lessons

I read something in an interview with Jose Saramago the other day that, in a lot of ways, explains how I feel about history, but also how I feel about life, God, and the bible.

"History, really, is a fiction--not because it is made up of invented facts, for the facts are real, but because in the organization of those facts there is much fiction. History is pieced together with certain selected facts that give a coherence, a line, to the story. In order to create that line, many things must be left out. There are always those facts that did not enter history, which if they had might give a different sense to history. History must not be presented as a definitve lesson" - Jose Saramago

When I read that last sentence, it rang really true for me, and I knew it wasn't just about history. It resonated with my weariness of trite lessons that are presented to me, and the feeling that all lessons are trite if they attempt to be definitive. But it's not just the last sentence that resonates with me, it's all of it, my belief that there is no such thing as non-fiction, and the belief that all words are symbols, and that because of this there is no way to accurately talk about God, that the Bible does not contain or completely describe God.

Except...of history, life, the Bible, and God, I feel like I can make the most definitive statement about God than the others on that list. This is ironic to me because, of all of them, I think that God is the biggest, the one that is mots inadequately described through words, through facts, through the organization of facts. But "God is love" is definitive, and I believe it, even though I know that I don't actually understand what I'm saying, and I suspect that no one understands what they are saying when they say that God is love.

In other news, I'm really uncomfortable when men/women are either demonized or idealized. The levels of discomfort I experience when people talk about how great girls are is equal to the levels I experience when men are typed as sex-obsessed and sexually out of control (I don't really know how to describe the girl one, just think of it as idealizations of girls as pure or hospitable or something along those lines). On that same topic, I'm not interested in biblical masculinity. I don't care about what type of man Adam was. I understand that there are people for whom this is very important, and if it is very important to them then they should pursue it, but it isn't for me. Probably because most of the time when people talk about biblical masculinity it's accompanied with theology that I'm uncomfortable with, and accompanied by ideas that men should be strong or forceful in some way. I'm becoming much more fascinated with weakness and with sickness, and with the idea that God moves mostly in subtle ways (because he doesn't want to be seen?) rather than through showiness and through force.

Another thing: I'm uncomfortable listening to people talk when I sense that they are trying to make me uncomfortable, or trying to use what they say to be powerful and manipulative, rather than becoming uncomfortable through the content of what they're saying. E.g., girls talking about PMSing. This doesn't make me uncomfortable unless I sense that it is being brought up as a way of trying to make me feel uncomfortable, as a way of sensationalizing what doesn't need to be sensationalized. This is similar to how I feel about ministries talking about what they do. When I sense that they are trying to make me feel guilty, I am uncomfortable. Ironically, these are probably the people say that it's good to make people uncomfortable and, in a sense, they're right. But I'm talking about a different type of discomfort, I'm thinking of a discomfort that tells me that I can no longer trust the words that are coming out of someone's mouth, and not so much discomfort that tells me I need to live my life in a different way, or that I need to take action.

I hate power. I hate when people try to make themselves powerful over others. More and more, I hear 'Give up' ringing in my ears, not in the fatalistic sense, but in the sense that I need to let go, to give up power rather than take it up, to give up my claims, to give up my control, to be terribly weak, to be diseased, to die. I don't want to respond violently to people. I don't want to lie to people. I don't want to withold knowledge from people as a means of making myself stronger. I don't want to tell inside jokes around people that aren't on the inside, because this is also a means of control.

Incidentally, I don't think I can write bible as Bible anymore. Something about that capitalized word just grosses me out. I think I associate it with bad theology. I'm pretty cool with the bible, and pretty fucking sick of the Bible.

In other news, I feel like I am coming to understand my dad more and more, mostly because I'm noticing the ways that I am like him. This is a good thing.