Summer Reading

For posterity and because of my strange obsession with making lists. If I get ambitious, there might be reviews of the books I find particularly interesting (I can already promise one on The Purity Myth--just in case you haven't heard me raving about it).

1. Breakfast at Tiffany's (Capote) (X)
2. Fear and Trembling (Kierkegaard)
3. Either/Or (Kierkegaard)
4. Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in Theology (Johnson)
5. The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women (Valenti) (X)
6. The Stranger (Camus)
7. Mrs. Dalloway (Woolf)
8. The New Kings of Nonfiction (Glass, ed)
9. Crucified God (Moltmann)
10. Good Omens (Prachett, Gaiman)
11. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
12. Why is Sex Fun? The Evolution of Human Sexuality (Diamond)
13. The Name of the Rose (Ecco)
14. Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape (Friedman, Valenti)

The Baptist

The Baptist

(Matthew 14:8)

When Mother missed my dance recital,

she promised to make it up to me.

I could show my dance at the next party

she threw with my new Father. New Father would love it.

If I was very, very good, he might give me a present.

Some bracelets, or a party dress, maybe a pony,

because new Father was rich. Much richer than Daddy had been.

I spent weeks sewing prettier feathers on my costume,

making sure I had the steps just right.

Mother and her friends weren’t in the room,

and New Father and his friends were so large, and hairy, and sweaty.

When I was finished, new Father pulled me into his lap,

stroked my hair, and whispered I could have whatever I wanted.

I ran to Mother asking if I could ask for my pony.

She told me she needed me to ask for something special,

and if I could get it, she would get me two ponies, and a cart for them to pull.

The platter was so heavy, I could barely carry it.

I had to close my eyes, afraid of what was on top.

He had a long beard and his eyes were open. He looked so mad.

Mother told me it was made of wax. A joke for her friends.

She told me to go change and play outside.

Hanging up my costume, I thought I heard her crying.

Betrothal

Betrothal
(Mark 15:40)
“I could use a woman like you.”
I had heard it before from men who mistook my vivacity for flirtation,
my unbound hair as a sign of promiscuity.
But something in the way he said it made me drop the mending,
ignore Martha’s hollering, and leave.
At first, it was what I feared; filling the waterskins, listening to his friends argue
while I looked for wine, cleaning up after immense dinner parties.
But later, it became caring for the ill, and pulling him from a fistfight
in his father’s house on a holiday.
Finally, it was speaking, head uncovered, before spoken to.
Sitting. Listening. Waiting.
When Martha begged me to come home, he smiled. “I’m coming with you.”
I thought he meant for good.
Martha met us in the road, screaming that my brother was dead.
Hurrying home, he murmured: “You know how she gets. I’m sure he’s just asleep.”
When I saw my brother’s face, ashen and set in stone, I wasn’t sure.
So when I saw the pair of them step from the room a few minutes later,
I dropped the jar of perfume I brought for Martha. It broke and spattered at his feet.
Wiping them with a towel, I heard him say: “I think it’s time you met my mother.”
And I did—
over bread and wine in a borrowed upper room while he chatted with his friends.
As we stood alone that windy hill the next day,
she held my hand and wiped my tears.
Telling me things weren’t what they seemed.
That she thought of me as a daughter.
That she had been waiting for something like this to happen.
A few days later, standing open-mouthed in a puddle of spices, broken crockery, and spilled oil,
she squeezed my hand and told me that it was all right.
She missed him too.

I have been known to, on occasion, be a little sassy.

A Draft:

For Corey
After Repeatedly Encouraging Me to Use More Similes

The fact of the matter is that I cannot stand using them. It's like using the phrase "as if" or "Gee golly whiz." Staid. Meaningless. Or wearing a Chanel suit. It's difficult to do without pretension. Equally bad, the deliberately obtuse: "The trees are marching like Frenchmen." What does that even mean? Like black holes, sucking all the light and meaning from a poem. Or, really rich triple-chocolate lava cake with peanut butter ice cream. So sweet you can't have more than a bite for fear of sickness. Sometimes akin to Romance novel heroines, hysterical and overblown. Worse yet, like coffee made with too much water, weak and tasteless. Only occasionally like the first Minnesota snowfall, so crisp and straight forward.

Life is What Happens

New Prose Poem Draft.

