns; at the same time I don't want to call them meltdowns because I don't actually do anything. They're like proto-meltdowns, and they happen in situations like this, when I'm waiting for something to happen, or something to be over, and I get so tremendously agitated that I feel like I'm going to have...well, a regular meltdown. Which isn't practical since I'm 21. To stop it from happening I start trying to scratch myself with pens and stuff.
I'm sure that if someone looks around the room when a class is running long and sees me gritting my teeth and scratching my arms with a pen, it probably looks to them like I'm being a jerk and trying to tell everyone how much I don't like the class, but this isn't the case. Trying to judge other people's morals is a terrible idea, and CS Lewis explains this much better than I can in the chapter of Mere Christianity called Morality and Psychoanalysis. (I think this chapter isn't that specific to Christianity and can still be useful and interesting if you're not Christian.) CSL points out that you don't know what is happening to a person inside and it's not fair to just judge them by what they do because you don't know what they're fighting against.
[Note: I know that CSL equates homosexuality with having a phobia of cats. I think this is actually pretty charitable given his time period and culture, because he understands that a person can't help being gay and a gay person can be moral, or at least move in a moral direction. Obviously your mileage may vary, but I think he has a good attitude given his raw material.]
This is part of why instead of saying "high-functioning," "low-functioning," etc., I like to say "severely affected," "mildly affected," and so on. This means that instead of thinking about what the person appears to be doing, I'm thinking about what they are working against or around. This seems like a fairer and more accurate way of thinking about people.
The greatest story ever told: At the ASD school where I interned last summer, they used to take the kids on the subway. A lot of the kids had trouble taking the subway and their aides would try to make things easier, for example they'd hold a big clipboard in front of the kid showing how many points the kid was earning by being well-behaved. Also some of the kids would wear iPods on the subway.
Another thing that made the experience easier was being able to sit down. If people didn't offer their seats to the kids, the aides would sometimes ask. Apparently, one time they asked this woman if she could move over so one of the kids, who not only disliked standing, but also had a cold, could sit down. So she very slightly moved over and sat there glaring at the kid, who was squished in next to her. AND THEN HE SNEEZED ON HER FACE.
Basically, her post was about how she was at the library with her kids, READING THE BIBLE (for some reason that's my favorite part), and this other kid was waiting for the computer that SF's daughter was using. The other kid got very frustrated by waiting and started flapping her hands and saying, "I'm being really patient," to which her grandmother would reply, "Yes, you're being very patient, soon you'll be able to use the computer." So SF made a post about how no one understands how to treat kids anymore, and this kid was majorly spoiled and wasn't actually being patient at all, or something.
Then a bunch of people commented on it and were like, "This kid obviously has ASD and you fail at being Christian." Smockity Frocks was like, "Well, her grandmother should have made her read a book instead." Then the other people said, "That might not have worked with a kid who has ASD," and it all climaxed with Smockity Frocks declaring, "Well, YOU'RE not being very Christian YOURSELF, because what if I have a disability that keeps me from being able to tolerate kids who are BRATS??"
Oh, boy. There is a collection of response posts here from people whose kids have disabilities: A Message for Smockity Frocks. I haven't read them all but I like Kristina Chew's post a lot. Jelly also wrote a post, which is really good: Oh the joys of judgmental people. From my not especially thorough skimming, it seems like Jelly is the only ASD person who has written a post.
This was striking to me because I've been having a lot of trouble with waiting lately. I've said I've been having shutdowns but that's not really true because they're not really a state of bluntedness or distance, which is how I think of shutdowns; at the same time I don't want to call them meltdowns because I don't actually do anything. They're like proto-meltdowns, and they happen in situations like this, when I'm waiting for something to happen, or something to be over, and I get so tremendously agitated that I feel like I'm going to have...well, a regular meltdown. Which isn't practical since I'm 21. To stop it from happening I start trying to scratch myself with pens and stuff.
I'm sure that if someone looks around the room when a class is running long and sees me gritting my teeth and scratching my arms with a pen, it probably looks to them like I'm being a jerk and trying to tell everyone how much I don't like the class, but this isn't the case. Trying to judge other people's morals is a terrible idea, and CS Lewis explains this much better than I can in the chapter of Mere Christianity called Morality and Psychoanalysis. (I think this chapter isn't that specific to Christianity and can still be useful and interesting if you're not Christian.) CSL points out that you don't know what is happening to a person inside and it's not fair to just judge them by what they do because you don't know what they're fighting against.
[Note: I know that CSL equates homosexuality with having a phobia of cats. I think this is actually pretty charitable given his time period and culture, because he understands that a person can't help being gay and a gay person can be moral, or at least move in a moral direction. Obviously your mileage may vary, but I think he has a good attitude given his raw material.]
This is part of why instead of saying "high-functioning," "low-functioning," etc., I like to say "severely affected," "mildly affected," and so on. This means that instead of thinking about what the person appears to be doing, I'm thinking about what they are working against or around. This seems like a fairer and more accurate way of thinking about people.
The greatest story ever told: At the ASD school where I interned last summer, they used to take the kids on the subway. A lot of the kids had trouble taking the subway and their aides would try to make things easier, for example they'd hold a big clipboard in front of the kid showing how many points the kid was earning by being well-behaved. Also some of the kids would wear iPods on the subway.
Another thing that made the experience easier was being able to sit down. If people didn't offer their seats to the kids, the aides would sometimes ask. Apparently, one time they asked this woman if she could move over so one of the kids, who not only disliked standing, but also had a cold, could sit down. So she very slightly moved over and sat there glaring at the kid, who was squished in next to her. AND THEN HE SNEEZED ON HER FACE.
