Interview Answers
Feb. 11th, 2004 10:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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queenofhalves
1. You have the opportunity to share any myth/sacred story in any form or medium you want for a large audience. What story would you pick and how would you present it (film? drama? ritual? storytelling? mime?)?
I’m torn on this one, because I have an old, frustrated desire to be a film director – but I love the power and immediacy of theater for myth.
Somewhat to my own surprise, I think that I would choose put on a production of Euripides’ The Bacchae as an outdoor theatrical production. Drama, dance, passion, catharsis – it has it all.
Runner-up Ideas: “The Descent of Inanna” as a theatrical piece (I’ve got pieces of a script adaptation filed away in my hard drive at home); a theatrical production of Godspell with a woman cast as Jesus; a film about the Grail Quest.
2. What was the first sacred story you taught your child?
When she was born, I was still in a time of searching, not really part of any community. I was participating in the OAG, but as a solitary, and since I was also working on my MA, most of my energy was going there – and to simply surviving the transition to motherhood. Consequently, she received very little sacred education. I’m only now starting to be more systematic about it. It’s hard when I’m torn between wanting to be simple and consistent for her, without giving her ideas that one way is the only way.
The answer to your question is that it was the story of Persephone, presented in the context of a small Spring Equinox ritual we had with another family. It wasn’t that I consciously chose that story to be her first; it’s just how it turned out.
This is an area I’m still struggling with.
3. Plan a dinner party with five other people, famous or obscure, living or dead. Who do you invite? (with explanations for the more obscure : )
Enheduanna: A priestess of Inanna. One of her poems of praise is believed to be the earliest piece of writing we have.
Mary Magdalene
Joan of Arc
Theresa of Avila
Queen Christina: became queen of Sweden at age 7, abdicated in 1654 to convert to Catholicism. She was raised to think of herself as a man in order to be a good “king” but was torn between that self-image and the demand that she marry and bear children. There are all kinds of legends and stories about her, and historians are divided as to whether she died a virgin or had a continent’s worth of lovers. She was an intellectual, a patron of the arts, and defied convention all her life.
4. Summarize your spiritual journey. Where did you start out, where did you go, and how did you end up a Swedenborgian divinity student?
I was raised in a non-denominational Protestant faith. My father is a former Baptist minister who lost his faith and left the ministry before I was born. He came back to a “reverent agnosticism” that was comfortable in some Christian churches. I grew up reading the Bible, praying before meals and bedtimes, and coming to know and consider Jesus a personal friend as well as a personal savior. I took my faith very seriously, and one of my identity labels was “Good Christian Girl.” My father was (and is) a highly intelligent man, loving, and someone who always rises to the top of any organization. When I was growing up, he was superintendent of the school district, taught Sunday school, filled the pulpit when the pastor was out of town (teaching the Bible, which he still believed was the best revelation of an ultimately mysterious God, and the best teacher of ethical principles). My vision of God was very much one of my Heavenly Father: he loved me, watched out for me, and was in charge of everything. It was a very comfortable and safe feeling.
Everything changed sometime in the early part of 1986, during my sophomore year of college, the night that I first watched “A Passage to India.” What struck me about the film was its portrayal of the extreme vulnerability of our lives. Even the best intentions can go awry and bring disaster. None of us are safe. Over the space of what seems in retrospect to have been no longer than 30 minutes or so, my entire faith crumbled. I could no longer believe in any God; I had my first real understanding of my own mortality, and I was no longer sure how we could know anything. It was one of the most painful experiences of my life. For the next few months, I would be fine during the day, but when I went to bed, I would come face-to-face with the Void. I could not imagine anything that could fill the vast emptiness of the universe, and I felt very small and very alone. I was afraid of dying, and appalled at the idea of living forever. I wished that I had never been born.
As I struggled with the Void, I also struggled to build a new system of ethics. My previous ethics had been based on the Bible. Now that I could no longer believe in God, honesty demanded I take a new look at everything. I didn’t end up far from where I started (not surprisingly). My “life raft” of ethical principles ended up being Wisdom (considered experience – thinking about what I did, trying to learn from everything), Integrity (honesty with self and others), Courage, and Tenderness (I didn’t expect myself to “love” everyone, but I could aspire to treat everyone gently and with compassion). Later, I added a “grace note”: Humor.
