The Golden Ass

Here continues my meditation on why I left in the middle of the worship service this Memorial Day weekend and had to pray afterwards. SEE LINK for Part 1, which was more of a presentation of the problem, the break, the trauma, the exile. Part 2 more wholly accomplishes my act of reaching out towards those I left behind.

Whether it’s wars that have shaped our history and present in ways that are difficult for us to come to terms with, or the cross that we have a hard time admitting was committed by the military we honor, or simply the distorted and disfigured image we inherit from Adam and Cain born by the God-man on said cross, I am often left wondering if we are able to embrace Jesus in any way other than through fragments of conceptualized and disjointed ideas that distance us from the flesh and blood concrete reality of the trauma born by the one who showed us what sacrificial love is, the one we say we honor and love in our worship while at the same time, during that very worship, honoring our forces that sacrificed him? In such moments, I am left wondering who we’re really loving?

“Maybe the worst of Tom’s symptoms was that he felt emotionally numb. He desperately wanted to love his family, but he just couldn’t evoke any deep feelings for them. He felt emotionally distant from everybody, as though his heart were frozen and he were living behind a glass wall. That numbness extended to himself, as well. He could not really feel anything except for his momentary rages and his shame…
The only thing that occasionally relieved his feeling of aimlessness was intense involvement in a particular case…It was like being in combat, he said – he felt fully alive, and nothing else mattered. The moment Tom won a case, however, he lost his energy and sense of purpose. The nightmares returned, as did his rage attacks – so intensely that he had to move into a motel to ensure that he would not harm his wife or children. But being alone, too, was terrifying, because the demons of the war returned in full force. Tom tried to stay busy, working, drinking, and drugging – doing anything to avoid confronting his demons.” – p. 14

Another reason I felt the need to pray after leaving church this weekend was because I wanted to love my “church family,” but, in that moment, I was having a difficult time with that. I needed to confront some demons. I was driving away from what could potentially offer a sense of energy and purpose. That, of course, would require a sense of home and belonging.

Being an exile – being, like a warrior, torn from a home I can’t return to - can bring up memories of painfully alienating wounds that brought great shame for me. Like a survivor of trauma, who has only fragments of memories and is unable to coherently narrate what happened with a well-ordered story with beginning, middle, and end, I’m not always conscious of the ways the past shapes how I react in the present.

It has required a miracle of God for me to be able to function in a way that anyone might refer to as resembling healthy. It’s somewhat of a miracle that I even had any concern for relating to the church and its leaders in any meaningful way after leaving in the middle of church this weekend.

“In many ways these patients were not so different from the veterans I had just left behind at the VA. They also had nightmares and flashbacks. They also alternated between occasional bouts of explosive rage and long periods of being emotionally shut down. Most of them had great difficulty getting along with other people and had trouble maintaining meaningful relationships.
As we know, war is not the only calamity that leaves human lives in ruins. While about a quarter of the soldiers who serve in war zones are expected to develop serious posttraumatic problems…” - p. 20

So, see, what I have presented here hopefully is appearing now as a fragmented tapestry with which, as I begin to try feebly to re-weave our story, I can at least glimpse what it is we honor on Memorial Day. It’s an unfathomable sacrifice that no one foresees before it’s made. Perhaps I can even identify with it, to some degree. Paul didn’t completely eschew his Roman citizenship or friendships. With that in mind, I appreciate those who serve. Because of the nature of what’s being protected or expanded, those who make it back are still left with the mark of sacrifice, a mark that isn’t going anywhere any time soon.

What I simply can’t get on board with, then – what I can’t give my trust and allegiance to – is where and when a community “honors a military calling” within the particular context and meaning of Christian worship. What sorts of lies do we have to tell ourselves, or what horrors do we have to fling from our consciousness, to embrace the (at best) half-truth that God “used the military to advance his Kingdom”?

“[H]uman beings are experts at wishful thinking and obscuring the truth…’The greatest source of suffering is the lies we tell ourselves.’” – p. 11 (and p. 26-27)

Considering my own ongoing bondage to wounds that pale in comparison to Tom’s, I really wonder about the nature of this “freedom” we say is the reason for these holidays. Do we really imagine that such trauma to the ground of our history leaves us “free” from the blood that cries out from it?

What image of humanity and of God – not to mention of Christian community that is the context and foundation of discipleship - do we have if we are left reaching and grasping for the military for our sense of what “service” means?

“We have…begun to understand how overwhelming experiences [of trauma] affect our innermost sensations and our relationship to our physical reality – the core of who we are. We have learned that trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience on mind, brain, and body. This imprint has ongoing consequences for how the human organism manages to survive in the present.
Trauma results in a fundamental reorganization of the way mind and brain manages perceptions. It changes not only how we think and what we think about, but also our very capacity to think.” – p. 21

I am left wondering if the reason we can’t tell the truth about the trauma of war is because we are shaped by the trauma of war.

“Impeccable in his war uniform and outwardly composed, McNair sits on the porch of his parent’s home in Virginia, anonymous behind a mask he made in an art therapy session. ‘I was just going through pictures, and I saw the mask of Hannibal Lecter, and I thought, ‘That’s who I am…He’s probably dangerous, and that’s who I felt I was. I had this muzzle on with all these wounds, and I couldn’t tell anyone about them. I couldn’t express my feelings.” – Quote from Marine Cpl. Chris McNair (Ret), who is photographed above. SEE LINK HERE.

So, though I am not at all myself unaffected by the brokenness of Cain, by the war and violence that rages in the groundwaters of our communities and society, I cannot, in truth and good conscience, let this moment of Memorial Day pass without asking a few potentially difficult questions. Does Tom’s story really sound God honoring? Like the advancement of God’s kingdom? Like God’s fruits of “service” to Him?

As I mentioned, I had to pray after leaving in the middle of church today, because I felt an urge to cut myself off - in a particularly unloving way. In prayer, I was able to work through what I was feeling and re-turn to a desire for connection and community with the people I was, in a sense, leaving behind. This is Grace.

I don’t doubt that God is at work in the precisely the way the Coast Guard officer interviewed at church this Memorial Day weekend said. I don’t doubt that God is using military service to begin to give him an image of what it means to die to self and serve a higher purpose and larger community. The Centurion’s position and purpose really did give him some insight into the authority Christ holds over his “army.” And, God really did use the position of Cornelius the Centurion to allow him to play a major role in moving the narrative of God’s justice and peace to “the nations” of the world.

Because I can’t give my trust and allegiance to what I regard as false worship, however, I still don’t regret leaving in the middle of church this weekend. In Paul’s cosmology, the people of God is a fundamentally different entity from America. Just so, serving one master is fundamentally different from serving the other. You can’t serve both faithfully. Christ’s kingdom functions in such a way that he purposefully DOESN’T command his “army” to fight in the PRECISE moment when it would make the most sense to do so. And, I regard God’s use of a figurehead of the enemy to advance His kingdom in much the same way that he teaches us about His faithfulness by transforming an enemy like Paul into an apostle or the shame of the cross into His ultimate victory.

For anyone I “left behind” who would actually like to connect more with me and talk about anything I’ve shared here, I’m down. You know how to find me.

*Note: all of the previous quotes, with the exception of the last one, are from a book called The Body Keeps the Score, by Bessel A. van der Kolk, M..D.