28 March, 2010
this is a transcript, obviously
Hey, so I can't remember if this wasn't recent or if it was a while ago, but my friend Todd was like, "How come you don't make any YouTube videos anymore?" and I was like, "Todd, um, I can't talk, that's why I don't make videos."
Like I feel like the reason I was making them in the first place was just as an experiment in talking, because I usually don't talk because I don't talk very well, so I realized it was kind of cool to make YouTube videos because I could practice saying things as many times as I wanted, or I could just say things and never post them but just listen to them and listen to how I talk. It's just really exciting to have the freedom to talk when you usually don't talk because you're a shitty speaker.
So that's my thing, and I don't know why Todd can't just read my blog, or he could call me on the phone and then he could listen to how horribly I talk--but then I guess he couldn't see me fidgeting around, which is maybe the best part.
Well, something happened, current events. It involves a person that I know but I really don't like to say his name because it has too many vowels in it--see, this is why I can't make videos, this kind of shit is actually sincerely upsetting to me because it's hard for me to say words that have too many vowels in them. That's why I don't talk. Well. This is his name. [holds up hand that says "Ari Ne'eman" on it, and carries on about that situation for a while, but I'm not transcribing most of that because I already posted about it twice]
...Do we need autistic mice? They would be cute, but what's even cuter, I think, is kids with severe autism getting an education so that they can communicate. I think that would be even more adorable than autistic mice...
I think I was going to talk about the idea of cure but the problem is that it's so nebulous to me and it feels so personal that it's hard for me to really say that I'm anti-cure--or what I like to say, rhetorically, is that I'm pro-cure and that I would take a cure pill, but just that I don't think, um, that I don't think it's particularly likely or easy, so.
I guess, okay. I would take a cure pill now, I think. Yeah, I can say that for sure. You know, it just makes stuff harder. But because stuff has been harder, I've realized, you know--I haven't had all the options that other people have had, I guess, I haven't been able to say, "I'm going to do this when I grow up," because I know that there are a lot of things, because I can't talk very well, and certain other things that are not going to be really possible--so I think, because of that I became interested in working with people with disabilities which really has been hugely meaningful to me, and if that hadn't happened, if I'd had all these options I'm afraid that that wouldn't have been the case. I also--I feel that my love for people is different and almost more tender because it's been so hard for me to be close to people and understand them that when it happens it's almost such a shock that it's sort of miraculous.
I guess my problem is I just don't necessarily have a very standard way of looking at things and whether things are good or bad, and I know, objectively, that having a disability, I think makes your life worse, but I mean, I mean, I mean, I can see how that's true if you write it all down, like, mathematically, I guess it's all worse, but it's just like, I feel that my life has been so meaningful to me through my disability and through other people's disabilities that it's really difficult for me to say "I don't want disabilities to exist."
I mean, if you don't want pain and disability to exist, like, instead of trying to figure out the gene for autism or continuing to abort fetuses with the gene for Down Syndrome--I mean, I think that the condition of pain and difficulty is called, um, "life," and I think every fetus has the gene for life, so I think it might be better if people just stopped living or having babies, if you really want life to not have difficulty in it.
But, I mean, okay, I feel concerned saying this because I know that this is, like, a political issue, but for me, I guess it's really hard for me to think about it because it feels philosophical and religious to me, and, I don't know. I haven't read this so I probably shouldn't talk about it, but I read about a woman who was a disabled Christian theologian, and she wrote books talking about Christ as a disabled person, since He was a person who was injured and in pain, and I feel, I don't know, I guess it's hard for me to, as a Christian person, to see the condition of injury and incompleteness, to see those things as something that I have and other people don't. I feel like it's clearer for me, sometimes I almost feel luckier because I feel like it's pretty easy for me to understand that I have a bunch of original sin going on because I'm not very good at hiding anything that I'm thinking or feeling, so I just know about it.
Yeah, I'm sorry to say this. I guess this isn't political, except the beginning, you should support Ari, but um, it's just difficult for me to think about disability the way that you're supposed to think about it. It's kind of like, um, what's the line, it's from Serenity, you know when the Operative is talking about the better world or whatever and he says, "Oh, I'm not going to live in the better world." Like, hypothetically, I understand that a world without disability is in some form a better world, right?
But I mean, I just don't want it, you know, I feel like if we get a world without disabilities I feel like I'm just gonna hop into a time machine and go back somewhere where we have them again, because I just don't understand the point of life without disabilities. Um, yeah, I don't know--is this a weird thing to think?
I mean, I know people with severe disabilities and I feel for them a lot when they're in pain so I don't think it's that I don't understand what disability is, that I think it's just a little thing, but it's just, it's hard for me to think that we should just get rid of it I guess--yeah, that's all.
Like I feel like the reason I was making them in the first place was just as an experiment in talking, because I usually don't talk because I don't talk very well, so I realized it was kind of cool to make YouTube videos because I could practice saying things as many times as I wanted, or I could just say things and never post them but just listen to them and listen to how I talk. It's just really exciting to have the freedom to talk when you usually don't talk because you're a shitty speaker.
So that's my thing, and I don't know why Todd can't just read my blog, or he could call me on the phone and then he could listen to how horribly I talk--but then I guess he couldn't see me fidgeting around, which is maybe the best part.
Well, something happened, current events. It involves a person that I know but I really don't like to say his name because it has too many vowels in it--see, this is why I can't make videos, this kind of shit is actually sincerely upsetting to me because it's hard for me to say words that have too many vowels in them. That's why I don't talk. Well. This is his name. [holds up hand that says "Ari Ne'eman" on it, and carries on about that situation for a while, but I'm not transcribing most of that because I already posted about it twice]
...Do we need autistic mice? They would be cute, but what's even cuter, I think, is kids with severe autism getting an education so that they can communicate. I think that would be even more adorable than autistic mice...
