So I was sitting at work the other day and a song popped in to my head for reasons that I cannot currently recall. I’m sure there was some reason for the earworm in question, though. It was an old Jars of Clay song that I once loved called, if I recall, “Faith like a Child.”[1]
The song begins with an invocation to god to “surround me when I speak.” And this is the part that popped in to my head. I remember making those invocations. The central message is, “I’m not good enough, but you are, god. So let me get out of the way so you can do your thing.” It’s a strange memory and, I suppose, a not particularly pleasant one. But it’s not unpleasant. It’s also deeply important while I try to figure out how to do the necessary work of digging out the shit and shame.
When I step out on to a stage as a storyteller I speak for no one but myself. When I write I represent no one but myself. If I am going to connect with my audience I will have to do it in reliance on myself, the material I’m working with, and the hope that my audience actually cares enough to engage. This is both immensely terrifying and immensely freeing. I can let the message take the audience wherever they want to take it.[2] But it also means I’m operating without a safety net, so to speak. If I suck it’s on me.
This, really, is a good thing. See, if I do well it’s because I’ve been doing the work necessary to do well. If I do poorly it’s because I haven’t. In both cases the necessary follow-up actions are ones I can take on my own: stay the course and keep working or find a new way and keep working.
Contrast that with the idea that with the prayer to god to actually do the speaking. If it goes well it’s because god got involved. If it goes poorly it’s because god didn’t or something got in god’s way. In both cases the only viable response is to keep asking an external agent to do the necessary work.
The first time I got on stage at the Fox Valley Folk and Storytelling Festival I was terrible. This actually kind of surprised me, as I have spent quite a bit of time doing stuff on stage. But that time I was nervous as hell and just plain didn’t do a very good job of telling me story. Other tellers then offered me advice and encouragement, much of which I took to heart. The next day I got back on the stage and I was better. I was still a long way from being “good,” but I was better.
Since then I’ve taken every opportunity to get on stage and tried to make sure that I’m properly prepared. I’m getting better. I still have a long way to go, but that’s what putting in the work is for. Specifically, it’s what putting in the work without a safety net is for. If I do poorly I cannot say, “Well, god didn’t speak through me today.” I have to say, “Well, I screwed up.” By saying, “I screwed up,” I am then free to ask, “How, specifically, did I screw up?” And that is the true key to improvement.[3]
What, though, does this have to do with shit?
It’s simple, really. In the churches I grew up in if you were going through something the correct, and only, response was to “give everything to Jesus.” As a teenager struggling with, say, thoughts of sex,[4] the appropriate response was to pray about it. So say you’re lying there in your bed at night thinking about that one really hot girl in youth group (yeah…that happened…a lot…). The appropriate response is to tell Jesus all about your lustful thoughts. Then Jesus will take those thoughts away. This is an idea that’s founded on two specific bits of the Bible, one of which says something to the effect that you can overcome all things through Christ and the other that says that you will not be burdened by anything bigger than you can handle.
Now this is a problem. Eventually those thoughts will come back. Sometimes they’ll stay away for as many as five minutes, but they’ll be back. So that means that when they do, inevitably, come back it’s because you do not have enough faith.
Jesus cannot fail. Only you can fail Jesus.
This is not at all a useful way to go through life, especially since Jesus seems to only care about the shit that the surrounding moralizers find important.
Let’s say that I just got done with my first ever story and was given four pieces of advice:
1. “That’s pretty good, but you need to be more expressive.”
2. “You should really name your main character Joe.”
3. “You need to work a bit harder to memorize your stories.”
4. “You should really lose weight.”
One of those bits of advice is completely useless and based on the personal preference of the audience member. One of those bits of advice has fuck-all to do with my storytelling.[5] Two of those things, however, are useful pieces of advice that offer something to do to improve. And it’s the useful, concrete suggestion that allows someone to figure out how to improve.
“You need to pray better,” is not a useful suggestion. It’s really not a suggestion at all.
But if we’re going to do what Lewis Hyde calls “dirt-work” and I call “shit shoveling,” we need to realize that not all improvements to who we are come in the form of a moment on stage. In fact, most improvements come in places that aren’t seen at all. The biggest challenge for most people is to become comfortable with who they are.