The following could be said to constitute an explanation of why I left in the middle of church today and had to pray afterwards. It also, at least figuratively or literarily, constitutes an act of reaching out towards those I left behind.

“He would never get one image out of his mind: the back of Alex’s head as he lay face down in the rice patty, his feet up in the air. Tom wept as he recalled, ‘He was the only real friend I ever had.’ Afterward, at night, Tom continued to hear the screams of his men and to see their bodies falling into the water. Any sounds, smells, or images that reminded him of the ambush (like the popping of firecrackers on the Fourth of July) made him feel just as paralyzed, terrified, and enraged as the day the helicopter evacuated him from the rice patty.”…
…
One of the hardest things for traumatized people is to confront their shame about they way they behaved during a traumatic episode, whether it is objectively warranted (as in the commission of atrocities) or not (as in the case of a child who tries to placate her abuser). One of the first people to write about this phenomenon was Sarah Haley…In an article entitled ‘When the Patient Reports Atrocities,’ which became a major impetus for the ultimate creation of the PTSD diagnosis, she discussed the well-nigh intolerable difficulty of talking about (and listening to) the horrendous acts that are often committed by soldiers in the course of their war experiences. It’s hard enough to face the suffering that has been inflicted by others, but deep down many traumatized people are even more haunted by the shame they feel about what they themselves did or did not do under the circumstances. They despise themselves for how terrified, dependent excited, or enraged they felt.” - p. 12-13

The American holiday of Memorial Day is tomorrow. As I was leaving church today, I was angry and, sensing that something monstrous that wasn’t right, felt the need to pray. My feeling that way reminded me of something that happened recently with a friend.

That friend had responded to a terrible and painful experience in his family by turning away from God in alienation and anger rather than towards God in trust and for healing. I reacted to him with continual annoyance and aggravation bordering on anger. It eventually dawned on me to ask myself why I was responding to him in that way. Soon after, God presented before me something that helped me realize that what my friend had experienced was trauma. I was then able, in prayer, to see that, in my responding to my friend the way I did, I was relating to God in essentially the same way he did. I was not trusting that God is present and at work and faithful to His task and mission. I was only able to see that as God called me trust. I am no longer angry.

“Tom had been a devoted and loyal friend, someone who enjoyed life, with many interests and pleasures. In one terrifying moment, trauma had transformed everything…
…We want to think of families as safe havens in a heartless world and of our own country as populated by enlightened, civilized people. We prefer to believe that cruelty occurs only in faraway places like Darfur or the Congo. It is hard enough for observers to bear witness to pain. Is it any wonder, then, that the traumatized individuals themselves cannot tolerate remembering it and that they often resort to using drugs, alcohol, or self-mutilation to block out their unbearable knowledge?
Tom and his fellow veterans became my first teachers in my quest to understand how lives are shattered by overwhelming experiences, and in figuring out how to enable them to feel alive again.” – p. 10-12

The friend I mentioned with whom I was angry? Prior to his traumatic experience, he and I had been planting a small and fledgling church together. It felt like home for me. It wasn’t perfect, but we were heading in the direction of doing what I had been wanting to do in and as a church for years. After his trauma, he was unable to pastor any longer, and the church was shattered into fragments that now, mostly, have little relationship with one another.

I was in a kind of spiritual exile for about a year afterwards – and to some degree still am. When I tried to re-integrate into a church community, I unexpectedly ended up at some point in tears, triggered by old traumatic wounds of death and alienation, wounds from which I thought I had healed. The church I was visiting today is the one that “sent me out” to plant the one that fell apart in trauma.

“His name was Tom. Ten years earlier he had been in the Marines, doing his service in Vietnam. He had spent the [4th of July] holiday [of 1978, 10 years after his trauma] holed up in his downtown-Boston law office, drinking and looking at old photographs, rather than with his family. He knew from previous years’ experience that the noise, the fireworks, the heat, and the picnic in his sister’s backyard against the backdrop of dense early-summer foliage, all of which reminded him of Vietnam, would drive him crazy. When he got upset he was afraid to be around his family because he behaved like a monster with his wife and two young boys. The noise of his kids made him so agitated that he would storm out of the house to keep himself from hurting them. Only drinking himself into oblivion or riding his Harley-Davidson at dangerously high speeds helped him to calm down.
…
At the end of his tour of duty, Tom was honorably discharged, and all he wanted was to put Vietnam behind him. Outwardly, that’s exactly what he did. He attended college on the GI Bill, graduated from law school, married his high school sweetheart, and had two sons. Tom was upset by how difficult it was to feel any real affection for his wife, even though her letters had kept him alive in the madness of the jungle. Tom went though the motions of living a normal life, hoping that by faking it he would learn to become his old self again. He now had a thriving law practice and a picture-perfect family, but he sensed something wasn’t normal; he felt dead inside.” – p. 7-8

Though it was only half way through, I didn’t “storm out of” the church service this morning. I wasn’t “afraid to be around” the pastor and church members. Part of why I felt the need to pray after I left, however, was because I did feel an urge to lash out in a way that would be hurtful to at least some of the leaders and members of the church. I genuinely love the people of that church, but I wasn’t feeling the connection or the love in that moment. I was feeling something else. And, I wasn’t willing to “just go through the motions and fake it.”

When and why did I leave, you might ask? After the time of worship in music and prior to the sermon, one of the associate pastors spent ten to fifteen minutes talking about how God "honors a military calling.” He gave examples from the New Testament of how God "used the military to advance His Kingdom.” He also gave a fairly extensive interview of a church member in the Coast Guard to exemplify those points. In the interview, it was also discussed how disciples are formed in and by military "service." The Coast Guard officer being interviewed talked about how his time in the military has helped him to understand what service even means in the first place. I was happy and thankful that I didn’t have to sit in squirming anger through the official liturgy of the American Military color guard in the middle of our (supposed) worship of Jesus, but…

“Trauma, by definition, is unbearable and intolerable. Most rape victims, combat soldiers, and children who have been molested become so upset when they think about what they experienced that they try to push it out of their minds, trying to act as if nothing happened, and move on. It takes tremendous energy to keep functioning while carrying the memory of terror, and the shame of utter weakness and vulnerability…posttraumatic reactions feel incomprehensible and overwhelming. Feeling out of control, survivors of trauma often begin to fear that they are damaged to the core and beyond redemption.” – pg. 1-2

So, in my strong disagreement with the pastor, perhaps I left because I found what was happening to be unbearable and intolerable. Perhaps it was a trace of a traumatic experience for me, in and of itself? Maybe, like Tom, I’m damaged…

In any case, I do believe that the reason for the disconnect between the pastor’s statement that “God honors a military calling” from the horrific ways that war damages, disfigures, and disorders the “imago dei” – which hopefully are becoming readily apparent as we begin to come face to face with and imagine stories like Tom’s - is, perhaps, related to the effects of a primordial trauma on all of us. We tend to push painful truths out of our minds.” Especially when they are rooted in a blinding display of false worship. “She did it…the serpent deceived me.”

“[T]raumatic experiences do leave traces, whether on a large scale (on our histories and cultures) or close to home, on families, with dark secrets being imperceptibly passed down through generations. They also leave traces on our minds and emotions, on our capacity for joy and intimacy, and even on our biology and immune systems.” – p. 1

Immediately after the above noted segment of the worship service, the same associate pastor advertised a book on grief. Insofar as I was able to hear or am able to remember, he didn’t mention PTSD. Assuming I’m not mistaken, I wonder why?

