So many voices running through my tired brain. Somewhere there's a poem, but it's hidden, I'm afraid. There are voices I can't hear anymore. Maybe they're still speaking, but they sound like grey water running down the drain. I hold unreasonable grudges. I don't drink enough. I won't forgive the church woman who taught 5000 people one weekend that women and men have different hierarchies of needs, that a woman's highest need is love, but a man's highest need is respect. Well, it did piss me off. I'm growing into an unreasonable woman. It occurs to me that I very well might grow old and die alone. This thought doesn't have the strong deterrent effect that it should. Or maybe it's the other way around. Maybe I should drink more.
On Monday I take my turn leading and (hopefully) inspiring discussion in Sally Smits' Women & Spirituality class. So I'm brainstorming today. The book is Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit and the theory text is Carter Heyward's "Sexuality, Love, and Justice." Happily for me, Women & Spirituality involves quite a bit of sex. See what you're missing! Here's some quotes from the theory I'm mulling over:
If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don't see. I read and understand this to be our common vocation.
...there is one fundamental category that can be appropriately descriptive, even definitive, of who we are -- of what we are here to do in the world -- it is that of lover.
What does it mean to be a lover?
What does it mean -- to love?
Lovers re-create the world.
Love is justice.
We act our way into feeling.
The act is love, the act is justice. Good feelings about love and justice come later.
Sexuality is expressed not only between lovers in personal relationship, but also in the work of an artist who loves her painting or her poetry, a father who loves his children, a revolutionary who loves her people.
Our passion as lovers is what fuels both our rage at injustice and our compassion...
To say I love you is to say that you are not mine, but rather your own.
Certainly there should be some discussion there, plenty of stuff to argue about. I think we're going to have fun and I haven't even gotten to the discussion topics on the book yet.
4 comments:
An interesting book, that one. I am wondering...is there a discussion of Christianity in this class, or is it mostly that vague undefinable "spirituality"?
Plenty of discussion of Christianity, but thankfully not limited to Christianity. And don't knock spirituality. Remind me to tell you a story next week. I promise it won't be vague.
This is very interesting to me. Would I be able to get a copy of the theory text?
Yes.
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