I think I was going to talk about the idea of cure but the problem is that it's so nebulous to me and it feels so personal that it's hard for me to really say that I'm anti-cure--or what I like to say, rhetorically, is that I'm pro-cure and that I would take a cure pill, but just that I don't think, um, that I don't think it's particularly likely or easy, so.
I guess, okay. I would take a cure pill now, I think. Yeah, I can say that for sure. You know, it just makes stuff harder. But because stuff has been harder, I've realized, you know--I haven't had all the options that other people have had, I guess, I haven't been able to say, "I'm going to do this when I grow up," because I know that there are a lot of things, because I can't talk very well, and certain other things that are not going to be really possible--so I think, because of that I became interested in working with people with disabilities which really has been hugely meaningful to me, and if that hadn't happened, if I'd had all these options I'm afraid that that wouldn't have been the case. I also--I feel that my love for people is different and almost more tender because it's been so hard for me to be close to people and understand them that when it happens it's almost such a shock that it's sort of miraculous.
I guess my problem is I just don't necessarily have a very standard way of looking at things and whether things are good or bad, and I know, objectively, that having a disability, I think makes your life worse, but I mean, I mean, I mean, I can see how that's true if you write it all down, like, mathematically, I guess it's all worse, but it's just like, I feel that my life has been so meaningful to me through my disability and through other people's disabilities that it's really difficult for me to say "I don't want disabilities to exist."
I mean, if you don't want pain and disability to exist, like, instead of trying to figure out the gene for autism or continuing to abort fetuses with the gene for Down Syndrome--I mean, I think that the condition of pain and difficulty is called, um, "life," and I think every fetus has the gene for life, so I think it might be better if people just stopped living or having babies, if you really want life to not have difficulty in it.
But, I mean, okay, I feel concerned saying this because I know that this is, like, a political issue, but for me, I guess it's really hard for me to think about it because it feels philosophical and religious to me, and, I don't know. I haven't read this so I probably shouldn't talk about it, but I read about a woman who was a disabled Christian theologian, and she wrote books talking about Christ as a disabled person, since He was a person who was injured and in pain, and I feel, I don't know, I guess it's hard for me to, as a Christian person, to see the condition of injury and incompleteness, to see those things as something that I have and other people don't. I feel like it's clearer for me, sometimes I almost feel luckier because I feel like it's pretty easy for me to understand that I have a bunch of original sin going on because I'm not very good at hiding anything that I'm thinking or feeling, so I just know about it.
Yeah, I'm sorry to say this. I guess this isn't political, except the beginning, you should support Ari, but um, it's just difficult for me to think about disability the way that you're supposed to think about it. It's kind of like, um, what's the line, it's from Serenity, you know when the Operative is talking about the better world or whatever and he says, "Oh, I'm not going to live in the better world." Like, hypothetically, I understand that a world without disability is in some form a better world, right?
But I mean, I just don't want it, you know, I feel like if we get a world without disabilities I feel like I'm just gonna hop into a time machine and go back somewhere where we have them again, because I just don't understand the point of life without disabilities. Um, yeah, I don't know--is this a weird thing to think?
I mean, I know people with severe disabilities and I feel for them a lot when they're in pain so I don't think it's that I don't understand what disability is, that I think it's just a little thing, but it's just, it's hard for me to think that we should just get rid of it I guess--yeah, that's all.
28 February, 2010
To people who have trouble going to religious services
Something to remember: God doesn't think you're normal, ever.
I missed church because I spilled a bottle of soda on my desk so I decided to go to student mass. I don't have much experience pretending to be Catholic and throughout the day it was an unpleasant prospect. I decided not to go a million times. As I was walking there, I decided to call Clayton and talk to him instead, but he wasn't there, so I decided to call Noah and hang out with him. Noah is always there but this time he wasn't. By the time Noah was done not being there, I had arrived at the chapel, and I just went in.
It is really hard for me to go to church since I wasn't raised going to church and I never know what to do and also have to worry about stuff like people maybe talking to me. But I just tried really hard to remember that Passing is Not Ethics. Basically, fucking up in church because I wasn't raised going to church, or because I'm a freak in general--I mean, God knows.
I forgot to genuflect when I went into my pew and it was like, okay, no one's watching me, and even if someone was, God knows why I forgot. I really liked going to mass. I just faked knowing what to say and stuff. I just sort of moved my lips. And I just have to remember that God knows why I do things wrong or right.
This isn't totally related, but I found it a few months ago and it makes me really happy: Suggestions (with many examples) about how to help ASD kids go to religious services.
I missed church because I spilled a bottle of soda on my desk so I decided to go to student mass. I don't have much experience pretending to be Catholic and throughout the day it was an unpleasant prospect. I decided not to go a million times. As I was walking there, I decided to call Clayton and talk to him instead, but he wasn't there, so I decided to call Noah and hang out with him. Noah is always there but this time he wasn't. By the time Noah was done not being there, I had arrived at the chapel, and I just went in.
It is really hard for me to go to church since I wasn't raised going to church and I never know what to do and also have to worry about stuff like people maybe talking to me. But I just tried really hard to remember that Passing is Not Ethics. Basically, fucking up in church because I wasn't raised going to church, or because I'm a freak in general--I mean, God knows.
I forgot to genuflect when I went into my pew and it was like, okay, no one's watching me, and even if someone was, God knows why I forgot. I really liked going to mass. I just faked knowing what to say and stuff. I just sort of moved my lips. And I just have to remember that God knows why I do things wrong or right.
This isn't totally related, but I found it a few months ago and it makes me really happy: Suggestions (with many examples) about how to help ASD kids go to religious services.