*Note: all of the previous quotes are from a book called The Body Keeps the Score, by Bessel A. van der Kolk, M..D.

* PHOTO FROM HERE: SEE LINK.

In a theater, is what is behind the curtain in a different room from what is in front of the curtain? Or, rather, does the curtain separate two parts of the same stage? Does all the action occur in one space, or are there two separate sets of action in front of and behind the curtain?

This is an important question, because our basic sense of the appearance of things and people and of events in the world is a mystery. What's on the other side of the contours of the horizons of all that appears before our senses is the overwhelming rush of the abysmal depths of the waters of Creation. Creation was not a one time act at some potentially locatable point in the measurably distant past.

In other words, we all live in God's theater. We appear on God's stage, and we are living the action of the play. Though it's full of mystery and wondrously unfinished - as is our raw sense of the power of creation - we even have the script for the play.

The original question of the layout of our divine theater, then, is an important one. Our popular imagination is dominated by our total separation from what we call "outer space.” This image of a divine theater of two separate rooms and two separate sets of action relies on a science and technocracy of control that makes it not only easy but our habitus to cover over our vulnerability and need in the face of the basic mystery inherent in existence itself with illusions of progressively higher levels of certainty as we better come to grasp with our minds what in previous times would have been "on the other side of the veil." So, what I’m asking is a question of the difference between control and trust.

2014 Art Installation at Griffith University Art Gallery in Brisbane by Dereck Dreckler

To ease potential or even inevitable suffering, heartache, fear, and even trauma, and to assuage our utter confusion in the face of so many disjointed, crisscrossing, and con-fused contours of daily life that appear before us like the ever-moving waves of the sea, do we craft our own poor image of what goes on behind the veil of reality, on the other side of the horizon of what appears to us? When we do, it tends to become its own monstrously large, and elaborate system of mechanizations that become a separate and even deathly contested theater in and of itself - an entirely disjointed room cut off from all that makes sense.

On the other hand, do we, in a state of wondrous awe, let go of our tight grasp on such illusions and fantasies and open our hands in trust to receive the fullness of what appears before us, as though from just on the other side of a thin veil we see moving in the wind?

We tend to kill each other - or perhaps splinter off into separate "voluntary associations" - over massive wars fought over competing dismissively technocratic explaining-aways of mystery rather than participate in the action of our divine theater in one space together.

"Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us THROUGH THE CURTAIN, THAT IS, THROUGH HIS FLESH, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of trust and allegiance, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water...And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works..."

In other words, our trust and confidence is because God himself appears on the scene of his divine theater. This demonstrates for us, in the fullness of mystery and knowledge held together, what appearance means. It is inherently the bearing fruit of the gift of Love, because God is Love.

"...about Jesus at Easter. Indeed, he appears as a human being with a body that in some ways is quite normal, and he can be mistaken for a gardener or a fellow traveler on the road. Yet the stories also contain mysterious but definite signs that this body has been transformed. It is clearly physical, using up (so to speak) the matter of the crucified body; hence the empty tomb. But equally, it comes and goes through locked doors; it is not always recognized; and in the end it disappears into God's space, that is, heaven, through the THIN CURTAIN that in much Jewish thought separates God's space from human space." - N. T. Wright, in Surprised by Scripture (emphasis added by me to "thin curtain" lol)

When he said he would "return," did he mean from a whole other place that went through or currently undergoes the groaning of a whole other act of creation? Or, rather, did he mean to say that he'll reappear again on this side of the veil, just as he did through the walls of a room full of praying disciples?

"For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf."
Hebrews 9:24

In a theater, is what is behind the curtain in a different room from what is in front of the curtain, or, rather, does the curtain separate two parts of the same stage. Does all the action occur in one space, or are there two separate sets of action in front of and behind the curtain? This is an important question, because it's posed between postures of control and trust.

Notably, if you actually sit in a theater, there isn't a "right" or "wrong" answer. Because of the mystery interwoven in all that appears before the rawness of our senses, different people will inevitably give different answers to this seemingly simple question, and for different reasons. The real answer, then, is not who is correct and incorrect but who will be vindicated. What I'm telling you is the reason the curtain in my bedroom is crimson red.

I was asked to do the spiritual portion of the morning conference call this morning at work. I didn't make it through without breaking down, lol. This pic, I hope, will helps serve as a kind of visual icon and reminder of the message and truth I tried to bear and carry. For me, I associate the image more with the temptation than the "trust" I discussed. So, this was what I shared:

Part of why I got into nursing was because I envisioned myself caring for people rather than treating them as cogs in a machine, letting them know they are cared for as human beings rather than as numbers in a conglomerate mass of bureaucratic B.S. There is a band called "Rage Against the Machine" for a reason.

Just because I have been gifted with sight of the problems with alienating things like bureaucracy and rule of law - whereas most others seems to take such things for granted - hasn't made this either easy or automatic. What I have discovered is that I am the bureaucratic B.S. I am the Rage Against the Machine. Because I have been formed into the image of the machine. When I get overwhelmed, I tend to, in turn, feel overwhelmed with a temptation to self-assertion verging on violence. "It's deep in my bones," as theologian Stanley Hauerwas says.

So, when I have deadlines or am overwhelmed with the amount of work to do because of the bureaucratic B.S., I still tend to get anxious, impatient, and angry. I am still tempted to rush through visits and be less (than) present with the flesh and blood human beings in front of my face. My very desire to overcome Babylonian dreams tends to itself become a Babylonian dream. I tend, in such situations, to want to be as fast, efficient, and functional as possible to relieve the stress placed upon all of us by the demands for speed, efficiency, and the reign of pragmatism upon a profession that is about actually caring for people.
These moves I tend to want to make to deal with my stress are all a big cover up for deep stuff that is difficult to deal with and process. And, I think it can only really be dealt with at an altar where blood is shed.

Historically, these demands, this vision for bureaucracy, has its roots in drastic measures taken by Napoleon to deal with the overwhelmingly large scale of his new version of Babylon. Napoleon wasn't exactly a man of peace, not quite a Son of Compassion.

So, in the end, there's no perfect system, no perfect way, no perfect humans. And there never was.
Napoleon rose out of the ashes of the French Revolution. And, we all know that modern revolutions became a thing only because, when actual in the flesh humans are in charge rather than putting themselves at the trust and mercy of a massive, mechanical system, things tend to towards a pretty messy injustice. Both the reasons for modern revolutions and the revolutions themselves are, in a sense, one kind of "altar where blood is shed." Humans didn't trust humans, and for good reason.

That's interesting to me, because part of caring and being cared for is establishing a deeply human trust and entrusting ourselves to another. We aren't perfect, but our work can be towards the edification of others. So, when I am get angry, stressed, and impatient in response to the inhumanity of bureaucratic B.S., I am breaking the bonds of trust that make care of humans possible. I am breaking the trust that gives shape and form to the image of humanity that is the reason why I'm a nurse.

So, with that in mind, what I have to do when these situations arise, when I am tempted to a distrusting posture of anger, stress, and impatience, is to remember that "who's in charge" isn't, in the end, a massive, idolatrous system of alienation and death. There is someone who took that death on upon his own flesh. He asks us to take on his way of suffering the stresses, anxieties, and efficiencies, the utterly dark alienation, the inhumanity and the degradation. He asks us to take those things upon ourselves WITH HIM. He asks us to trust him enough to suffer with him. TRUST. There's that word.