Life is What Happens

Life is What Happens
Wells Fargo called. The car payment is late. And, speaking of late, so am I and I don't know how to tell you. At the moment, the dog needs to be walked, the repairman couldn't fix the washing machine, and your mother won't get off the phone. I hope that when you come home we can slip off for a walk or a late movie. Although, it's more likely that we'll make some mac and cheese and argue about dishes and who forgot to make the bed this morning. Then, I'll drift to my Hebrew textbooks and half-finished papers. You, to your crossword, the television on in the background. Later, brushing your teeth, you'll hear me adding another blanket cursing the broken, cold radiator. Shivering together under the covers, you'll whisper "Won't it be nice when..." falling asleep before you can finish. I'll kiss your shoulder and wonder if I'm crazy. I love the way things are now.

Winter, Collegeville

New draft.

Winter, Collegeville

Winter, Collegeville.

Cold. So cold the old radiator can’t keep up.

There's a thick layer of ice on the windows.

Your breath feels like it might freeze in your lungs.

Whiteouts, too. Eight hours only of weak

sunlight. Black ice. Scraping the car windows

every morning. Running the car for fifteen minutes

before you can begin to coax it from its parking space.

But, also, stars so numberless and bright they’re painful. The Northern Lights.

Sledding, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing. Deep breaths of air

so clear it feels like the first breath you’ve ever taken. Soup and

crusty bread shared among friends. Ice-skating. Scarves and mittens.

Mulled wine. Hot tea. December 22^nd. Your claw-footed bathtub.

And always, the hope for April’s first rainstorm singing down the windows.

Revealing the many small green growing things, just waiting out the winter.

Risky

Dear Friend,

Love is Risky.

I keep running over these words as I finish the last week of my first semester at the School of Theology. As I struggle to finish papers, take mind-bending exams, submit proposals, and work a 40-hour week, I have been overcome by the most intense wave of self-doubt I have ever experienced. Am I smart enough to be here? Is my writing strong enough? Am I strong enough? Have I learned anything? Will I pass my finals with distinction? Will I pass them at all? Can I really keep working while I'm doing this and not go crazy? How much are my relationships suffering because of my schedule?

Never has the riskiness of love been as apparent as it was while I've holed up writing a paper about the beauty and terror of the Crucifixion. People often ask me--despite corruption in the Church, pedophilia scandals, power abuses, degradation of women, in spite of a religion at which any reasonable person would scoff—in spite of all of this, why do I remain Catholic, Christian, a student of theology? While writing this paper, I thought about the riskiness of the Incarnation; the beauty and terror of a God who loved the world enough to say "yes" to torture and death. This, to me, was more than enough to become a Christian, and certainly enough to keep me in a Church with which I so often feel in conflict. My experience with the Catholic Church has been analogous to falling in love. It's risky. I've had to open myself to an uncertain future with nothing but faith in the other party. For an extreme type-a personality, this has been a difficult, but necessary process.

Yesterday an unlooked for and very dear friend stopped by. He knocked in my door in the midst of my cursing Turabian style guides and feeling like I was drowning in a sea of my own inadequacy. Expecting another student, I was near to tears with the thought of another distraction, another indication of how much smarter and self-possessed my compatriots are, when he burst through my door. A graduate of the SOT, he knows much about my frustrations, exhaustion, occasional total and complete apathy toward my subject, and intense doubt about my own scholarly abilities. During these final days of December, when Minnesota is so dark, quiet, and lonely, he arrived as an unforeseen blessing; a small gift to remind me that amid the milieu of papers, exams, sleeping through the alarm, phone calls, mail merges etc. ad nauseum, God is Present. Shaun reminded me what it is to be in real communion with another person. Months worth of emotional crust was stripped away and I remembered what it was like to love someone and allow them to love you just as you are.

I take much comfort in some words of Karl Rahner's which I read in the last week: "And in Jesus he (God) experienced the fact that the mystery of man, which it is not for man himself to control, and which is bound up in the absurdity of guilt and death is, nevertheless, hidden in the love of God." In typical Rahnerian style, he cannot help but obfuscate his own meaning. After much unpacking of and prayer over these words, I think what Rahner is saying is that human nature, despite its fallenness and sinfulness is inextricably interwoven with God's grace and love. I find the idea of a constantly graced existence both compelling and true to my own lived experience. Shaun's vist and Rahner's words came to me at the same moment, each a different and equal blessing as I muddle on the best I know how.

How are you? How are your own joys and small sorrows? Your moments of beauty and terror? Are you staying warm? Finding ways to overcome the darkness? Are you looking forward to the solstice? Christmas? The ending of an academic semester? The beginning of a new year? I would like to tell you more, but the kettle is whistling and my slippers are waiting. I hope you remain safe in your travels and that you embrace love's riskiness, whatever it may mean to you.

You are in my prayers. I hope to remain in yours.

With love,
KMJ