In a Christian system where there are only three actors: God, Satan, and Self, this sort of self improvement is almost impossible. See, excessively morality focused Christianity attempts to be a closed system. But there is no such thing as a closed system where humans are concerned. This is the “shit” that needs to be shoveled. We take in more than we can hold and some must be discarded as useless.
Christianity attempts to tell us that one of those items that must be discarded is sexuality. The followers of Christianity are supposed to magically ignore or avoid sexuality until marriage, when it’s suddenly, equally magically, okay and wonderful. There is no way that this is a mentally tenable position.
The weird thing is that the nattering moralizers seem to actually know this is the case. That’s why there’s basically a new reminder to be pure every week or so. That’s why they work so hard to get people to avoid producing art that incorporates sexual elements. It’s why they encourage such wonderful bullshit as “accountability partners,” who are supposed to admit their sexual thoughts to each other and keep each other from falling in to such things.[6]
Then there are the random strategies to avoid such things. Mercifully, I’ve forgotten most of them. However, I was recalling one of them the other day. Well, it wasn’t really a strategy. It was more of an idea about how a couple should operate.
The idea basically went like this: the guy will always be pushing to go farther, physically, so it’s the girl’s job to set the boundaries and make sure they don’t get crossed.
Let’s just think about that for a moment. Really roll it around inside your mind. Consider the implications.
Now, you’ve got your standard “boys will be boys” and “girls just don’t like sex.” We’ve come to expect that. But it’s so much more insidious than that. Really, it’s the pu-pu platter of shitty, patronizing ideas about human sexuality.
See, that attitude right there is ready-made for slut shaming and rape apologia. If a couple has sex it must be because the girl didn’t set the proper boundaries or just let the guy go too far. Ergo, slut. If she didn’t want him to go that far she just didn’t set the boundaries forcefully enough or clearly enough. Ergo, she was asking for it.
More, it allows for the standard definition of gay guys as being only about their sexuality. If there are two dudes neither one will be able to properly set boundaries and they’re just gonna hump all day due to the lack of the control offered by a frigid bitch with a taser.
It’s unassailable logic, really. I mean, as long as you don’t burden yourself with real knowledge.
The truly important thing, though, is that it pushes everything away from self-reflection. Everything you do is, by the nature of the system, set up as you measuring yourself against an external agent. It’s not a question of, “How do I want to enjoy sex?” but, “Am I properly Christian in my attitudes towards sex?” Spending time with your partner isn’t about finding out how comfortable you are with that person, but worrying about whether you’re crossing lines that shan’t be crossed. And they’re not lines that either person is actually laying down.
Because, see, we all have our own levels of sex, shit, and shame that we have to deal with. But they’re personal, not universal. And as long as we’re focused on bright-line distinctions written by outside forces, we’ll never learn to become comfortable with ourselves.
That’s why you need Coyote, the Trickster. But I’ll get to that in the next (and hopefully final) installment.
-------------------------
[1]One of the weirdest things that’s been happening lately is that I’m coming in to contact with old CCM songs I once loved. I blame Pandora (which is awesome for that. I mean, Semisonic’s “Closing Time?” Hells, yeah, that just made my afternoon better!). When I stopped doing the church thing I got rid of all such music, as I didn’t want to be reminded of it. Now it’s taking on the same effect as listening to old-school Hammer or something. I’m all, “Dude, it’s [this song]! I used to love this song!” It’s really quite strange.
[2]This is actually one of the weirdest things about the whole deal. I run in to it time and time again on the blog, where I write a long post and expect people to take one thing from it, but all the comments are about completely different things. This can be, in turn, awesome and aggravating. The place where it’s most likely to be aggravating is where I write a personal story and attempt to tie it in to a larger topic and then receive advice on how to deal with the particulars of the story itself. I rarely actually write personal stuff looking for personal advice, as I’m usually abstracting whatever the story is about to a large degree.