So, as I see it, the only way to trusting, caring relationships in our world of Rage Against the Machine is the Way of the Cross. The way of suffering the reasons for the rage, of taking the posture of the one who suffered rather than fighting back in a rage. He himself entrusted himself to the Father. He trusted. He didn't let go of an all-consuming, faithful, covenant fire of love to the point of his very own death. And, well, in the end, that turned out OK with him. He says we share in his glory when we share in his suffering.

From Colossians 1

15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. 17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. 19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

21 And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, 22 he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, 23 if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.

Here ends my blog series on how, in our Porn Star-saturated world, we are re-membering and reenacting the ancient, traumatic story of Medusa, Poseidon, and Perseus. In Parts 1 (LINK HERE) and Part 2 (LINK HERE), I focused most on rendering the story of Medusa something other than a distant, ancient, irrelevant fantasy about gods and goddesses who don’t exist. In Part 3 (LINK HERE), I dug into how Porn shapes us into shamed monsters who objectify and humiliate women. Here, where I finish up my series, I turn the lathe of truth around how the rage of Poseidon in the story of Medusa reappears in our world where we cast and aspire to the Porn Star, who herself then returns the favor by casting us into men who are less than human, perhaps even monsters. I come to my completion by pointing to how, even in our trauma and brokenness, our weakness and faithlessness, the faithful, risen One can shine bright in our healing - if we but TURN to Him.

Again from the “Growing Up In Pornland” article (SEE LINK HERE):

"Year 7 girls ask me questions about bondage and S&M. Many of them had seen 50 Shades of Grey (which was released on Valentine's Day). They ask, if he wants to hit me, tie me up and stalk me, does that mean he loves me? Girls are putting up with demeaning and disrespectful behaviours, and thereby internalizing pornography's messages about their submissive role…"

"[I]f he wants to hit me, tie me up and stalk me, does that mean he loves me?" I suppose, to some degree, it’s a legitimate question. After all, in the above picture of the flogging of Jesus, the men are smiling. Right?

The more plausible explanation is that the calmly blowing whims of the winds of Poseidon on a sunny day are forever on verge of rising up into raging tempest on the verge of murderous rape. Perhaps, in the first place, our very phallacies are shaped by malformed desires born of stone-like paralysis and jealous rage. Sometimes, mythology actually helps us parse through the proper relationship between fantasy and reality. To being to see again what it’s like “Growing Up In Pornland”:

"In the past few years we have had a huge increase in intimate partner rape of women from 14 to 80+. The biggest common denominator is consumption of porn by the offender. With offenders not able to differentiate between fantasy and reality..."
….
The authors found that "adolescents who are intentionally exposed to violent sexually explicit material were six times more likely to be sexually aggressive than those who were not exposed."
….
As a recent study found:
"online mainstream pornography overwhelmingly centered on acts of violence and degradation toward women, the sexual behaviors exemplified in pornography skew away from INTIMACY AND TENDERNESS and typify patriarchal constructions of masculinity and femininity."

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With this tragic story of Medusa, Perseus, and Poseidon as our reality as we lean into our need and desire for relationships with others rather than withdrawing into a wounded and bloody cave of isolation and loneliness - which is often the nature, power, and temptation of porn - we are faced with a series of choices.

I can open myself to the other person or people in vulnerability to potential suffering, or I can perform one of the many various moves available to me as means to cover over that open vulnerability of the exposure of my true wants and desires. I can turn and walk away, paralyzingly refusing the fulfillment - or even exposure to the light of day in the first place - of my want. Porn is great at helping me do this. I could also, alternatively, violently, coercively, or controllingly force the fulfillment of my wants like a raging wind of Poseidon, while simultaneously managing to keep them hidden. Porn is great at helping me do this, as well. Wind is difficult to visualize or grasp.

In the end, during that evening of the Missio Alliance Conference (see Part 1), Matt kept returning to the question: Can we just get our wants on the Table? That Table is the ground of mutual, face to face, self-sacrifical fulfillment of divinely GIFTED urge for harmonious, faithful human relationships. It’s also, then, the altar on which the One in whom all things are (re)made appears as the figurehead of our suffering, making our transformation into his Life possible as we vulnerably submit to others in our need and thus partake of his BREAD at the Table of fellowship.

So, I believe this question – “can we just get our wants on the Table?” - fundamentally asks us to trust in the presence and work of the Spirit towards healing, loving transformation of our wants towards His ends of righteous, harmonious, faithful relationships, whether relationships of the sexual variety or order or not. As far as I know, the means, path, and posture to and for that exposure of our wants and desires on the altar of Grace is the Way of the Cross, of potential or even inevitable suffering and pain. After all, in relationships, no two parties or people hold the same desires equally. It's certainly not easy, but I don't know of another Way to love.

"Fear opens the door of death, and through fear of death, we become slaves of our own desires...When we turn creatures into gods we also seek to turn STONES INTO BREAD, rather than living by the BREAD OF LIFE (John 6: 25-59) that comes from God." - Doug Harink on 1 Peter 2: 1-3

In Kari’s stories (see Part 1), as well as the stories of the subway and the bar restaurant (see Part 2), it was as though men immediately became STONE-cold monsters – or at least something less than human - as soon as they were faced with the beauty and power, vulnerability, and openness of female sexuality. We tend to turn such overwhelming images into divine ones.

So, through fear born of false worship of false gods "made of STONE" with our own hands – images produced and directed by humans to appear on magical, transparent STONE screens - we become slaves to our own desires. In the above noted story from ABC Religion and Ethics - this occurs with and through the illusion and fantasy of control in porn. But, as we know, perfect love drives out all fear. In mutual, caring relationship in which we tend to the presence, humanity, and desires of the other: "Do unto others as you would have done unto you." Taking our fears and desires and wants to the sacrificial Table of Grace allows them to be re-ordered towards love. Here, by and in the work of the Spirit, our hearts of STONE can be made into hearts of flesh.

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Let us face one another at the Table of Grace. Let us place there, out in the open, our disordered desires: our tendencies towards the abuse, aggression, violence, and control of Poseidon. I wanted to punch him in the face (see Part 3)! Let us confess how we are stunned into weak faithlessness when faced with the power and fertility of great beauty we don’t and won’t understand. Let us place on the altar of attunement our murderous tendencies to respond with COLD DISTANCE. Let us TASTE together there, at the Table of fellowship, the BREAD of life.

Let us make ourselves known by the one who absorbed in his own flesh - which is the BREAD OF LIFE - our punishment, our shame, our guilt, and our bloodshed. Only in himself can those repeated enactments of death bring us to an open space of life and peace in his Resurrection appearances in the garden in the cool of the dawn, behind locked doors of fear, and around a sea-side, charcoal fire of shame.