22 February, 2010
Living in the pregnant pause
(Hi, before you start you should know that this is not very much about what I usually post about--it's mainly about religion. As with many Christian traditions I halfheartedly absorbed just because I'm American, I feel that I didn't fully understand Lent when I decided to give up I'm Somewhere Else. Having thought about it more, I feel that Lent is a way of living and thinking and isn't as simple as just giving up something concrete, and I think this post is an appropriate post for me to make during Lent.)
When I was younger I used to think that all gay people felt empty and cried all the time because we're naturally unhappy people because it's an inferior state. I thought that whenever people did gay pride or anything, they were just trying to convince themselves, like the Emperor's New Clothes, and that when gay people said they were in love and wanted to get married, they were just trying to convince themselves they were in love, but really they were settling for someone they didn't really love.
This is probably hard to believe given how much I complain about being gay on this blog, but I don't feel that way anymore. There are still a lot of aspects of it that I find to be shitty, but I know they affect other people differently. Also, I just don't feel miserable. I think a lot of this has to do with my environment. When I was in high school I looked at all the shitty aspects of being gay and would just cry all the time, but I think that's because aside from the legit shitty aspects I was in an environment where there were lots of non-innate shitty aspects, like having to feel really nervous about everything I wrote and said, and having to feel cut off from being friends with both genders in different ways. These aspects were sort of under-the-radar and pervasive so I didn't necessarily see them. At Oberlin they are mostly gone, so even though I don't think that being gay is a fun time, I think that being alive while being a gay person can be a very fun time.
So, anyway, the way I used to feel about gay people is now how I feel about religious people. I drew a pretty good comic about it in class.
AFV: batter my heart 3-person God
God: (reaches down with a giant shining hand and wrests AFV's heart open) Hi! I'm here!
AFV: (looks happy)
AFV a few minutes later: (looking sad) Did that really happen. I probably just imagined it. AARGH I'm so alone in the world.
The fucking shit that God has done for me and I don't even care. Or, um, the fucking shit my brain is doing because the idea of there not being a God makes me want to die? Except, either way I just want to die so I can find out, at this point I feel like I'd rather be in hell and know there is a God. (I recognize this is kind of a messed-up thing to put on the Internet. I have no motivation to commit suicide, lots of fun stuff is happening right now and I'm a happy person, gay germs aside. I'm sure I will be agonizing about the afterlife for seventy more years, unless I get hit by a bus.)
I have actually figured out how I ruined my relationship with God. Amusingly, given that I now feel pretty normal about being gay, and horrible about God, in the time period when I felt horrible about being gay, God was just around. Sometimes people are like "it must have sucked to find out you're gay, you're so religious" but I wasn't raised in a religion at all. In fact I became religious when I was ten, after I had already started finding out that I was gay. It was my own thing. For a while I would tell God that I was sorry for being gay, but I soon figured out I wasn't. Even later, when I felt like it was an empty, horrible thing to be, I didn't think that God was mad at me for it or anything like that.
Sometimes I thought my prayers got answered. However, in twelfth grade I prayed for my music teacher, who was bipolar and would yell and swear at the kids in my class, to get better, because I knew something horrible was going to happen. I really loved my teacher, I was one of the only kids he considered worthy of apologies after he blew up. One time he awkwardly bought me flowers after making me cry in class. Anyway, I prayed a lot, and then something incredibly horrible happened. I think he wasn't even allowed back on campus afterward. After that, I didn't believe in the power of prayer, but I thought that God could change me if I wanted to be changed, and sometimes when I prayed I felt it happen--this grace, just something that altered my way of thinking about things.
Then at the end of first year I read Mere Christianity by CS Lewis. I always liked CSL when I was a kid but sometimes I think this was the worst decision I ever made. I always said Christian prayers because that's most of the little I had been exposed to, but I didn't really think Christianity was true. I remember watching the movie Jesus Camp and thinking "that sucks, those kids have a real feeling for God but they're being told all the wrong things about Him."
But then when I read Mere Christianity I thought a lot of it made sense. I started moving toward identifying as Christian. I also got interested in medieval studies and I was really moved by the way medieval Christians related to God. And I just thought that I wasn't Doing Enough. If I was Christian there would be certain things for me to read and certain things for me to do, in order to be a religious person.
The problem is because of my social shit it is pretty impossible for me to go to church regularly. For the past two Sundays I have gone to church and I think--could be wrong, could totally be wrong--that this will be the time it actually works out, because I have a friend who likes going to church and we go together, and no one really talks to us or anything, which is perfect.
Actually, I don't know why I said "the problem is." I have about eight problems. I would like to know what to do in church all the time, and be able to take communion. But it is scary to think about contacting people so I can get baptized and confirmed. Also, the really really really big problem is just that I have horrible doubts. And not just about the existence of God. I just find Christianity to be--well, I mean, it's very beautiful, and it makes sense, but--
Next year I want to live in Talcott, which is this really castle-y awesome dorm that is right next to the building where most of the creative writing and Latin classes are. Once I started thinking about living in Talcott, I remembered that the kosher co-op is in the same building, and wondered if it would be nice to join it. I remembered that last year I thought it would be nice to be in a co-op where they sometimes pray.
But then I couldn't even believe I had ever thought that would be okay, because I would probably like it a lot, and if I liked praying with Jewish people, then that would mean Christianity wasn't real. I realize now that I believe mostly in experience. I mean, I know I've experienced grace. But lots of people who aren't Christian have experienced things like that. I feel like my attempts at identifying with Christianity are just making me not believe in God because I find it completely impossible to reconcile Christianity with the things about God that I firmly and deeply believe.
Since I started identifying as Christian, I've become aware that lots more people than my parents (especially my father) are extremely contemptuous of religion. I mean, almost everyone I know is like that. It just makes me think I'm stupid and if I wasn't so stupid and deluded I'd be an atheist. I was reading some posts by chaoticidealism, who is an ASD person who's written some really good and important stuff about ASD and functioning level things, and is also Christian. She said that she has doubts, but that believing in God makes more sense to her than not believing in God, so it's actually less of a leap to be a theist. Maybe that's how I feel, now. The thing is I used to be so sure.