But, of course, no one knows that unless I point it out. It’s a weird inside-out problem, I suppose. I don’t do personal stories in storytelling at the moment. But whenever I tell a story in front of my parents they try to figure out people or places in my life that created a certain character or location. There usually isn’t one, or if there is it’s in a third- or fourth-degree of separation. I start with something that happened to me. My first thought is to turn it in to a story. My second thought is to turn it in to a story about that thing. My third thought is to turn it in to a story about that thing that happened to me as an abstract or archetype. Finally I work my way around to the story itself. And by that time I’m working with archetypical characters and locations. But the power of using archetype is such that people who know me hear of a certain character type and say, “Aha! He must be talking about this person.” If you walk it back far enough then it’s possible to find that person in the original germ of the story. But I compose the stories themselves in such an abstract way that I’m usually unaware of that connection.
And, of course, sometimes you just need a stock person or location. So there may be people and places who appear who have nothing to do with anything. They just needed to be in that story for the plot.
[3]One of the really interesting bits of advice I got during that first festival: “You don’t look like you’re enjoying yourself. Smile more.” That’s a damn useful piece of advice. I always wanted to approach storytelling with the solemnity of sermonizing. But the story and the sermon are completely different creatures.
For one thing, the audience follows the cues of the storyteller. If you’re telling a funny story with a stone serious face, they don’t know what to do. More importantly, though, if you’re attempting to make a transition from one thing to another, your attitude has to make the transition. A moment of levity in a scary story just before the big hit makes the hit all the more shocking and, therefore, scary.
[4]Teenagers thinking about sex? Never!
[5]To be fair, it would have been good advice. I did not look good in the fall of 2008. Or the fall of 2009. In fact, everyone was more than a little shocked to see me in the fall of 2010 after a nine-month separation. My freaking dog didn’t recognize me at first.
[6]I’m still exceedingly good friends with one of my former “accountability partners.” We thought it was pretty much bullshit at the time, but now we still occasionally have accountability meetings. They basically consist of one of us saying, “So, had any sexual thoughts lately?” The response is always some variation of, “Hell, yeah,” to which the questioner responds with some variation of, “Good job. Keep it up.”
Oddly, it seems to accomplish just about as much…
The song begins with an invocation to god to “surround me when I speak.” And this is the part that popped in to my head. I remember making those invocations. The central message is, “I’m not good enough, but you are, god. So let me get out of the way so you can do your thing.” It’s a strange memory and, I suppose, a not particularly pleasant one. But it’s not unpleasant. It’s also deeply important while I try to figure out how to do the necessary work of digging out the shit and shame.
When I step out on to a stage as a storyteller I speak for no one but myself. When I write I represent no one but myself. If I am going to connect with my audience I will have to do it in reliance on myself, the material I’m working with, and the hope that my audience actually cares enough to engage. This is both immensely terrifying and immensely freeing. I can let the message take the audience wherever they want to take it.[2] But it also means I’m operating without a safety net, so to speak. If I suck it’s on me.
This, really, is a good thing. See, if I do well it’s because I’ve been doing the work necessary to do well. If I do poorly it’s because I haven’t. In both cases the necessary follow-up actions are ones I can take on my own: stay the course and keep working or find a new way and keep working.
Contrast that with the idea that with the prayer to god to actually do the speaking. If it goes well it’s because god got involved. If it goes poorly it’s because god didn’t or something got in god’s way. In both cases the only viable response is to keep asking an external agent to do the necessary work.
The first time I got on stage at the Fox Valley Folk and Storytelling Festival I was terrible. This actually kind of surprised me, as I have spent quite a bit of time doing stuff on stage. But that time I was nervous as hell and just plain didn’t do a very good job of telling me story. Other tellers then offered me advice and encouragement, much of which I took to heart. The next day I got back on the stage and I was better. I was still a long way from being “good,” but I was better.
Since then I’ve taken every opportunity to get on stage and tried to make sure that I’m properly prepared. I’m getting better. I still have a long way to go, but that’s what putting in the work is for. Specifically, it’s what putting in the work without a safety net is for. If I do poorly I cannot say, “Well, god didn’t speak through me today.” I have to say, “Well, I screwed up.” By saying, “I screwed up,” I am then free to ask, “How, specifically, did I screw up?” And that is the true key to improvement.[3]
What, though, does this have to do with shit?
