tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29680163.post1059822248000470500..comments2024-02-28T12:04:11.837-08:00Comments on Jesus in Love Blog: In memory of Adrienne Rich, lesbian poet (1929-2012)Kittredge Cherryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02617858676733169316noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29680163.post-38879995407518107142012-04-18T21:14:59.324-07:002012-04-18T21:14:59.324-07:00Eric, we have discussed this subject in a private ...Eric, we have discussed this subject in a private email exchange, so here I will just thank you for your discussion of how silence protects the bullies. It's very timely now because Friday is the national Day of Silence when students take a day-long vow of silence to call attention to anti-LGBT bullying. Watch for my new piece about it on Friday.Kittredge Cherryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02617858676733169316noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29680163.post-42923426488677823632012-04-18T21:12:35.861-07:002012-04-18T21:12:35.861-07:00CJ, thank you for eloquently raising the question ...CJ, thank you for eloquently raising the question “Who or what does the silence protect them from?” It brings to my mind the words of Carl Jung, “Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.” The attempt to silence truth may be an attempt to avoid suffering… but the silence ultimately becomes more painful than what it was meant to deny.Kittredge Cherryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02617858676733169316noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29680163.post-64610673179378568612012-04-01T18:14:25.511-07:002012-04-01T18:14:25.511-07:00You know, I have a very specific memory, clear and...You know, I have a very specific memory, clear and hard as nails, of sitting on the benches outside my high school, age 15, newly and head-over-heels in love for the very first time, watching the straight-kids-in-couples laughing, holding hands, and making out, and thinking, "Why can't they just leave us alone? Why can't she and I just be like *that*? Why can't my friends just tease me about this and make jokes about how dorky I'm acting -the same as they would if I got this way over a guy- instead of being shocked or stunned and wanting to change the subject? Why can't we just walk down the hall hand in hand, and go to the dances, and send each other flowers on valentine's day, and do everything else that everybody else in love does and not have it be such an issue? Why hide and pretend and act so ashamed? I'm not ashamed....so why do I act like I am?"<br /><br />And yet I realize- though I spent many, many years in pursuit of various feminist answers to those questions, and began my journey into Christianity as well, partially to find such answers, there's still always been a kind of guardedness in the asking; a kind of unwillingness to really risk engaging with those questions. Why *do* they insist on not leaving us alone? Why *must* they continually ensure that we know to keep silent? Why *do* they put so much time and energy into seeing to it that other's silence feels like safety? <br /><br />You don't spend resources where you're not getting a return- so what's the return? What *does* our silence give the people who work so hard to keep us in it? <br /><br />If it protects them, what -or who- does it protect them from?CJ Barkernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29680163.post-62118533292427534642012-03-30T16:32:11.115-07:002012-03-30T16:32:11.115-07:00Hi Kitt,
"Your silence will not protect you&...Hi Kitt,<br /><br />"Your silence will not protect you". If not you, then who? you ask, Kitt.<br /><br />I think, those who hate and who wish harm to others are always the beneficiaries of their targets' silence.<br /><br />It would be easy for me to slip into a "victim mentality", ie, it's me and my kind against everyone else. <br /><br />The reality - to me - is, it's MY minority against the minority of people who actively hate us and wish us harm. And the vast majority could care less, one way or the other, and will remain cocooned in their blithe inattentiveness, as long as we let them... as long as we keep silent.<br /><br />The one who is protected by silence is the bully.erichttp://www.scottneric.com/abteric.htmlnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29680163.post-12370892742115692672012-03-29T18:21:36.199-07:002012-03-29T18:21:36.199-07:00CJ, thanks for sharing so many wonderful quotes fr...CJ, thanks for sharing so many wonderful quotes from Adrienne Rich! I have been reading many tributes to her today, and almost everyone is choosing different quotations -- and they’re ALL great. It’s amazing how much Adrienne had to say, and how well she could say it. I’m glad that you and I can share our love for her writing, as well as our spirituality and our health challenges.<br /><br />I’m pleased that the Feminism and Religion Blog has cross-published my tribute Adrienne Rich today at this link:<br /><a href="http://feminismandreligion.com/2012/03/29/in-memory-of-adrienne-rich-lesbian-poet-1929-2012-by-kittredge-cherry/" rel="nofollow"> http://feminismandreligion.com/2012/03/29/in-memory-of-adrienne-rich-lesbian-poet-1929-2012-by-kittredge-cherry/</a><br /><br />As Adrienne would say, “I have to cast my lot with those who age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.” Special thanks to Xochitl!<br /><br />I’m not sure if the anonymous comment means to be negative or not, but it raises an important issue. If our silence doesn’t protect us, then who DOES it protect?Kittredge Cherryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02617858676733169316noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29680163.post-24304152728623385722012-03-29T01:03:18.321-07:002012-03-29T01:03:18.321-07:00"Your silence will not protect you."
