Although O'Connor claimed fear kept her gaze downward, her stage presence did not suffer. She chatted about becoming addicted to television preachers during a brief time living in Atlanta prior to the Celtic-reggae hybrid "Lamb's Book of Life." And she mused about doing interviews with the Christian press for her new album "Theology" and the fact that a small percentage of the interviewers would take issue with her suggestion that "God perhaps doesn't want war."

As a rebuttal she offered up "If You Had a Vineyard," with its direct quotations from Isaiah and lush backing vocals, which pulled the listener along as if caught up in a current.

While "Theology" draws inspiration from scripture, a well O'Connor has tapped since her debut album, "The Lion and the Cobra," it was not the ecclesiastical that produced the night's most rapturous moment. That occurred when O'Connor stood at the microphone and lifted her voice for "In This Heart." As she was joined in harmony one by one by her bassist, fiddler, and guitarist, the intertwined notes pulled a little bit of heaven onto the stage and easily survived a momentary lapse of lyrical memory

she quotes from song of solomon- the most erotic book in the bible
and gives a surprisingly amazing rendition of jesus christ superstar's "i don't know how to love him"
the whole thing is an unabashed love letter to jesus 
knowing the realities of how fucked everything is- and never denying that for a second.
she offers instead- 
the possibilities of something beautiful.

truly .
near weepy on barrington st.

one of those days.
the good kinds of days.
 

SŽ: No, I am a complete atheist.

BLVR: Your book The Puppet and the Dwarf deals with St. Paul. In fact, it celebrates St. Paul’s Christianity in contrast to other forms of spirituality, i.e. gnosticism, new-age spiritualities, etc. So why would an atheist defend Christianity?

SŽ: Today, spirituality is fashionable. Either some pagan spirituality of tolerance, feminine principle, holistic approach against phallocentric Western imperialist logic or, within the Western tradition, we have a certain kind of rehabilitation of Judaism, respect for otherness, and so on. Or you are allowed to do Christianity, but you must do a couple of things which are permitted. One is to be for these repressed traditions, the early Gnostic gospels or some mystical sects where a different nonhegemonic/patriarchal line was discernible. Or you return to the original Christ, which is against St. Paul. The idea is that St. Paul was really bad, he changed Christianity into this patriarchal state, but Jesus, himself, was something different.

What I like is to see the emancipatory potential in institutionalized Christianity. Of course, I don’t mean state religion, but I mean the moment of St. Paul. I find a couple of things in it. The idea of the Gospel, or good news, was a totally different logic of emancipation, of justice, of freedom. For example, within a pagan attitude, injustice means a disturbance of the natural order. In ancient Hinduism, or even with Plato, justice was defined in what today we would call almost fascistic terms, each in his or her place in a just order. Man is the benevolent father of the family, women do their job taking care of the family, worker does his work and so on. Each at his post; then injustice means this hubris when one of the elements wants to be born, i.e. instead of in a paternal way, taking care of his population, the king just thinks about his power and how to exploit it. And then in a violent way, balance should be reestablished, or to put it in more abstract cosmological terms, you have cosmic principles like yin and yang. Again, it is the imbalance that needs to establish organic unities. Connected with this is the idea of justice as paying the price as the preexisting established order is balanced.

But the message that the Gospel sends is precisely the radical abandonment of this idea of some kind of natural balance; the idea of Gospels and the part of sins is that freedom is zero. We begin from the zero point, which is at least originally the point of radical equality. Look at what St. Paul is writing and the metaphors he used. It is messianic, the end of time, differences are suspended. It’s a totally different world whose formal structure is that of radical revolution. Even in ancient Greece, you don’t find that—this idea that the world can be turned on its head, that we are not irreducibly bound by the chains of our past. The past can be erased; we can start from the zero point and establish radical justice, so this logic is basically the logic of emancipation. Which is again why I find any flirting with so-called new-age spiritualities extremely dangerous. It is good to know the other side of the story, at least, when you speak about Buddhism and all of these spiritualities. I am sorry, but Nazis did it all. For Hitler, the Bhagavad Gita was a sacred book; he carried it in his pocket all the time. In Nazi Germany there were three institutes for Tibetan studies and five for the study of different sects of Buddhism.

BLVR: That is a really interesting point. I’m not religious at all, but when it comes to religions, I’ve always really distrusted new-age spiritualities.

SŽ: I agree. So let’s at least be clear of where in the West this fascination with Eastern spirituality originated. Of course when I advocate Christian legacy, I make it very clear that this legacy today is not alive in the Catholic or any Christian Church. Here I am kind of a vulgar Stalinist; churches should either be destroyed or turned into cultural homes or museums for religious horrors [laughs]. No no no, it’s not that, but nonetheless, a certain logic of radical emancipation exploded there. And all original emancipatory movements stopped there. This should be admitted. So the point is not to return to the Church, to rehabilitate Christianity, but to keep this certain revolutionary logic alive. I mean this is the good news that the Gospel means: you can do it, take the risk.

 
*****

bleh.

‘if feminism presupposes that “women” designates an undesignatable field of differences, one that cannot be totalised or summarised by a descriptive identity category, then the very term becomes a site of permanent openness and resignifiability. I would argue that the rifts among women over the content of the term ought to be safeguarded and prized, indeed, that this constant rifting ought to be affirmed as the ungrounded ground of feminist theory. To deconstruct the subject of feminism is not, then, to censure its usage, but, on the contrary, to release the term into a future of multiple significations, to emancipate it from the maternal or racialist ontologies to which it has been restricted, and to give it play as a site where unanticipated meanings might come to bear.