It’s simple, really. In the churches I grew up in if you were going through something the correct, and only, response was to “give everything to Jesus.” As a teenager struggling with, say, thoughts of sex,[4] the appropriate response was to pray about it. So say you’re lying there in your bed at night thinking about that one really hot girl in youth group (yeah…that happened…a lot…). The appropriate response is to tell Jesus all about your lustful thoughts. Then Jesus will take those thoughts away. This is an idea that’s founded on two specific bits of the Bible, one of which says something to the effect that you can overcome all things through Christ and the other that says that you will not be burdened by anything bigger than you can handle.
Now this is a problem. Eventually those thoughts will come back. Sometimes they’ll stay away for as many as five minutes, but they’ll be back. So that means that when they do, inevitably, come back it’s because you do not have enough faith.
Jesus cannot fail. Only you can fail Jesus.
This is not at all a useful way to go through life, especially since Jesus seems to only care about the shit that the surrounding moralizers find important.
Let’s say that I just got done with my first ever story and was given four pieces of advice:
1. “That’s pretty good, but you need to be more expressive.”
2. “You should really name your main character Joe.”
3. “You need to work a bit harder to memorize your stories.”
4. “You should really lose weight.”
One of those bits of advice is completely useless and based on the personal preference of the audience member. One of those bits of advice has fuck-all to do with my storytelling.[5] Two of those things, however, are useful pieces of advice that offer something to do to improve. And it’s the useful, concrete suggestion that allows someone to figure out how to improve.
“You need to pray better,” is not a useful suggestion. It’s really not a suggestion at all.
But if we’re going to do what Lewis Hyde calls “dirt-work” and I call “shit shoveling,” we need to realize that not all improvements to who we are come in the form of a moment on stage. In fact, most improvements come in places that aren’t seen at all. The biggest challenge for most people is to become comfortable with who they are.
In a Christian system where there are only three actors: God, Satan, and Self, this sort of self improvement is almost impossible. See, excessively morality focused Christianity attempts to be a closed system. But there is no such thing as a closed system where humans are concerned. This is the “shit” that needs to be shoveled. We take in more than we can hold and some must be discarded as useless.
Christianity attempts to tell us that one of those items that must be discarded is sexuality. The followers of Christianity are supposed to magically ignore or avoid sexuality until marriage, when it’s suddenly, equally magically, okay and wonderful. There is no way that this is a mentally tenable position.
The weird thing is that the nattering moralizers seem to actually know this is the case. That’s why there’s basically a new reminder to be pure every week or so. That’s why they work so hard to get people to avoid producing art that incorporates sexual elements. It’s why they encourage such wonderful bullshit as “accountability partners,” who are supposed to admit their sexual thoughts to each other and keep each other from falling in to such things.[6]
Then there are the random strategies to avoid such things. Mercifully, I’ve forgotten most of them. However, I was recalling one of them the other day. Well, it wasn’t really a strategy. It was more of an idea about how a couple should operate.
The idea basically went like this: the guy will always be pushing to go farther, physically, so it’s the girl’s job to set the boundaries and make sure they don’t get crossed.
Let’s just think about that for a moment. Really roll it around inside your mind. Consider the implications.
Now, you’ve got your standard “boys will be boys” and “girls just don’t like sex.” We’ve come to expect that. But it’s so much more insidious than that. Really, it’s the pu-pu platter of shitty, patronizing ideas about human sexuality.
See, that attitude right there is ready-made for slut shaming and rape apologia. If a couple has sex it must be because the girl didn’t set the proper boundaries or just let the guy go too far. Ergo, slut. If she didn’t want him to go that far she just didn’t set the boundaries forcefully enough or clearly enough. Ergo, she was asking for it.
More, it allows for the standard definition of gay guys as being only about their sexuality. If there are two dudes neither one will be able to properly set boundaries and they’re just gonna hump all day due to the lack of the control offered by a frigid bitch with a taser.
It’s unassailable logic, really. I mean, as long as you don’t burden yourself with real knowledge.
The truly important thing, though, is that it pushes everything away from self-reflection. Everything you do is, by the nature of the system, set up as you measuring yourself against an external agent. It’s not a question of, “How do I want to enjoy sex?” but, “Am I properly Christian in my attitudes towards sex?” Spending time with your partner isn’t about finding out how comfortable you are with that person, but worrying about whether you’re crossing lines that shan’t be crossed. And they’re not lines that either person is actually laying down.