I came back to belief in a Divine when, after much thinking, I realized that I had had one experience in which I had reason to believe I had heard the Voice of God, in a time and a place and with a purpose that gave me reason to believe that that God paid attention to humanity and cared about it. I no longer dared to put a name to any Being who could equal the vastness of the Void. I settled on the term “Almighty Creator.”
At some point in this era, Matthew Fox visited the Claremont colleges, and I was invited to attend a dinner with him. Later, Original Blessing would open up my idea of what “Christianity” was about.
During my last semester I took a class called “Women in Greco-Roman Society” at Scripps College (a women-only school). It turned out to be about women’s experience and the Feminine Divine in Western religious history. This was my introduction to the Goddess as something other than Greek myth (which, of course, was always presented as a kind of fairy tale). I discovered Inanna, Lilith, Shekinah, Chokmah – and the concept that idolatry was not so much about statues of a god, but the limits we put on the Divine by describing it. It was a huge paradigm shift. I started addressing the Divine as Goddess, and started reading Starhawk and Z Budapest.
I named myself a witch for several years, but I was a lousy witch. I wasn’t interested in spell-casting, and all the paraphernalia got in the way for me. I also missed the depth of the theology of Christianity. Reading Matthew Fox helped me realize that some of the things I thought were missing in Christianity were actually there. I read The Crafted Cup, the book of the theology and rituals of the Ordo Arcanorum Gradalis, a Grail fellowship, which found harmony between Christianity and Paganism in the Grail Lore. I felt like for the first time the two sides of my soul could be united. I wrote to the author and embarked on the ordination study program. It took me eight years, because at this time I was also enrolled in my MA program, having a child, and then getting divorced. It was also a bit of a struggle because the OAG is very small, and I was a solitary, and my teachers would sometimes take months to respond to my lessons, then disappeared without warning.
I found the Swedenborgian church three years ago this spring. I loved it because it teaches that Jesus was/is God Incarnate, the highest theophany we have, but that all people who believe in one God and who live their lives as best they know how, in harmony with the principles of love and wisdom, are “saved” – and that in the afterlife we are not judged by God, but gravitate toward the spiritual community which most closely matches our deepest, ruling love. (Very short form.)
When I was in high school, I remember sitting in church listening to the pastor preaching, and thinking, “I would like to do that some day: teach people about God and the Bible, help give them hope and support.” But I knew that I could not tell anyone that they would go to Hell if they did not believe in Jesus – even if it was true. So I disqualified myself from ministry. After a year in the Swedenborgian church, and several months of work with a life coach exploring why a bright, talented person like myself was still working in admin jobs instead of having a career, I “heard my Call” and realized that I had finally found a church in which my beliefs and my gifts qualified me for ministry. This was the path I had been meant for, one which I had not been ready for until now.
5. On a day-to-day basis, who is your closest friend? What is s/he like?
On a day-to-day basis, my closest friend is probably JB. He is a gaming (RPGs) friend I have known for about 13 years now. For many years we knew each other only in game, but once he moved out of town and I started having email access we started corresponding about game, and doing some email scenes. Gradually we started communicating more deeply. Email allowed us the privacy and time “together” that we never sought in person – in part because we both were shy when we met, and then he was involved with and married to someone, and we didn’t want to take any chances of intentions being misconstrued. But we have become close friends and confidantes, and his emails always brighten up my day. He has (through gaming and through his inclusion in Seonaid’s story described in last night’s post) very strong daimonic overtones for me. We have two sets of RPG characters who have married, and there is often a strong attraction (not necessarily romantic) between our other characters. I have a lot of practice keeping the real man separate from the daimonic characters he manifests on his own and in my imagination.
He is nine years older than I am, but the age difference has never really registered with me. He’s an ex-Marine, a Mormon, an artist, shy as himself but a dynamic role-player. We share a love of sci-fi and fantasy, gaming, mythology, and expressing our creativity.
My best girlfriends are Sandy, who I met in a School of the Seasons class while I was pregnant, and who has seen me through all kinds of transitions and growth; and Stephanie, who I met at church and is also my lifecoach. Both of them are staunch friends, the kinds I can call in the middle of the night, and with whom I have entrusted some of my deepest secrets and feelings. But we don’t see each other on a day-to-day basis.
queenofhalves 1. You have the opportunity to share any myth/sacred story in any form or medium you want for a large audience. What story would you pick and how would you present it (film? drama? ritual? storytelling? mime?)?