So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— if indeed you have TASTED that the Lord is good. As you come to him, A LIVING STONE rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves LIKE LIVING STONES are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
1 Peter 2:1‭-‬5

Here continues a 4 part blog series on how, in our contemporary world of the broken relationship between “male and female”, we are reenacting the story of Medusa. This, I hope, has become apocalyptically apparent in and through the figure of the Porn Star. See links here for Part 1 (LINK HERE) and Part 2 (LINK HERE) of this blog series. Briefly, there I discussed the beginnings of how Medusa and the Porn Star tell and embody a story of how originally faithful and creative desires for a treasured and gifted beauty are shaped into jealous envy of other suitors, as well as into raging coercion, deceit, control, and violence wielded upon the image of humanity out and because of our weakness and faithlessness that are “fed” when we participate in worship of and give power to false gods who are not gods – images of powers like Medusa and the Porn Star.

I did that, in Part 1, by attempting to reveal how the mythology of the power of the image of Medusa is not so very foreign to our contemporary, modern, “empirical fact” of a world. I also told of how the stories of my friend Kari, a woman on a Subway in NYC, and my “stunningly beautiful” friend at the bar restaurant, are all re-enactments of this same story of Medusa. In Part 1, however, I only hinted at how the power of and worship at the altar of the Porn Star shapes us and is interwoven with the story of Medusa. As I noted there, Parts 1 and 2 were more about Medusa the Porn Star.

I now aim to reveal more about the power and work of the figure of the Porn Star in our world, so this is more about Porn Star the Medusa. This post is more about the "objectification" of the Porn Star as an extension of the lifeless, fragmented, bloody body of the beheaded Medusa. The next post, which accomplishes its end at the Cross, is more about the associated violence. Perhaps – as God tends to somehow use deeply wounded pain, faithlessness, and brokenness for redemption into strength and recreation - such an obscene exposure of our reaching up and grasping for our Porn Stars can put us on a path of an encounter with the revealed Lord of transforming mercy, grace, love, and life.

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Pictured, Classical Greek depiction of Medusa as a Gorgon, from the fourth century BC



Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side… - John 20: 27.

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Let me return to the article noted in Part 1 that discussed the harmful effects of porn – SEE LINK AGAN HERE – which I also posted on Facebook. I realize that porn is pretty widely accepted these days. I can vaguely imagine that a small number of people can manage to function healthily while still remaining engaged with porn. But, I also imagine that those people – assuming they are functioning in a healthy way - don’t struggle with the shame, disordered desires, paralysis, guilt, and controlling tendencies I’ve struggled with in my life when it comes to my sexuality. Godspeed to them, if those people actually exist at all. I strongly suspect that my story is the more common one, perhaps really the only one. I also suspect that the story of this article, along with conversations with friends such as Kari that came as a result, that the picture they paint is the more predominant one.

Such new stories indicate that the old stories of ancient Greek mythology didn’t stop being told with the death of Ovid or of the Roman Empire. We continue to re-enact them. And, further, it seems to me that porn has quickly become a central means of shaping, forming, and molding us into this broken and traumatic story of Medusa and Perseus. From the story of “Growing up in Pornland”:

"If there are still any questions about whether porn has an impact on young people's sexual attitudes and behaviours, perhaps it's time to listen to young people themselves. Girls and young women describe boys pressuring them to provide acts inspired by the porn they consume routinely. Girls tell of being expected to put up with things they don't enjoy."
....
"As the Plan Australia/Our Watch report found, girls are tired of being pressured for images they don't want to send, but they seem resigned to how normal the practice has become. Boys use the images as a form of currency, to swap and share and to use to humiliate girls publicly."

They reach for and then cast people as distant images on stone screens to humiliate girls? Perhaps they were roused to a jealous rage in the face of other suitors? Remember that it was only after Medusa was raped by Poseidon when she came to be viewed as a MONSTER. Perhaps this was a projection of sorts. My friend Kari is not a young girl, but these Australian girls seem to be living in the same story. To return to it:

“These people who said they cared about me had NO INTEREST IN TRUE INTIMACY, in knowing about how I felt, what I wanted, who I am, which is so so so sad. And they are people who uphold an image of being emotionally mature. It’s MONSTROUS. Why aren't more men looking at their behavior and getting the help they need to grow? Why do they think it's ok to abuse women? Why do they want to be like that? Every woman I know has stories like this.” [emphasis added]

Perhaps the aspirations and desires of Kari’s friends were shaped by the distance from face to face interaction, by the world of divinized fantasy inhabited by the figure of the Porn Star as she is cast into her role as object of our hallowing. Her hallowing is why we vicariously enter into her world, the world we create with our own hands and into which we cast her.

From “Growing Up In Pornland” again:

"A 2012 review of research on "The Impact of Internet Pornography on Adolescents" found that adolescent consumption of Internet pornography was linked to attitudinal changes, including acceptance of male dominance and female submission as the primary sexual paradigm, with women viewed as 'sexual playthings eager to fulfill male sexual desires.'…."

I would like to explore something, and I would like to do so safely, peacefully, and respectfully. I wonder if the guy on the subway - from the video in Part 2 - was surprised when the woman didn’t enjoy his slapping of her ass? I wonder if the guy who caressed the “stunningly beautiful” woman in the bar restaurant who he had never met was confused when she was uncomfortable with it? Perhaps the reason women are viewed as "sexual playthings eager to fulfill male sexual desires" is because the figure of the "objectified" Porn Star, of the disfigured Medusa and the world we inhabit with them, is crafted by the hands of male desire in the first place? To return to the “Pornland” article:

"The proliferation and globalisation of hypersexualised imagery and pornographic themes makes healthy sexual exploration almost impossible. Sexual conquest and domination are untempered by the bounds of respect, intimacy and authentic human connection. Young people are not learning about intimacy, friendship and love, but about cruelty and humiliation."

I wonder if the caressing and slapped men felt humiliated by their rejection? Shamed, perhaps? Such are the internal workings of emotional paralysis into a conglomeration of STONE. With what kind of rage and conviction might they tend to react to such humiliation and rejection? To break free from their STONE coffins?

We’re unable to engage with women in substantial relationships, but our sexual desires – even our very physiology - are shaped towards fleeting games, towards chaff in the wind of male whims? It sounds to me like such playful whims could easily turn into the rushing winds of the sea of Poseidon.

No wonder the distant STONE-cold images on cell phones are used as tools for humiliation of girls and women. I doubt Medusa thanked Poseidon after he raped her.

In “Pornland,” we are not only falsely cast and molded into ephemeral, disembodied beings incapable of face to face, intimate relationality. Not only that. We are also thereby incapacitated from “getting our wants on the Table” in a safe, healthy, and graceful way that allows for the inevitable dynamics of honor and shame, edification and degradation that arise in all relationships – especially those belonging to the order of our sexuality - to work themselves out gracefully without resort to scapegoating the figure of the Porn Star we worship (or anyone elese). In “Pornland”:

"It is intimacy and tenderness that so many girls and young women say they are looking for…

But how will young women find these sensual, slow-burn experiences in men indoctrinated by pornography? Psychologist Philip Zimbardo says of young men: 'They don't know the language of face to face contact ... Constant arousal, change, novelty excitement makes them out of sync with slow developing relationships - relationships which build slowly.'"

“They don’t know the language of face to face contact…” That sounds like Perseus finding it inconceivable and impossible to relate to the disfigured image of Medusa, in all of her beauty and power, in a human way. Finding it impossible to accept the GIFT, he had to use a mirror, which has now been re-cast as a screen.

Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side… - John 20: 27.

The fact that we habitually relate to women who are neither Porn Stars nor Medusa as though they are indicates to me that the world of the Porn Star and the story of Medusa shape us in ways beyond our face time with the screen of pornography and beyond the pages of Ovid.