‘Paradoxically, it may be that only through releasing the category of women from a fixed referent that something like “agency” becomes possible.’

There was endless talk at the WRC about sisterhood- I remember conversations about
"who was a sister"

and I remember other conversations when an alleged 'sister' would leave a room- suddenly out came the knives-

jean vanier says that gossip destroys communities. he also says love of communities can destroy them too. it's the clubhouse mentality- the desire to assert safe spaces. again- questions of power- who's in? who get's to say what's safe?

they were hard times.  i left the WRC and never went back. instead went to LBGT mun- where the politics were also fucked. so eventually i left there too. but because i was there i ended up in SCM.

but in both cases there were people around the WRC and LBGT mun whose friendships were invaluable- like Angie, Renee, Steve Dymond. People that made me feel profoundly alive- ridiculous- courageous-

it was very necessary.

I remembered how I felt years ago.  The incredible cardboard woman. Rigid- awkward- passionate but unsure of herself at every step.
 I've written about this before- but the time in the Anna Templeton Centre program really changed that- mostly it was feeling super comfortable in the presence of straight-identified women and not feeling like in being someone's friend that i was creeping them out- not feeling like an alien- but also- not just those friendships but the act of making something- making something tangible-  weaving- knitting- dyeing- i still love dyeing wool a lot- i love putting it in the pot- watching it slowly absorb the dye- leaving it to dry and then noticing how, in the case of natural dyes anyway- they have a kind of lit from within quality to them. The graduating show. Being on that platform wearing something I made myself- arms linked around those girls posing for photos wearing things they made and all looking so fucking fabulous. No part of me was cardboard then. Nor is now.

here's an excerpt from earlier livejournal about that time-to clarify i left national conference in ottawa- was flown home and flown back - just so i could be at that show.

"one day i'm feeding a goat, talking seriously about anti-oppression work and the next i'm on the platform modeling my own clothes and my dad and stepmom are on one side of the room and my mom is standing awkwardly beside me on the other side and its packed and allison book is swigging back the beer everytime i looked at her and a big speaker blared her mixed cd and i sang along to pulp and ladytron and watched some 60 pieces come from my twelve classmates and i. and we all climbed up on the platform, with our flowers in hand and posed for class shots, i cried a bit at some point, when deirde got the award, just b/c i knew she deserved it...at barry's new bar later that night and allison book has forgotten that she doesn't know how to dance but oblivious to the fact that she is the worlds cutest girl so it doesn't really matter and adam wight kept telling me i was so pretty and me and matt dawe talked indie rock records like always and lindsey, kyla, sarah, guzz,sabrina, kathryn, peggy,melissa, deirdre, carolyn, were drinking and laughing and taking pictures of themselves and katie, susan, elizabeth, bev and sarah minty were all there and laughing and drinking beer and i snuck away to go back to school and get my luggage, had a beer by myself and walked around looking at everybody's work while waiting for a cab. i came home to my messy apartment, eventually the cats showed up, and i slept for four hours, hauled my ass back to the airport for conference. the next day i facilitated a full day of consensus decision making.at some point i went to a wine and cheese for an anglican justice camp. holy crap. they must have found all the rowdy anglicans in canada and put them in a room together.there was someone there from a group called Integrity, an LBGT Anglican group who wanted people to march with them at the Nigerian embassy the following day (see http://www.integrity.ca as to why they were there, i m too woolly to be articulate right now). if you'd asked me before i wouldve said rowdy anglican was an oxymoron. not so."

The hilarious irony of this is that I've been making a return to the Anglican church. I am slowly becoming a rowdy Anglican in my own right. The time I spent in the United Church was important- I needed that space to feel completely comfortable in the church- to begin to feel comfortable articulating myself as someone who does identify as being Christian. But I don't actually have a religious experience there- it's an intellectual one- most of the time. The big thing for me is communion. When I went on the retreat with the King's College Chaplaincy (very, very high Anglicans) I could not get over how much I missed communion. Longed for it even. The words of the Book of Common Prayer were like poetry- I experienced them in some kind of immanent/ transcendent way- and the weird part was- these were words I knew and had raged against- but now- specifically this prayer- the prayer of confession;

"Almighty God, our heavenly Father:
 We have sinned against you, Through our own fault, in thought, word and deed,
 and in what we have done and what we have left undone. For the sake of your Son our Lord Jesus Christ, forgive us our sins..."

the version i'm typing is from the episcopalian Book of Common Prayer- but here's another form;

    14 You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden.

    15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.

    16 In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.

and then later

 43 You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.'

    44 But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,

    45 that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

    46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?

    47 And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?

 and just like that 

everything changed.

thanks be to god.

especially to the thoughtful words of a smart priest.

i can safely say- i'm no longer living in something written by stephen morrissey.
mostly i'm just living.

life is good

quoth vonnegut-

And now I want to tell you about my late Uncle Alex. He was my father’s kid brother, a childless graduate of Harvard who was an honest life insurance salesman in Indianapolis. He was well-read and wise. And his principal complaint about other human beings was that they so seldom noticed it when they were happy. So when we were drinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, say, and talking lazily about this and that, almost buzzing like honeybees, Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, ''If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.''

exactly.