I’m torn on this one, because I have an old, frustrated desire to be a film director – but I love the power and immediacy of theater for myth.
Somewhat to my own surprise, I think that I would choose put on a production of Euripides’ The Bacchae as an outdoor theatrical production. Drama, dance, passion, catharsis – it has it all.
Runner-up Ideas: “The Descent of Inanna” as a theatrical piece (I’ve got pieces of a script adaptation filed away in my hard drive at home); a theatrical production of Godspell with a woman cast as Jesus; a film about the Grail Quest.
2. What was the first sacred story you taught your child?
When she was born, I was still in a time of searching, not really part of any community. I was participating in the OAG, but as a solitary, and since I was also working on my MA, most of my energy was going there – and to simply surviving the transition to motherhood. Consequently, she received very little sacred education. I’m only now starting to be more systematic about it. It’s hard when I’m torn between wanting to be simple and consistent for her, without giving her ideas that one way is the only way.
The answer to your question is that it was the story of Persephone, presented in the context of a small Spring Equinox ritual we had with another family. It wasn’t that I consciously chose that story to be her first; it’s just how it turned out.
This is an area I’m still struggling with.
3. Plan a dinner party with five other people, famous or obscure, living or dead. Who do you invite? (with explanations for the more obscure : )
Enheduanna: A priestess of Inanna. One of her poems of praise is believed to be the earliest piece of writing we have.
Mary Magdalene
Joan of Arc
Theresa of Avila
Queen Christina: became queen of Sweden at age 7, abdicated in 1654 to convert to Catholicism. She was raised to think of herself as a man in order to be a good “king” but was torn between that self-image and the demand that she marry and bear children. There are all kinds of legends and stories about her, and historians are divided as to whether she died a virgin or had a continent’s worth of lovers. She was an intellectual, a patron of the arts, and defied convention all her life.
4. Summarize your spiritual journey. Where did you start out, where did you go, and how did you end up a Swedenborgian divinity student?
I was raised in a non-denominational Protestant faith. My father is a former Baptist minister who lost his faith and left the ministry before I was born. He came back to a “reverent agnosticism” that was comfortable in some Christian churches. I grew up reading the Bible, praying before meals and bedtimes, and coming to know and consider Jesus a personal friend as well as a personal savior. I took my faith very seriously, and one of my identity labels was “Good Christian Girl.” My father was (and is) a highly intelligent man, loving, and someone who always rises to the top of any organization. When I was growing up, he was superintendent of the school district, taught Sunday school, filled the pulpit when the pastor was out of town (teaching the Bible, which he still believed was the best revelation of an ultimately mysterious God, and the best teacher of ethical principles). My vision of God was very much one of my Heavenly Father: he loved me, watched out for me, and was in charge of everything. It was a very comfortable and safe feeling.
Everything changed sometime in the early part of 1986, during my sophomore year of college, the night that I first watched “A Passage to India.” What struck me about the film was its portrayal of the extreme vulnerability of our lives. Even the best intentions can go awry and bring disaster. None of us are safe. Over the space of what seems in retrospect to have been no longer than 30 minutes or so, my entire faith crumbled. I could no longer believe in any God; I had my first real understanding of my own mortality, and I was no longer sure how we could know anything. It was one of the most painful experiences of my life. For the next few months, I would be fine during the day, but when I went to bed, I would come face-to-face with the Void. I could not imagine anything that could fill the vast emptiness of the universe, and I felt very small and very alone. I was afraid of dying, and appalled at the idea of living forever. I wished that I had never been born.
As I struggled with the Void, I also struggled to build a new system of ethics. My previous ethics had been based on the Bible. Now that I could no longer believe in God, honesty demanded I take a new look at everything. I didn’t end up far from where I started (not surprisingly). My “life raft” of ethical principles ended up being Wisdom (considered experience – thinking about what I did, trying to learn from everything), Integrity (honesty with self and others), Courage, and Tenderness (I didn’t expect myself to “love” everyone, but I could aspire to treat everyone gently and with compassion). Later, I added a “grace note”: Humor.
I came back to belief in a Divine when, after much thinking, I realized that I had had one experience in which I had reason to believe I had heard the Voice of God, in a time and a place and with a purpose that gave me reason to believe that that God paid attention to humanity and cared about it. I no longer dared to put a name to any Being who could equal the vastness of the Void. I settled on the term “Almighty Creator.”