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Let us face one another at the Table of Grace. Let us place there, out in the open, our disordered desires: our aspirations to be known in and by a “stunning” beauty, our hope of entering into the world into which we cast the figure of the Porn Star, as well as our jealous rage roused by her other suitors. The guy who rubbed his hands intimately on the stunning beauty he didn’t know? I confess that I wanted to punch him in the face. Let us also bring to God our tendency to, in our blind rage, scapegoat, punish, and humiliate the gift we can’t, in our weakness, our paralysis, and our vulnerability, figure out how to unwrap. It was impossible in that moment to discern how much of that desire to punch the suitor in the face was out of the jealous rage of Poseidon and how much was out of respect and care for the actual person of the “stunning beauty” who was not being treated the way she is made to be treated, to be (appropriately, according to the nature of the relationship) loved and respected with faithful love to the point of death by the One who made her.

"The Fall and Expulsion from Garden of Eden” depiction of Adam and Eve in the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo.

Here continues my blog series on Medusa and Porn. SEE LINK HERE for Part 1, where I began to tell the story of Medusa as it is re-enacted daily in our world that is saturated with images of the figure of the Porn Star. In Part 1, I started to connect the story of Medusa to our world, and I told of how my friend Kari both has been hurt by this story and sees value and need in its being told. The beauty of Medusa rouses men to competitive aspirations that leads to a jealous rage. Male “heroes,” who cast the figures of Medusa and the Porn Star into roles they can’t and aren’t meant to fill, are then faced with and shaped by suddenly “dark” powers they don’t understand and can’t control. After all, actual intimate relationality with human persons requires an image of reality that is totally foreign to the one “cast” by and in the habitus, practices, and upward-reaching aspirations of false worship in porn consumption. That sounds like a recipe for disaster, so what comes next?

So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation — if indeed you have TASTED that the Lord is good…
- 1 Peter 2: 1-3

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Medusa was the only mortal of three divine sisters. So, she’s the only one able to die. In most versions of her story, then she is eventually beheaded by the hero Perseus. Death rather than life reigns in this story because of the dreaded and feared danger she tragically presents to us. This is the tragedy of our false worship, our vainly-reaching aspirations, of our dis-ordered desires.

Perseus accomplishes this “heroic” feat of murdering Medusa the MONSTROUS Gorgon by using the reflection of a mirror to gaze upon her without himself being transformed into a coffin of STONE. Notably, he does not do so by relating to her in some way before unseen. He never overcomes her power to TURN him into STONE. He perceives the GIFTING of beauty, relationship, and intimacy as danger and threat to be feared. So, he “accomplishes” his task by never directly coming face to face with her in the first place. Such a “facing” or reckoning requires a confession and repentance that itself depends upon the GIFT of a whole other way of seeing in a new, larger, and recreated world where Morning Stars mysteriously and incomprehensibly rise from graves.

After Perseus’ feat, what then remains of Medusa after being abused and murdered is merely a fragmented, faceless, lifeless, body. She becomes an object of our gaze, external to and at a distance from our world and our reality. Outside of actual relationship, shamed and dishonored. Like the dead and disfigured body of Christ being placed in a tomb – notably, after we accused him of blasphemy.

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I recently saw this viral video of a woman simply walking onto the crowded subway in NYC. She happened to be wearing an outfit that reveals her terrifying beauty that rouses men to competitively jealous aspirations. With no relationship with the woman whatsoever – not even so much as a hello or the knowledge of her name – a man sitting on the subway reaches over and slaps her ass.

When Perseus beheads the impregnated Medusa, a giant who wields a golden sword springs from her body. The woman on the subway’s response is to shame the man by violently and repeatedly slapping and screaming at him in the face. As she repeats herself desperately, she leans in and challenges him to do it again.

This woman’s response teaches us of the treasured, worthy, and honorable female GIFT being violated in Medusa’s rape. It speaks to the reason why, in the story, she’s raped by a figure of unhinged male rage inside the Temple of the female goddess of temperance and wisdom. It teaches us about the broken image of humanity in both male and female that results from false worship and thus from disordered desires.

The pain, humiliation, degradation, and disordered relationships associated with the predominance of porn in our world are not new to the “porn industry” that was introduced by the sexual revolution of the 60’s and grew to maturity in the consumer culture that budded in the 70’s and flowered in the 80’s. Perhaps we are reliving old traumas.

Notably, the man’s response to the woman’s wielding of, figuratively speaking, a giant golden sword, to her desperate challenge to the man’s humanity, was twofold. True to the story of Medusa, he first responded with the anger of Poseidon. He was then left in the utter paralysis born of our weakness and faithlessness, our faithlessness towards both God's Law of love and towards Eve. Towards the end of video, he was TURNED TO STONE.

There’s deep pain here embedded in the image of God, who “made them male and female”. None of the above women asked to be treated like they embody the figure of the Porn Star. I doubt any of them want to be Medusa, either.

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The above viral video - demonstrating the brokenness of our pain, anger, shame, and guilt associated with our less-than-human and disordered relationships and desires - was posted on Instagram by a “stunningly” beautiful young woman the day after she had a man she had never met and didn’t know come up from behind her in a bar restaurant and, with his left hand, start caressing her neck and shoulders WARMLY AND INTIMATELY. In his blind arrogance, he did so repeatedly and for an uncomfortably long period of time, even after she made her discomfort readily apparent with her body language. With his right hand, he pulled out his STONE-COLD cell phone to ask her for her phone number.

Despite being “beheaded,” though, Medusa still holds us captive in her power. Images we worship - images we craft by and with our own hands, on our own terms, and using our own disordered desires – have power over us. This occurs whether we come face to face with her beauty in actual relationship or not, even and especially where our desires are not ordered properly toward appropriate ends in mutual relationship. This is precisely the story of Medusa, Perseus, and Poseidon. Porn tends to shape us into and reify that same old tragedy.

The men on the subway and in the bar restaurant reaching out of their hands, aroused to jealous aspirations by creative, fertile beauty, aspiring to intimate touch of women they don’t know from Eve, affirm this power held by Medusa even after her beheading by Perseus. Is this power GIFT, or is it crafted deceit into a world of death?

In the mythology, Perseus, then, because of that power, is later able to use Medusa’s head, her face, as a weapon. It still has the power to turn men into STONE upon sight of it. The woman in the bar restaurant is still “stunningly” beautiful in the STONE-COLD, blind gaze of the arrogant man who, himself shaped by aspirations to “TASTE and see” the goodness of the figure of the Porn Star, doesn’t understand how relationships work with actual women. Again as a sign of the violation that leads to the deceitful transfiguration of her form into that of a MONSTER, as well as to her more recently being silenced, objectified, and finally slain, Medusa’s weaponization continues until Perseus finally somehow decides to give Medusa’s head to the goddess of Wisdom to be placed on Wisdom’s shield, which Perseus had previously used as a mirror to be able to murder Medusa.

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Medusa and the Porn Star, then, tell and embody a story of how originally creative desires for a treasured and GIFTED beauty are shaped into jealous envy of other suitors, as well as into raging coercion, deceit, control, and violence wielded upon the image of humanity out and because of our weakness and faithfulness that come about when we participate in worship of, give power to, and (like the fruit of a tree) reach up in aspiration towards false gods who are not gods – images of powers like Medusa and the Porn Star.