Because, see, we all have our own levels of sex, shit, and shame that we have to deal with. But they’re personal, not universal. And as long as we’re focused on bright-line distinctions written by outside forces, we’ll never learn to become comfortable with ourselves.
That’s why you need Coyote, the Trickster. But I’ll get to that in the next (and hopefully final) installment.
-------------------------
[1]One of the weirdest things that’s been happening lately is that I’m coming in to contact with old CCM songs I once loved. I blame Pandora (which is awesome for that. I mean, Semisonic’s “Closing Time?” Hells, yeah, that just made my afternoon better!). When I stopped doing the church thing I got rid of all such music, as I didn’t want to be reminded of it. Now it’s taking on the same effect as listening to old-school Hammer or something. I’m all, “Dude, it’s [this song]! I used to love this song!” It’s really quite strange.
[2]This is actually one of the weirdest things about the whole deal. I run in to it time and time again on the blog, where I write a long post and expect people to take one thing from it, but all the comments are about completely different things. This can be, in turn, awesome and aggravating. The place where it’s most likely to be aggravating is where I write a personal story and attempt to tie it in to a larger topic and then receive advice on how to deal with the particulars of the story itself. I rarely actually write personal stuff looking for personal advice, as I’m usually abstracting whatever the story is about to a large degree.
But, of course, no one knows that unless I point it out. It’s a weird inside-out problem, I suppose. I don’t do personal stories in storytelling at the moment. But whenever I tell a story in front of my parents they try to figure out people or places in my life that created a certain character or location. There usually isn’t one, or if there is it’s in a third- or fourth-degree of separation. I start with something that happened to me. My first thought is to turn it in to a story. My second thought is to turn it in to a story about that thing. My third thought is to turn it in to a story about that thing that happened to me as an abstract or archetype. Finally I work my way around to the story itself. And by that time I’m working with archetypical characters and locations. But the power of using archetype is such that people who know me hear of a certain character type and say, “Aha! He must be talking about this person.” If you walk it back far enough then it’s possible to find that person in the original germ of the story. But I compose the stories themselves in such an abstract way that I’m usually unaware of that connection.
And, of course, sometimes you just need a stock person or location. So there may be people and places who appear who have nothing to do with anything. They just needed to be in that story for the plot.
[3]One of the really interesting bits of advice I got during that first festival: “You don’t look like you’re enjoying yourself. Smile more.” That’s a damn useful piece of advice. I always wanted to approach storytelling with the solemnity of sermonizing. But the story and the sermon are completely different creatures.
For one thing, the audience follows the cues of the storyteller. If you’re telling a funny story with a stone serious face, they don’t know what to do. More importantly, though, if you’re attempting to make a transition from one thing to another, your attitude has to make the transition. A moment of levity in a scary story just before the big hit makes the hit all the more shocking and, therefore, scary.
[4]Teenagers thinking about sex? Never!
[5]To be fair, it would have been good advice. I did not look good in the fall of 2008. Or the fall of 2009. In fact, everyone was more than a little shocked to see me in the fall of 2010 after a nine-month separation. My freaking dog didn’t recognize me at first.
[6]I’m still exceedingly good friends with one of my former “accountability partners.” We thought it was pretty much bullshit at the time, but now we still occasionally have accountability meetings. They basically consist of one of us saying, “So, had any sexual thoughts lately?” The response is always some variation of, “Hell, yeah,” to which the questioner responds with some variation of, “Good job. Keep it up.”
Oddly, it seems to accomplish just about as much…
In fairness, just because a given element is commented on doesn't mean it's the only point or message that hit home, just that it's the only one the given commenter thinks they can contribute to.
If you'll recall, when I read your final Left Behind post of the character who murdered an evangelist who came to his door and then committed suicide (apologies to other readers if that's a spoiler, but seriously, it's been up for like at least 2 years now), my first reaction was to give you shit for having the character own a Springfield XD (as I have, since, become quite partial to Glocks and Walthers). I did that because, hey, I'm a gun nut and it's all I really had to say. What I didn't say, or even couldn't say, was how much that story stuck with me for days, months, even years afterward as an ultra-drastic insight into what can happen when self-pity runs amok in a world with no God (or other external agent) to act as a safety net.