I keep meeting people and asking them if they're religious. Why would I do that? Who cares? Why do I need other people to make me not wake up in the middle of the night feeling incredibly terrified and alone all the time? (The other night I woke up and there was this voice singing outside and I didn't feel alone at all and I started shaking, but, fuck, that stuff never stays with me for long, of course, because that's just how stupid and horrible my brain is.)
I'm always screwing with my Facebook religious beliefs, trying to be clever and accurate at the same time. In the past year I've had "Episcopalian Quaker Deist," "Christian Universalist," "Affective Piety," "There was a pregnant pause before He said okay" (Belle & Sebastian), "Pray to God but row for shore" (a quote from Carnivale), and "Cretin." I guess these are all reasonably true (especially the Belle & Sebastian one) but "Cretin" probably gets the closest to how I feel.
"Cretin" means Christian. People started using it as a word for intellectually disabled people as a way of saying, God is for everybody. Our society hates intellectually disabled people, so now it is a Ramones song, but I like the original idea. I think that spending time with severely intellectually disabled people is a pretty good way to understand God, and this definitely isn't because I think that they are adorable saints, but I do think there is a deeper love in us that we try to constrict and deny the farther we get into the world. If you don't have language and you're not far enough entrenched in your standard culture to do impression management, I think that you experience and display that love in a more obvious way. I know a woman who tears up Bibles and scratches people in the face when she gets mad--I'm not saying severely disabled people don't have original sin--but she also hugs and kisses people as soon as she meets them. She doesn't remember people's names most of the time. I think that if we didn't remember we're not supposed to hug everyone, we would hug everyone. It's caritas.
I hope this doesn't come off as offensive but I seriously sometimes want a DDDD--Doctorate of Developmentally Disabled Divinity. I feel like maybe as I've tried harder to be standard, I've tried to make my feelings about God be standard too, and it's just not taking. It just makes me feel terrified, it has for months.
There has to be something under all the systems. There has to be something under all the words. I put all these words on top of God and now it's hard for me to see God. I'm always praying and it's like I need to pray to keep God alive. But what if there's a kind of prayer that stacks on top of God and hides God away?
I try to look at life like I have the brain disorder where you can see colors but you can't tell what anything is. Like an everlasting shutdown, but more fun. If you dislocate your mind like that, then of course you can see life is glorious, it's something more than the sum of its parts. But sometimes I'm afraid that that's all I can say about God. Maybe it's stupid that I find myself trying to say more than that.
(If you have any more faith than I do--i.e. about as much faith to fill a contact case, probably--please talk to me about this, I'm kind of falling apart.)
When I was younger I used to think that all gay people felt empty and cried all the time because we're naturally unhappy people because it's an inferior state. I thought that whenever people did gay pride or anything, they were just trying to convince themselves, like the Emperor's New Clothes, and that when gay people said they were in love and wanted to get married, they were just trying to convince themselves they were in love, but really they were settling for someone they didn't really love.
This is probably hard to believe given how much I complain about being gay on this blog, but I don't feel that way anymore. There are still a lot of aspects of it that I find to be shitty, but I know they affect other people differently. Also, I just don't feel miserable. I think a lot of this has to do with my environment. When I was in high school I looked at all the shitty aspects of being gay and would just cry all the time, but I think that's because aside from the legit shitty aspects I was in an environment where there were lots of non-innate shitty aspects, like having to feel really nervous about everything I wrote and said, and having to feel cut off from being friends with both genders in different ways. These aspects were sort of under-the-radar and pervasive so I didn't necessarily see them. At Oberlin they are mostly gone, so even though I don't think that being gay is a fun time, I think that being alive while being a gay person can be a very fun time.
So, anyway, the way I used to feel about gay people is now how I feel about religious people. I drew a pretty good comic about it in class.
AFV: batter my heart 3-person God
God: (reaches down with a giant shining hand and wrests AFV's heart open) Hi! I'm here!
AFV: (looks happy)
AFV a few minutes later: (looking sad) Did that really happen. I probably just imagined it. AARGH I'm so alone in the world.
The fucking shit that God has done for me and I don't even care. Or, um, the fucking shit my brain is doing because the idea of there not being a God makes me want to die? Except, either way I just want to die so I can find out, at this point I feel like I'd rather be in hell and know there is a God. (I recognize this is kind of a messed-up thing to put on the Internet. I have no motivation to commit suicide, lots of fun stuff is happening right now and I'm a happy person, gay germs aside. I'm sure I will be agonizing about the afterlife for seventy more years, unless I get hit by a bus.)
I have actually figured out how I ruined my relationship with God. Amusingly, given that I now feel pretty normal about being gay, and horrible about God, in the time period when I felt horrible about being gay, God was just around. Sometimes people are like "it must have sucked to find out you're gay, you're so religious" but I wasn't raised in a religion at all. In fact I became religious when I was ten, after I had already started finding out that I was gay. It was my own thing. For a while I would tell God that I was sorry for being gay, but I soon figured out I wasn't. Even later, when I felt like it was an empty, horrible thing to be, I didn't think that God was mad at me for it or anything like that.
Sometimes I thought my prayers got answered. However, in twelfth grade I prayed for my music teacher, who was bipolar and would yell and swear at the kids in my class, to get better, because I knew something horrible was going to happen. I really loved my teacher, I was one of the only kids he considered worthy of apologies after he blew up. One time he awkwardly bought me flowers after making me cry in class. Anyway, I prayed a lot, and then something incredibly horrible happened. I think he wasn't even allowed back on campus afterward. After that, I didn't believe in the power of prayer, but I thought that God could change me if I wanted to be changed, and sometimes when I prayed I felt it happen--this grace, just something that altered my way of thinking about things.