I do believe there is, however, hope. That’s, at least, what God seems to be forming me into lately as I come to Him in my STONE-COLD PARALYSIS, my pain, and my suffering that have come to me in our disordered and broken world of bloodshed between “male and female.” The lifeless, abused, and objectified body of Medusa is claimed by and into that of Jesus in His baptism into our blood. At the Table of Grace, Fellowship, and Forgiveness, murderous blood spilled to the ground is transformed again into a resurrected body of Life.

So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation — if indeed you have TASTED that the Lord is good…
- 1 Peter 2: 1-3

…if indeed you have TASTED that the Lord is good. As you come to him, A LIVING STONE rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves LIKE LIVING STONES are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
1 Peter 2:3‭-‬5

"Fear opens the door of death, and through fear of death, we become slaves of our own desires...When we turn creatures into gods we also seek to TURN STONES TO BREAD, rather than living by the BREAD OF LIFE (John 6: 25-59) that comes from God." - Doug Harink on 1 Peter 2: 1-3 [bold type added]

Depiction of Medusa, 2014, by Ronnie Ray Mendez

Medusa was a mythological, divine female figure associated symbolically with primordial, fertile, creative forces of the earth. She was purported to have a terrifying beauty. In Ovid’s Roman version of her story, at her origin she was “stunningly” beautiful, becoming an object of desired aspirations of men. She thus roused many suitors to competitive jealousy. Does that sound familiar to real life?

Porn stars are generally GIFTED with such beauty, too. Aspirations and desires shaped into and by jealous competition are most often and habitually left unfulfilled. Then what? Porn stars (even often seek to) become known as our idols, celebrities of a sort, the objects by which we reach upwards to a treasured and sacred place where such desires are vicariously fulfilled at a distance on magical, transparent STONE screens. But promises given by the terms of a contract written by the STONE-cold hand of death are, in the land of mortals, not usually fulfilled. We might say that Medusa is the ancient, primordial archetype of the contemporary, consumeristic Porn Star.

Medusa was also known as a kind of MONSTER with the capacity to turn men into STONE. Porn tends to paralyze men into a disordered CONGLOMERATE MASS of emotional immaturity, turning us into something less than human, perhaps even MONSTERS. So, what I’m telling here is more of a male story. I doubt, though, that females will find no place in the story or find no value in it. In fact, as I began to tell it previously, one woman thanked me and opened up about her own (more on that below). So, it’s primarily my story, but I recognize it everywhere. This is Part 1 of a 4 Part blog series. This post is more about Medusa the Porn Star. Later, I will expose more about Porn Star the Medusa.

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In prayer, pain, and suffering throughout the course of my life – but especially in the last year or so – God has been teaching me that the mishappening of such above noted misshapen desires are and can be transformed and re-ordered towards a more properly human, cross-shaped, mutually-sacrificial, life-giving love. This transformation is happening for me in and by worship of and fellowship in the One who TURNS STONES TO BREAD, the one who ascended and will never fall but who will, instead, faithfully and, as promised, return home.

One of the most pivotal and powerful moments of my time at the Missio Alliance Conference recently – SEE LINK HERE for their website - was a conversation over an informal time of drinks and fellowship with friends in the courtyard of the hotel where theologian, pastor, and star professor David Fitch was staying. (Per my point above about rising and falling, he would laugh at my calling him a star professor, btw)

My friend Matt Tebbe shared how, in relationships - he was using the example of relationships that belong to the sexual order in marriage - one person or party always wants or desires something more so or to a greater degree than the other. This means that we are always and forever, in relationships, presented with the opportunity and reality of confronting and facing our vulnerability before others and before God. He shared how and that the ways we have of "covering over" that vulnerability and weakness with illusory mechanisms of control and power are so manifold and all-pervasive as to be dizzyingly blinding to their very presence in the first place.

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In the story of the power of Medusa, arising out of our aspiration to beauty, our jealous competition, and our mechanisms of control that cover over the vulnerability and sensitivity of our flesh, the male god of the power of the chaotically raging sea - Poseidon - rapes her. Further, as a sign of the nature of the violation, he does so inside the Temple of worship to the equally beautiful female goddess of temperance and Wisdom.

Reflecting the ancient male telling of the story, Medusa’s image was then transfigured into that of a terrifying MONSTER, and her hair became that of curly serpents. Keep in mind here the dark, serpentine hair of many Mediterranean beauties. Their hair of shadows turns mysteriously in the wind that blows from the Mediterranean Sea. This is the particular embodiment of female beauty, GIFT, and mystery that gives context to this ancient Roman poetry and mythology. Upon casting our gaze upon her figure, we find Medusa to have – in addition to these serpents for hair - wings, along with mesmerizing, ever-moving eyes. According to the mythology, if - in seeking her beauty or wanting to draw too close to her creative powers - we fix our gaze upon her, we are immediately TURNED to STONE.

Remember, I am most primarily telling a male story of false worship - of what happens when we try to fix, affirm, and “cast” or “TURN” life sustaining bread, so to speak, into STONE. A living gift of a beautiful woman is not primarily an overly-sexualized object of for the male gaze to “TASTE and see that it is good.” “Beauty evokes desire,” as David Bentley Hart says, but disordered desire does not evoke beauty. Being MOVED by awestruck wonder in the face of the goodness of a GIFT is different from being TURNED TO STONE by jealousy and rage.

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A while back, ABC Religion and Ethics published an article called “Growing Up in Pornland: Girls Have Had It with Porn Conditioned Boys” – SEE LINK HERE - that talked about how, on the one hand, porn shapes and (dis)orders boys and men and their desires and, on the other hand, renders young girls and women somewhere between confused and fed up.

A female friend of mine named Kari spoke up. She thanked me for sharing and opening up space for conversation on the topic, which she saw as desperately needed. She senses a deep need for men to become more whole, human, and able to relate to their own emotions and to women. She said this:

“Most men I've known in a dating context are abusive, liars, deceitful, aggressive, and defensive…I have several examples of kind male friends who suddenly TURNED on me aggressively when romance or sex entered the picture. And other examples of men who paint themselves as emotionally evolved, then TURN on you when you express that you’d just like to be friends. This literally happened last week. He was so sweet and kind and even told me that if I just wanted to be friends he'd be fine with that. But when I told him that I did just want to be friends, he became COLD AND DISTANT…”

Does that sound a bit familiar in relation to the story of Medusa? Her friend TURNED COLD LIKE STONE, perhaps? Kari’s friend was, perhaps, aroused by a beauty he found mesmerizing and by its associated creative, fertile power. Maybe he was aroused to competitive aspirations shaped into jealousy of many other suitors.

Kari has many other stories. She had a best friend of four years who was male. Romance entered the picture. Instead of a mature conversation where each was able to share how they felt, “he freaked out, lashed out, cut me off, and started abusively accusing me of things...” She had a friend of seven years who wanted a date. When she said she had to think about it, “He lashed out abusively, he demanded what he wanted.” There seems to be a pattern here.