Sometimes a message can be delivered decisively and powerfully enough that no further discussion is warranted, and I've read many of your entries that were just that, and all that was left to be discussed was the periphery.
Posted by: Big A | 09/14/2010 at 11:53 PM
A lot of what you are saying here gets to what I mean when I say that in order to really live the way a lot of Christians think they should live, you have to be mentally ill. And I was mentally ill, so I did live that way, and got put on some holiness pedestal when what I really needed were some good psychotropic drugs. All that "I'm desperate for you," "Jesus is my only hope for happiness" stuff, I totally meant it and felt it. And I was also toeing the edge of psychosis. There is that whole "I believe that I am worthless without Jesus even though I don't feel that way, so I will proclaim 'I am worthless' and call it authenticity." That isn't authenticity; that is called "lying". But it was obvious that I really did feel worthless, therefore I must be holy. I think they saw me as a sort of Teresa of Avila: doing pretty well at being good, but lamenting my depravity. It was all so twisted.
Posted by: jessa | 09/15/2010 at 09:14 AM
Not that I want to focus on the wrong part here but, holy balls, accountability partners was a real thing that you did? I don't think I'm allowed to complain about my Catholic upbringing anymore. Sure, their rules were stupid and arbitrary but at least they didn't try the worst possible ideas ever to enforce them.
Posted by: Rhino of Steel | 09/15/2010 at 09:52 PM
Not that I want to focus on the wrong part here
That was really meant more as an observation than a genuine attempt to bring about change...
accountability partners was a real thing that you did?
Yes. Yes it was. It's actually probably far, far more excruciatingly awkward than you think, too. The whole idea is generally sprung by someone else as part of the small group structure and you're supposed to pair up with someone. There's a non-zero possibility you'll be paired up with someone you don't know very well or don't really like very much (because, see, you've got to pretend you like people. I went to church with people I absolutely despised but I couldn't actually say it out loud and they thought I was friends with them. Awkward to the max, that is). Even when you do get paired up with someone you're actually friends with and not worried about sharing stuff with, you're then basically supposed to sit down with this person once a week and discuss how many times you masturbated and whatnot. But you're having these conversations in euphemism and Christianese, which is basically a language invented to allow Evangelical Christians to lie to each other while sounding holy.
Weirdly, my most successful accountability partnership was with the same guy I still jokingly do the routine with now. We mostly discussed how stupid and off the mark the whole thing was and made extremely not funny jokes at the expense of this one girl we knew who seemed to be horny 24/7 but wasn't allowed to admit it because, y'know, she was a Christian and shit.
In retrospect, it's not surprising that neither one of us is willing to darken the doors of a church these days...
Posted by: Geds | 09/15/2010 at 10:26 PM
I'd just like to second what Big A said about the... um... plasticity of topics in the comments. I generally try not to leave comments that don't add something, however small, to to the conversation. Add to that, I don't generally read your posts and think, "Well, yes, but he left out X consideration" or "I think you're completely off-base here, and this is why." As a result, a lot of my comments are going to be tangents.
I'm assuming that all the accountability partners were same-sex pairs? (I mean, duh... right?) 'Cause the only thing I can think of that would be more awkward than having to discuss my sexual thoughts (as a teen, with a relative stranger) would be having to discuss them with a girl. But how that does work if you have an odd number of people in your group?
Posted by: Michael Mock | 09/16/2010 at 08:45 AM
Yes! Pretending to like people we don't! I do remember some people at church who I didn't like and suspected others didn't like, but no one mentioned it. I don't understand how it is better Christian love to lie about it rather than tell the truth. It isn't just in church, either. It happens in my family. It happens in group therapy. Someone says they are fat/ugly/unliked and everyone jumps to say, "No! You are so thin/pretty/likable."
I once wanted to write a letter to someone who thought I was his friend to the effect of, "Hey, so I know you think we are friends and you want to hang out with me and stuff, but I'm not interested in that. I am not your friend." I ran it by a couple friends because my social skills aren't great. They told me I couldn't do that; they said it bordered on being hate mail. I don't understand!
Posted by: jessa | 09/16/2010 at 03:52 PM