N..."Your silence will not protect you."<br /> No, but your silence does me an enormous amount of good. I have lived over half a century cheerfully oblivious of these three women and their "work".<br /> Mainline Protestantism has so many delusions of relevance.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29680163.post-48860620220196386952012-03-29T00:23:43.724-07:002012-03-29T00:23:43.724-07:00Wow Kitt- I hadn't heard. So, you got me news ...Wow Kitt- I hadn't heard. So, you got me news about things I wanted to know about, yet again - thank you!!<br /><br />Reading this post made me sigh very deeply, as I realized all over again that, as much as I love the inclusive evangelical world that I've found these last couple of years, there's really not anybody I know in it who would even know the name, "Adrienne Rich," let alone mourne her passing or be able to quote large chunks of "On Lies, Secrets, and Silence," or "the Dream of a Common Language." But I still sure can.<br /><br />Besides the famous, "reconstitute the world," quote, some of my other favorites (which, I now understand, spoke just as much to my mcs/cfids self as to my queer self, though I don't think I understand that at the time):<br /><br /><br /><br />"I am not with her I have been waking off and on<br />all night to that pain not simply absence but<br />the presence of the past destructive<br />to living here and now" <br /><br />"Yet if I could instruct<br />myself, if we could learn to learn from pain<br />even as it grasps us if the mind, the mind that lives<br />in this body could refuse to let itself be crushed<br />in that grasp it would loosen Pain would have to stand<br />off from me and listen its dark breath still on me<br />but the mind could begin to speak to pain<br />and pain would have to answer:<br /><br />'<i>We are older now<br />we have met before these are my hands before your eyes<br />my figure blotting out all that is not mine<br />I am the pain of division creator of divisions<br />it is I who blot your lover from you<br />and not the time-zones or the miles<br />It is not separation calls me forth but I<br />who am separation And remember<br />I have no existence apart from you</i>'<br /><br />"Does the infant memorize the body of the mother<br />and create her in absence? or simply cry<br />primordial loneliness? does the bed of the stream<br />once diverted mourning remember the wetness?"<br /><br />"I choose not to suffer uselessly"<br /><br />"I will not be divided from her or from myself<br />by myths of separation<br />while her mind and body in Manhattan are more with me<br />than the smell of eucalyptus coolly burning on these hills"<br /><br /><br /><br />"Today I was reading about Marie Curie: <br />she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness <br />her body bombarded for years by the element <br />she had purified<br /> It seems she denied to the end <br />the source of the cataracts on her eyes <br />the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends<br /> till she could no longer hold a test tube or pencil<br /><br />She died a famous woman denying <br />her wounds <br />denying <br />her wounds came from the same source as her power"<br /><br /><br />"two women together is a work<br />nothing in civilization has make simple, <br />two people together is a work<br />heroic in its ordinariness, <br />the slow-picked, halting traverse of a pitch <br />where the fiercest attention becomes routine<br />—look at the faces of those who have chosen it"<br /><br /><br /> I get so discouraged at times, having to constantly chose whether to be around people who can quote the Bible at will, or those who can quote things like this. But my soul is quite honestly tied up with both- so I end up feeling rather incomplete in either camp. So nice to be able to come here- where you value, honor, and share both. :)CJ Barkernoreply@blogger.com