“These people who said they cared about me had NO INTEREST IN TRUE INTIMACY, in knowing about how I felt, what I wanted, who I am, which is so so so sad. And they are people who uphold an image of being emotionally mature. It’s MONSTROUS. Why aren't more men looking at their behavior and getting the help they need to grow? Why do they think it's ok to abuse women? Why do they want to be like that? Every woman I know has stories like this.” [emphasis added]

Kari’s friends were also, then, perhaps shaped and governed by the chaotically raging violence of Poseidon’s sea. Perhaps the rape of Medusa is a primordial one in which we all participate when men “lash out abusively, demand” and “abuse” women with no apparent interest in the actual WARMTH AND INTIMACY of human relationship. What’s really going on here? Men don’t actually lack desire for true relationships, so why does it often seem so far off?

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When we are reliving ancient traumas that are ever on the threshold of our memories by the very nature of the chaos or abyss over which the spirit moves that in every moment of creation, we don’t simply move past or on from such bloodshed, violation, and fear. As we “get our wants on the Table,” the faithful One can invade our bloody world with his forgiveness and shape, form, and re-order our desires towards His own faithful love that he demonstrated to us “while we were yet sinners.”

So, I believe that it’s only at the Table of Grace where fellowship is and can be reborn in a space of openness, tenderness, care, and forgiveness. This is a new kind of dominion governed by the One who TURNS STONES TO LIFE-GIVING BREAD, the One in and by whom being “stunned” is to be moved by a wondrous gift rather than paralyzed by the chaotic abyss of Poseidon’s sea. This is the Table where He is present in our midst as we come face to face with one another and share in deep fellowship together the “BREAD of the presence.”

Icon of the banishment Adam and Eve from the Garden
This evening, I did Lectio Divina on this week's lectionary passage - John 20: 19-39 - with friend and pastor Greg West, and God seemed to gently knock me on the head and heart and strength with some stuff.

I've caught before that this story is a story of the launching of a New Creation. N.T. Wright taught me about that, specifically the significance of this being "the first day of the week." After all, it's the Omega to the story about the creative Word spoken of in the Alpha verses of the book of John. In prayer this evening, though, I was given to see a bit more.

The doors were locked. The disciples were enclosed, surrounded by walls, shut off and alienated from their very own people, their community, and their history. The bloodshed, violence, and brokenness of the world was what cast then out from honor and closed them into shame and exile. Well, this sounds a lot like the garden! In the sin and brokenness of humanity, the garden became an enclosed space from which we were exiled and excluded. We're now left enclosed in our abyss of darkness, shut off from the origins of our history

In the garden of our history, God "walked with them in the cool of the day." In the midst of this enclosure of exilic darkness, God in the flesh stands in their midst.

In the garden, humanity loses touch and trust with the God of awestruck wonder, and they reach out to grasp for a fleshly fruit of knowledge that enables them to have to rely on no one but themselves. In a place where death, darkness, distrust and fear reign, Thomas declares he won't believe unless he reaches out and grasps knowledge for himself.

Once the first woman was lured inside a place where she questioned her trust in her true beginnings and endings, she "saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired..." She then cuts a covenant into the fleshly fruit with her teeth. With an unknown horizon of deceit before her, she takes a bite. Thomas' friends, however, are not deceptive.

With unknown horizon before us, the doubting one in all of us still has a desire to remain in the midst of his friends, despite - with his biting words from a place of deep pain - cutting himself off from them and the One in whom they trust and see with their hearts, minds, strength, and eyes. "I can't be sure you're not deceiving me unless I take a bite..." Jesus appears before him and offers for him to reach out and grasp the very flesh of Life.

When Jesus shows up - and he does - the one who grasps (closes his hands around) for the only thing in which he knows he can trust for himself is overwhelmed and, notably, no longer feels the urge to grasp. He declares, in response to the world opening, enlarging, and creating call: "My Lord and my God!"

Cherubim (Uriel) with flashing sword at the garden of Eden and Titus (Dismas), the Penitent Thief carrying the cross trying to enter the garden...
In the moment of creation, while "the Spirit is upon the face of the deep, abyssmal chaos of the waters," God speaks. His breath moves, and earth and heaven take their shape. As the disciples are stilled into a mystery of awe-struck wonder and grace, Jesus speaks as though blowing a cool, refreshing breeze upon the day: "Peace be with you." Here, we see that the guarded enclosure of the disciples becomes the Temple when Jesus enters, and we remember the Garden.

From that mysterious place of wonder-struck trust, Jesus' breath of fresh air in the cool of the garden sends his people out of their self-imposed exilic enclosure of darkness and death, out where the Light of the world is shining cherubic rays of a new creative, communal order for humanity representing and basking in the presence of God.

Cast out from the garden, humanity is enslaved to a nostalgia for a lost history. We can only remember bloody scars. Jesus shows up - bearing those very scars! What can you build with shattered mirrors and nails? Blood clots but doesn't make very good glue to hold things together. Christ appears and not only restores the beginnings of our history to us in his act of re-creation in his very self but also redeems the shattered and fragmented bits that we thought were the only blood-stained pieces of mirror and nail we had left of our humanity and history.

Thus, in the life-blood of Christ, we go from cast out to sent out.

From prayer the morning of Tues., April 27, 2019:
On John 20: 19-30, where the disciples are praying behind locked doors for fear of the Jews....

Maybe I'm just dense and slow, but I've always been confused as to why, of all greetings, Jesus said "Peace be with you." I mean, why not, "Hello"? Lol. I mean, they all hadn't seen each other in 3 days after basically hanging out continually for 3 years. "Hello" and a hug seems appropriate to me :P

On top of that, "peace" is ingrained in me as an abstacted, universal principle of life with God. I also, similarly, most readily and easily tend to associate "peace" as something that comes along with the character of God. He "leads me beside still waters" because of who he is. So, that understanding of the "peace" of God has always left me confused as to why he would choose that particular abstracted principle to glean from the machinery of all of our systematic truth about Him to grab from the heavens like a star from a tree with which to address the disciples in that particular moment. Why not something like, "Hello everyone. 1600 years from now, don't focus TOO MUCH on the Cross; the resurrection is important, too!" Lol.

In prayer this week, it dawned on me like a flash of insight from a warm fire of dancing light: "Duh. He said 'peace', because the people he loves were anything but at peace in that moment."

I can only imagine the power at work here. They're hunkered down behind locked doors in fear because the rebellious guy they publicly allied themselves with as King was murdered by the authorities. They don't just have their lament over the death of the world they thought they knew to deal with. They also have to navigate a basic primitive fear of shameful death and a basic animal desire to stay alive. In the midst of all that confusion, suddenly standing among them is their dead King. And, he's not only standing there but speaking to them! And, with his words, he is directly addressing their deepest and darkest fears and insecurities in that moment. "Peace," he says. "Wait, you mean, you aren't dead?" While they're still processing that, it's as if Jesus is saying, with his very presence, "I am here. Your suffocating black hole of fear and darkness is a mirage. I am more powerful than black holes."

So, here they are blinking three times to make sure they're not dreaming, mouths agape and minds reeling - and he "breathes" that very power that overcomes the black hole of death upon them. In that power, he "sends" them out on a mission to procliam His divine and authoritative presence and life among them to the very people who are the reason the doors are still locked even though the disciples' living King is standing in their midst without coming through said doors first!

I suspect that would require a lot of rearranging of categories and worlds in the imagination. Haha. I also imagine that it's not something one would just understand fully in the blink of a moment. No wonder Pentecost - when these doors of fear were flung open in the power of love and life - was like 40 days later.