At some point in this era, Matthew Fox visited the Claremont colleges, and I was invited to attend a dinner with him. Later, Original Blessing would open up my idea of what “Christianity” was about.
During my last semester I took a class called “Women in Greco-Roman Society” at Scripps College (a women-only school). It turned out to be about women’s experience and the Feminine Divine in Western religious history. This was my introduction to the Goddess as something other than Greek myth (which, of course, was always presented as a kind of fairy tale). I discovered Inanna, Lilith, Shekinah, Chokmah – and the concept that idolatry was not so much about statues of a god, but the limits we put on the Divine by describing it. It was a huge paradigm shift. I started addressing the Divine as Goddess, and started reading Starhawk and Z Budapest.
I named myself a witch for several years, but I was a lousy witch. I wasn’t interested in spell-casting, and all the paraphernalia got in the way for me. I also missed the depth of the theology of Christianity. Reading Matthew Fox helped me realize that some of the things I thought were missing in Christianity were actually there. I read The Crafted Cup, the book of the theology and rituals of the Ordo Arcanorum Gradalis, a Grail fellowship, which found harmony between Christianity and Paganism in the Grail Lore. I felt like for the first time the two sides of my soul could be united. I wrote to the author and embarked on the ordination study program. It took me eight years, because at this time I was also enrolled in my MA program, having a child, and then getting divorced. It was also a bit of a struggle because the OAG is very small, and I was a solitary, and my teachers would sometimes take months to respond to my lessons, then disappeared without warning.
I found the Swedenborgian church three years ago this spring. I loved it because it teaches that Jesus was/is God Incarnate, the highest theophany we have, but that all people who believe in one God and who live their lives as best they know how, in harmony with the principles of love and wisdom, are “saved” – and that in the afterlife we are not judged by God, but gravitate toward the spiritual community which most closely matches our deepest, ruling love. (Very short form.)
When I was in high school, I remember sitting in church listening to the pastor preaching, and thinking, “I would like to do that some day: teach people about God and the Bible, help give them hope and support.” But I knew that I could not tell anyone that they would go to Hell if they did not believe in Jesus – even if it was true. So I disqualified myself from ministry. After a year in the Swedenborgian church, and several months of work with a life coach exploring why a bright, talented person like myself was still working in admin jobs instead of having a career, I “heard my Call” and realized that I had finally found a church in which my beliefs and my gifts qualified me for ministry. This was the path I had been meant for, one which I had not been ready for until now.
5. On a day-to-day basis, who is your closest friend? What is s/he like?
On a day-to-day basis, my closest friend is probably JB. He is a gaming (RPGs) friend I have known for about 13 years now. For many years we knew each other only in game, but once he moved out of town and I started having email access we started corresponding about game, and doing some email scenes. Gradually we started communicating more deeply. Email allowed us the privacy and time “together” that we never sought in person – in part because we both were shy when we met, and then he was involved with and married to someone, and we didn’t want to take any chances of intentions being misconstrued. But we have become close friends and confidantes, and his emails always brighten up my day. He has (through gaming and through his inclusion in Seonaid’s story described in last night’s post) very strong daimonic overtones for me. We have two sets of RPG characters who have married, and there is often a strong attraction (not necessarily romantic) between our other characters. I have a lot of practice keeping the real man separate from the daimonic characters he manifests on his own and in my imagination.
He is nine years older than I am, but the age difference has never really registered with me. He’s an ex-Marine, a Mormon, an artist, shy as himself but a dynamic role-player. We share a love of sci-fi and fantasy, gaming, mythology, and expressing our creativity.
My best girlfriends are Sandy, who I met in a School of the Seasons class while I was pregnant, and who has seen me through all kinds of transitions and growth; and Stephanie, who I met at church and is also my lifecoach. Both of them are staunch friends, the kinds I can call in the middle of the night, and with whom I have entrusted some of my deepest secrets and feelings. But we don’t see each other on a day-to-day basis.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-12 09:37 pm (UTC)i should write about my alter-egos sometime too. :>
Re:
Date: 2004-02-13 05:42 am (UTC)I have never met anyone who had (or at least 'fessed up to) the same kind of internal landscape that I do. I would love to learn about what your alter egos are like, where they come from, how they function for you, and etc.