马年快乐

This horse (from our Met daily calendar) looks a little overwhelmed. Lunar new year, Ramadan and Mardi Gras, all at once?

Out lines

More and less evanescent lines on the Kazimiroff Nature Trail

Intervention

In today's church bulletin, a copy of a public letter sent by the head of the Anglican Church in Canada to the head of the Episcopal Church. 

Our nation finds itself in a "time of distress," he writes, which is "heartbreaking for us, your northern neighbors, to watch." How good to be reminded that other hearts break with ours, see the blessing in our acts of loving resistance. How grateful I feel to read his call to Canadian Anglicans "to continue holding in prayer all of you in this intense, unpredictable season in the life of the United States of America."

Upcycling

Today we had a symposium featuring people whose work appears in the exhibition "Fashion - Faith: Rituals and Conversations," including a panel for us members of the planning team. The symposium ranged widely, as the exhibition does, making a stimulating whole out of what had started as a grab-bag of piecemeal ideas and connections. We heard about young Muslim American influencers and their innovative takes on hijab, the vestments designed for the ordination of Episcopal bishops (including Gene Robinson), an erstwhile Tibetan Buddhist nun's art in body-hugging and inflatable latex, the extravagantly garbed figures of an invented religion called Abwoon Dominus...

Discussion ranged from testimonials to fashion designed by "people of faith" to a young religious studies scholar's insistence that "fashion is capitalism, religion is violence, that's just authentic!" A Japanese priest told us how, when he was doing monastic training, the robes made him feel he needed to get up at 5:30am rather than his preferred 2pm. An older Moroccan woman responded to the presentation of work on new stylish hijabs by reflecting that when she grew up, she envied the women in hijab their freedom not to have to do up their hair, etc.; these young women's freedom is being taken away! In indigenous designer challenged the fashion industry's obsession with "scaling up" but also the expectation that each designer set up their own shop - why not find someone already doing what you're interested in and joining them?

I'm sort of hoping this project continues. Not that this phase is finished yet - I'm offering a workshop called "Is fashion a religion" in ten days, assisted by students from "Theorizing Religion." I'll bring from today's discussions a renewed sense that standard understandings of dress in terms of "self-expression" and "being seen" may mischaracterize religious - but also putatively non-religious - forms of attire.

Anthrobscene

 

 

 

 

 

 

What wicked, wicked people these are

Question Mark Religion

Meanwhile, in "After Religion," I today tried to cover both the history and problems of the modern notion of religion (private, individual, focused in feeling, etc.) and the history and problems of the idea of world religions (incoherent category privileging Christianity-like imperial formations, etc.) - what I called, borrowing from Brent Nongbri, the idea of religion a genus and species. This folded together two lectures 

from last year's iteration, each a bit of a condensation of several sessions of "Theorizing Religion." Somewhat disturbingly, I think it made sense as a digest - even with the additional critique of the ideas of religion and world religions of American Indian philosopher Vine Deloria. I tried somewhat subliminally to communicate what I was doing through 

some fiddling with image on the agenda slides I use to structure and punctuate my lectures. A giant question mark composed of symbols of world religions (a piece of free clip art amusingly entitled Question Mark Religion) towered over the class as we began, then tilted to one side as we noticed the surprisingly modern pedigree of "religion." It   

lurched further - to an almost fishhook angle - as we dissected the faux pluralism of "world religions," before stabilizing into a kind of horizontal correction as we learned about Deloria's critique of time-based religions from the vantage of space-based ones. I hope it felt like a kind of calibration, arriving at an unexpected alternative coherence.

The reason for the compression of what had originally been three lectures near the center of the course into two nearer the start is to make space for some of the other things this moment seems to demand. Today's was the first of the pair "Challenging Religion" and "Challenging the Secular," and will be followed by a pair (expanded from one lecture) focusing on the multifaceted threat of religious nationalism.

Seguimos acqui

Bad Bunny at the Super Tazón made me so proud and grateful to be American - America understood as a whole hemisphere of course! I hope every time a white nationalist utters the pablum "God bless America" (not just at waspy "All-American" celebrations that embarrass by their narrowness) we will all feel the surge of God's love for all the Americas, pushing aside the theological absurdity of supposing any one part has a manifest destiny to dominate the others. Rhetorical touchdown, Benito!

Out of commission

A happy transition at church today - the "commissioning" of four new vestry members and a new warden. 

And it was fun to watch it from the side, rather than be part of it, as I have been for nine years: a three-year term on vestry, and then thrice two years as one of the church's two wardens. 

We've been through a lot in that time, from the calling of a new rector to the zoom-diaspora disruptions of the pandemic to a current capital campaign updating our physical plant, and it was nice to have a ring-side seat ... though really the wardens' place is inside the ring! At a diocesan wardens' conference and then again at last summer's CCD (College for Congregational Development), I learned that my ride has been unusually smooth. In demographically challenged or less well-run congregations, and without the kind of managerial support we are afforded by the professional staff of the Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen, there's more and harder work for wardens to do. 

I had an earlier stint in the lay leadership, a term on vestry from 2010-13, as we went through an earlier clergy transition. Reading my reflections on the end of that chapter (thank you, blog!), I realize I've metabolized all the transitions we witnessed then, as, indeed, I've already metabolized those of this longer stint. 

At that point I reflected that successful change is made possible by the continuity in what isn't changing - space, community, liturgy, polity - whether those are better understood as inertia or momentum. I'd like to think my wardenship has contributed to steady momentum! (Space, community and liturgy have all shifted over these nine years, too.) As we confirmed at CCD, Holy Apostles is doing well as Episcopal congregations go, and the imminent completion of the rebuilt Mission House will open further new doors. 

In any case, I've done my time. Grateful others are there to take on the work. 

Windy

Full color

As regnant white supremacy's nihilism, brutality and racist vulgarity continue to shock and appal, there is good in the world. 

Last call

Spent a long day at two poorly-structured "visioning sessions" for the turbocharged devising of new degree programs we're told we need pronto if we are to right the foundering ship of the liberal arts at The New School. 

The first was billed as regarding "humanities and social sciences" across the university but managed not to mention humanities once. Our specific focus was to be the space of history, sociology and anthropology (whose majors are among the "credentials" marked for "indefinite discontinuance for redesign" in our restructuring plan), but our breakout discussions wound up reinventing the wheel of general education. 

The other brought together faculty in the "discontinuance for redesign" programs in urban, environmental, and global studies (one of our curricular strengths but one few students choose as majors), who were invited to come up with "concepts" for new degree programs, what one wag called "new bottles for old wine." We think the old wine is excellent, but both of these exercises were haunted by the likelihood that the restructurers are looking for new wine - and will refer to these "visioning" sessions as proof that faculty sommeliers had a say.

Vested!

An exhibition on fashion and faith in whose design I had a very small part opens today. The latest in a series of events, it's turned out much richer and engaging than I expected. These garments have things to say! (Even Women's Wear Daily has taken notice!) More to come - a symposium (2/14) and a workshop (led by me, 2/22) womdering "Is fashion a religion?"