Then at the end of first year I read Mere Christianity by CS Lewis. I always liked CSL when I was a kid but sometimes I think this was the worst decision I ever made. I always said Christian prayers because that's most of the little I had been exposed to, but I didn't really think Christianity was true. I remember watching the movie Jesus Camp and thinking "that sucks, those kids have a real feeling for God but they're being told all the wrong things about Him."
But then when I read Mere Christianity I thought a lot of it made sense. I started moving toward identifying as Christian. I also got interested in medieval studies and I was really moved by the way medieval Christians related to God. And I just thought that I wasn't Doing Enough. If I was Christian there would be certain things for me to read and certain things for me to do, in order to be a religious person.
The problem is because of my social shit it is pretty impossible for me to go to church regularly. For the past two Sundays I have gone to church and I think--could be wrong, could totally be wrong--that this will be the time it actually works out, because I have a friend who likes going to church and we go together, and no one really talks to us or anything, which is perfect.
Actually, I don't know why I said "the problem is." I have about eight problems. I would like to know what to do in church all the time, and be able to take communion. But it is scary to think about contacting people so I can get baptized and confirmed. Also, the really really really big problem is just that I have horrible doubts. And not just about the existence of God. I just find Christianity to be--well, I mean, it's very beautiful, and it makes sense, but--
Next year I want to live in Talcott, which is this really castle-y awesome dorm that is right next to the building where most of the creative writing and Latin classes are. Once I started thinking about living in Talcott, I remembered that the kosher co-op is in the same building, and wondered if it would be nice to join it. I remembered that last year I thought it would be nice to be in a co-op where they sometimes pray.
But then I couldn't even believe I had ever thought that would be okay, because I would probably like it a lot, and if I liked praying with Jewish people, then that would mean Christianity wasn't real. I realize now that I believe mostly in experience. I mean, I know I've experienced grace. But lots of people who aren't Christian have experienced things like that. I feel like my attempts at identifying with Christianity are just making me not believe in God because I find it completely impossible to reconcile Christianity with the things about God that I firmly and deeply believe.
Since I started identifying as Christian, I've become aware that lots more people than my parents (especially my father) are extremely contemptuous of religion. I mean, almost everyone I know is like that. It just makes me think I'm stupid and if I wasn't so stupid and deluded I'd be an atheist. I was reading some posts by chaoticidealism, who is an ASD person who's written some really good and important stuff about ASD and functioning level things, and is also Christian. She said that she has doubts, but that believing in God makes more sense to her than not believing in God, so it's actually less of a leap to be a theist. Maybe that's how I feel, now. The thing is I used to be so sure.
I keep meeting people and asking them if they're religious. Why would I do that? Who cares? Why do I need other people to make me not wake up in the middle of the night feeling incredibly terrified and alone all the time? (The other night I woke up and there was this voice singing outside and I didn't feel alone at all and I started shaking, but, fuck, that stuff never stays with me for long, of course, because that's just how stupid and horrible my brain is.)
I'm always screwing with my Facebook religious beliefs, trying to be clever and accurate at the same time. In the past year I've had "Episcopalian Quaker Deist," "Christian Universalist," "Affective Piety," "There was a pregnant pause before He said okay" (Belle & Sebastian), "Pray to God but row for shore" (a quote from Carnivale), and "Cretin." I guess these are all reasonably true (especially the Belle & Sebastian one) but "Cretin" probably gets the closest to how I feel.
"Cretin" means Christian. People started using it as a word for intellectually disabled people as a way of saying, God is for everybody. Our society hates intellectually disabled people, so now it is a Ramones song, but I like the original idea. I think that spending time with severely intellectually disabled people is a pretty good way to understand God, and this definitely isn't because I think that they are adorable saints, but I do think there is a deeper love in us that we try to constrict and deny the farther we get into the world. If you don't have language and you're not far enough entrenched in your standard culture to do impression management, I think that you experience and display that love in a more obvious way. I know a woman who tears up Bibles and scratches people in the face when she gets mad--I'm not saying severely disabled people don't have original sin--but she also hugs and kisses people as soon as she meets them. She doesn't remember people's names most of the time. I think that if we didn't remember we're not supposed to hug everyone, we would hug everyone. It's caritas.
I hope this doesn't come off as offensive but I seriously sometimes want a DDDD--Doctorate of Developmentally Disabled Divinity. I feel like maybe as I've tried harder to be standard, I've tried to make my feelings about God be standard too, and it's just not taking. It just makes me feel terrified, it has for months.
There has to be something under all the systems. There has to be something under all the words. I put all these words on top of God and now it's hard for me to see God. I'm always praying and it's like I need to pray to keep God alive. But what if there's a kind of prayer that stacks on top of God and hides God away?
I try to look at life like I have the brain disorder where you can see colors but you can't tell what anything is. Like an everlasting shutdown, but more fun. If you dislocate your mind like that, then of course you can see life is glorious, it's something more than the sum of its parts. But sometimes I'm afraid that that's all I can say about God. Maybe it's stupid that I find myself trying to say more than that.
(If you have any more faith than I do--i.e. about as much faith to fill a contact case, probably--please talk to me about this, I'm kind of falling apart.)
14 February, 2010
the Eisley post finally (written before they left WB)
I used to really love this band. They were the first band I really got into on my own, at the relatively late age of 16, right after their first full-length album, Room Noises, came out. They seemed otherworldly to me--these beautiful, spooky-looking Christian homeschooled teenagers. They lived in Texas, a place I had never been, and they’d started writing music eight years before I heard of them, playing shows in their parents’ coffee shop and becoming well-known in the local music circuit. They finally signed to a label in 2003--they didn’t want to sign to a Christian label because they don’t make religious music, which is fine, but did they have to sign to Warner Brothers? Their label basically treats them like an embarrassment, not advertising them or having them make videos, and telling them to underplay the fact that some of their songs are about sci-fi and fantasy subjects because that might turn off potential listeners. And I have to wonder if their label is partly responsible for the fact that their second album, Combinations, was so much worse. I mean, I’m not saying there weren’t some really good songs on it, but most of it is just girly stuff--falling in love, breaking up, and having a lot of other feelings that aren’t clearly explained.
There’s nothing wrong with writing about girly stuff, but because the content of the songs is more generic it exposes what awkward writers the DuPree girls are. They know a lot of words, but they don’t know what all of those words mean, and they also seem to have trouble just putting together lines that sound good. Which means we end up with really bad lyrics like, “You will take the cherished people that I hold.” “That” is bad grammar! “Cherished” is a cheesy word! Even “the people I hold” seems like a needlessly roundabout way of saying “the people I love.” The DuPrees are extremely good singers, and in “Ten Cent Blues” the simple line “I can’t control my feelings” is stunning because of Stacy’s vocal quality. But soon enough, the awkwardness: “But then she chose to dissect me, and I was casted into poverty.” Number one, it’s “cast” not “casted,” and number two, are you a fetal pig? In “Ten Cent Blues” this awkwardness can be forgiven because the lyrics are dense, specific, and evocative, like a lot of the lyrics on Room Noises. My other favorite Combinations song, “I Could Be There for You,” has tenderly eerie lyrics (“Ring, ring, ring, ring, where are you hiding?/...You’re a cave, admitting who you choose, but I could be there for you”). But some of the songs, like the incredibly generic “Go Away,” are stripped of any intentional strangeness or magic, and all that’s left is the counterintuitive phrasing--instead of just saying he wants to break up, Stacy’s boyfriend tells her “we’re gone”--and obtuse exposition--”I could keep this all from you/Or I could make a statement based on truth/But then it all comes tumbling down.” These lyrics are boring and make no sense. I hope the next album will be better, but I’m not too optimistic, since the recently-divorced Sherri has written a song where she refers to her “apocryphal wedding” (so, Sherri doesn’t know whether her own wedding took place or not?).
But anyway, back to the nice part, the part about why I was so enthralled with this band when I first heard them in 2005. When it comes to the songs on Room Noises and the songs before that, the weird phrasings and hard-to-decipher subjects become charming if you notice them at all. While a lot more of these songs have sci-fi and fantasy lyrics, there is plenty of girly stuff on Room Noises. It’s just strange and thick with images. “I Wasn’t Prepared” is probably a breakup song, but for some reason the verses are about bees, and for some reason this is poignant. “Plenty of Paper” is a song about artsy, companionate love, but it casts the main characters as superheroes. “Lost at Sea” is another song that plunges you into a strange, vibrant landscape, so that when you get to the blatantly sentimental chorus--“I’ll always love you”--you’re moved and surprised. The band defends Combinations by saying they’ve “grown up,” but the love songs they wrote when they were teenagers seem much more real and intimate, more like love and less like a description of how love looks in People magazine.
I never listen to this band anymore, but this morning I woke up with the first song on Room Noises stuck in my head. It starts with a farmer crying about much he loves plants. Then he dies. Then he and his wife try to talk to each other:
Wife: I’m always wondering where you are, I’m always wondering where you are.
Husband: Darling, shouldn’t I be the one wondering? After all, I’m the one who is gone.
The two singers switch off in this vein for a while, before returning to the chorus, which tells us that plants make up for the hard times in life. Because plants are a symbol for memories, or something. Despite the gorgeously spooky harmonies, these lyrics are as sweet and idealistic as anything can be, but who cares? “Memories” was clearly written by some sheltered, geeky kids who liked to sit at home and read the Harry Potter and Narnia books, but those kids wrote with much more passion and creativity than the people they grew up to be. I just want them back.
SUPPLEMENTARY VIDEOS:
MEMORIES. This is from spring 2005 and is my all-time favorite video in terms of Stacy cuteness. I don't think she'll ever totally fall out of my celebrity crushdom, but I'd forgotten how infatuated with her I was when I was in tenth and eleventh grade. I obsessively read her xanga and basically thought she was the most beautiful, pristine, smart, wonderful, talented person EVER. The DuPree parents, who are sort of stage-parent-y, used to make a big deal out of the fact that Stacy hadn't started dating because she was EXTRA PIOUS, and I remember feeling really guilty about having a crush on her, especially since I'm a girl. As soon as this video started playing I got really embarrassed and had to put my headphones on, even though I'm in a room by myself.
LADY OF THE WOOD. This song is seven years old, and possibly my favorite--although maybe that's not what I mean. It is probably the pinnacle in terms of really genre-y spooky music, which is to say it's much more representative of the stuff they did when they were really young.
I COULD BE THERE FOR YOU/TEN CENT BLUES. These videos are from 2006 and 2008 (and the songs are on Combinations which came out in 2007). The first video isn't marked but it's from a show that A.T. and I were at. I got really excited when I heard "I Could Be There For You," "Like the Actors," and "Ten Cent Blues," because I was actually a little bored of the fantasy-ish angle and find those three songs to be really stunning. But the other songs on Combinations ended up being much worse and "Like the Actors" wasn't even on it, which is a travesty. (Full disclosure, I like "A Sight to Behold" too.) I feel disappointed by these videos because I was trying to find a particular video of Stacy wearing a sweater vest which led to me wearing sweater vests for YEARS.
I feel like I have too many videos of recent stuff so I will include this little bundle of awesomeness:
PRETENDER! This song is sort of nuts because: 1. it's from before Chauntelle stopped singing almost completely (which I think was about 10-12 years ago). 2. it's pretty obviously about how YOU SHOULD GET SAVED, which I personally think is nice. Not because it's about being saved in particular, but just because it's obviously very passionate and sincere. Some of their recent love songs have just seemed like really unconvincing attempts at emotion.
There’s nothing wrong with writing about girly stuff, but because the content of the songs is more generic it exposes what awkward writers the DuPree girls are. They know a lot of words, but they don’t know what all of those words mean, and they also seem to have trouble just putting together lines that sound good. Which means we end up with really bad lyrics like, “You will take the cherished people that I hold.” “That” is bad grammar! “Cherished” is a cheesy word! Even “the people I hold” seems like a needlessly roundabout way of saying “the people I love.” The DuPrees are extremely good singers, and in “Ten Cent Blues” the simple line “I can’t control my feelings” is stunning because of Stacy’s vocal quality. But soon enough, the awkwardness: “But then she chose to dissect me, and I was casted into poverty.” Number one, it’s “cast” not “casted,” and number two, are you a fetal pig? In “Ten Cent Blues” this awkwardness can be forgiven because the lyrics are dense, specific, and evocative, like a lot of the lyrics on Room Noises. My other favorite Combinations song, “I Could Be There for You,” has tenderly eerie lyrics (“Ring, ring, ring, ring, where are you hiding?/...You’re a cave, admitting who you choose, but I could be there for you”). But some of the songs, like the incredibly generic “Go Away,” are stripped of any intentional strangeness or magic, and all that’s left is the counterintuitive phrasing--instead of just saying he wants to break up, Stacy’s boyfriend tells her “we’re gone”--and obtuse exposition--”I could keep this all from you/Or I could make a statement based on truth/But then it all comes tumbling down.” These lyrics are boring and make no sense. I hope the next album will be better, but I’m not too optimistic, since the recently-divorced Sherri has written a song where she refers to her “apocryphal wedding” (so, Sherri doesn’t know whether her own wedding took place or not?).
But anyway, back to the nice part, the part about why I was so enthralled with this band when I first heard them in 2005. When it comes to the songs on Room Noises and the songs before that, the weird phrasings and hard-to-decipher subjects become charming if you notice them at all. While a lot more of these songs have sci-fi and fantasy lyrics, there is plenty of girly stuff on Room Noises. It’s just strange and thick with images. “I Wasn’t Prepared” is probably a breakup song, but for some reason the verses are about bees, and for some reason this is poignant. “Plenty of Paper” is a song about artsy, companionate love, but it casts the main characters as superheroes. “Lost at Sea” is another song that plunges you into a strange, vibrant landscape, so that when you get to the blatantly sentimental chorus--“I’ll always love you”--you’re moved and surprised. The band defends Combinations by saying they’ve “grown up,” but the love songs they wrote when they were teenagers seem much more real and intimate, more like love and less like a description of how love looks in People magazine.
I never listen to this band anymore, but this morning I woke up with the first song on Room Noises stuck in my head. It starts with a farmer crying about much he loves plants. Then he dies. Then he and his wife try to talk to each other:
Wife: I’m always wondering where you are, I’m always wondering where you are.
Husband: Darling, shouldn’t I be the one wondering? After all, I’m the one who is gone.
The two singers switch off in this vein for a while, before returning to the chorus, which tells us that plants make up for the hard times in life. Because plants are a symbol for memories, or something. Despite the gorgeously spooky harmonies, these lyrics are as sweet and idealistic as anything can be, but who cares? “Memories” was clearly written by some sheltered, geeky kids who liked to sit at home and read the Harry Potter and Narnia books, but those kids wrote with much more passion and creativity than the people they grew up to be. I just want them back.
SUPPLEMENTARY VIDEOS:
MEMORIES. This is from spring 2005 and is my all-time favorite video in terms of Stacy cuteness. I don't think she'll ever totally fall out of my celebrity crushdom, but I'd forgotten how infatuated with her I was when I was in tenth and eleventh grade. I obsessively read her xanga and basically thought she was the most beautiful, pristine, smart, wonderful, talented person EVER. The DuPree parents, who are sort of stage-parent-y, used to make a big deal out of the fact that Stacy hadn't started dating because she was EXTRA PIOUS, and I remember feeling really guilty about having a crush on her, especially since I'm a girl. As soon as this video started playing I got really embarrassed and had to put my headphones on, even though I'm in a room by myself.
LADY OF THE WOOD. This song is seven years old, and possibly my favorite--although maybe that's not what I mean. It is probably the pinnacle in terms of really genre-y spooky music, which is to say it's much more representative of the stuff they did when they were really young.
I COULD BE THERE FOR YOU/TEN CENT BLUES. These videos are from 2006 and 2008 (and the songs are on Combinations which came out in 2007). The first video isn't marked but it's from a show that A.T. and I were at. I got really excited when I heard "I Could Be There For You," "Like the Actors," and "Ten Cent Blues," because I was actually a little bored of the fantasy-ish angle and find those three songs to be really stunning. But the other songs on Combinations ended up being much worse and "Like the Actors" wasn't even on it, which is a travesty. (Full disclosure, I like "A Sight to Behold" too.) I feel disappointed by these videos because I was trying to find a particular video of Stacy wearing a sweater vest which led to me wearing sweater vests for YEARS.
I feel like I have too many videos of recent stuff so I will include this little bundle of awesomeness:
PRETENDER! This song is sort of nuts because: 1. it's from before Chauntelle stopped singing almost completely (which I think was about 10-12 years ago). 2. it's pretty obviously about how YOU SHOULD GET SAVED, which I personally think is nice. Not because it's about being saved in particular, but just because it's obviously very passionate and sincere. Some of their recent love songs have just seemed like really unconvincing attempts at emotion.
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