Poem for the Day: September 4th, 2021

Holy Sonnets: I am a little world made cunningly by John Donne

I am a little world made cunningly 
Of elements and an angelic sprite 
But black sin hath betray’d to endless night 
My world’s both parts, and on both parts must die. 
You which beyond that heaven which was most high 
Have found new spheres, and of new lands can write, 
Pour new seas in mine eyes, that so I might 
Drown my world with my weeping earnestly,
Or wash it, if it must be drown’d no more. 
But oh it must be burnt; alas the fire 
Of lust and envy have burnt it heretofore,
And made it fouler; let their flames retire,
And burn me O Lord, with a fiery zeal 
Of thee and thy house, which doth in eating heal.

John Donne (1572-1631), in addition to being arguably England’s chief metaphysical poet, also served as a cleric in the Anglican Church. He was made Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1621, where he spent the last decade of his life preaching and writing.

Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter and Instagram @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.

Quote for the Day: August 4th, 2021

Nothing you can say can fuck up the space for God.
Maggie Nelson

Maggie Nelson, more so than any other active American writer, is a master of queering form while maintaining literary excellence. Her work is experimental yet grounded in traditions of expression as old as language itself.

I love today’s quote because it dovetails quite significantly from accepted dogma. As someone who was raised in an evangelical tradition, as I’ve probably mentioned before, I was taught that our words can separate us from God, from the divine, from the inner sanctum.

When I first read The Argonauts, it made me think perhaps this wasn’t 100% true. For if we’re to believe in God or a divine intelligence that set all This in motion, then surely God can stand up to our scrutiny. Before I went to college, I would never have thought about saying something so (in my experience) unorthodox, but I’m glad I changed. I even had a conversation about it with my mother once. She said that she worried about some of the things I said when discussing religion, and I told her point-blank that I couldn’t believe in something I couldn’t question.

So ask your questions. Have your arguments. Take what you think you know and hold it up to the light. Smell it. Investigate it. Demand of it transparency, because nothing you can say can fuck up the space for God.

Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please follow, like, comment, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at thevoraciousbibliophile@yahoo.com or catch me on Twitter @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.

Quote for the Day: July 16th, 2021

Isn’t that what divinity should be? The embodiment of truth.

The world is never not ready to kick you in the teeth, my friends. Wear your truth like armor and they can never use it against you. You are brave. You are resilient. You are the end result of eons of grand design leading to the person looking back at you in the mirror. Own it. Rise. Roar.

You are the end result of eons of grand design leading to the person looking back at you in the mirror.

Quote for the Day: July 14th, 2021

In this moment, you’re still breathing. In this moment, you’ve survived. In this moment, you’re finding a way to step onto higher ground.

This is a book I find myself re-reading from time to time to give myself a spiritual tune-up. Life is often difficult, messy, and downright disagreeable, but it is important for us to remember this truth: everything we need to keep moving forward is already inside us. We have made it through every single one of our worst days and we are stronger for it. This does not mean that we should ignore our circumstances, or blithely move through our days like a bunch of Live, Laugh, Love simpletons. It simply means that we possess, on a molecular level, the tools for survival. We are not weak beings. By being here in this moment, we have already won.

This does not mean that we should ignore our circumstances, or blithely move through our days like a bunch of Live, Laugh, Love simpletons. It simply means that we possess, on a molecular level, the tools for survival. We are not weak beings.

Just keep breathin’ and breathin’ and breathin’ and breathin’.
Ariana Grande

You cannot earn breath. It is free. So take in a big breath, steel yourself, and know that you are a freaking warrior. Even if you have to stay home today. Even if you don’t get out of bed. Are you alive? Then you’re winning. Until next time, my darlings.

From the Archives: Shameless: A Sexual Reformation by Nadia Bolz-Weber (Part 2)

Allow me to first offer my sincere apology to all of you, my devoted readers, for making you wait so long for Part 2. This part is going to be a lot different from the first one because I’ll be sharing and discussing my favorite passages from Nadia’s book. Are you ready for it? Let’s go.

God planted so many of us in the corners, yet the center-pivot irrigation of the church’s teachings about sex and sexuality tends to exclude us.

This is so life-affirming. For all #exvangelicals out there and for people who still have ties to the church, the feelings of exclusion that we experience in relation to our religious upbringings are so strong that they almost manifest in corporeal form whenever we’re exposed to the teachings inculcated in us from when we were congregants.

We were taught that the body is a site of shame. We were taught that we were tainted by Adam’s original sin, that our flesh is something we must overcome in order to become one with God. We were taught that sharing our bodies with others outside the confines of monogamous, heterosexual marriage separates us from the holy.

We were taught that sharing our bodies with others outside the confines of monogamous, heterosexual marriage separates us from the holy.

We were even condemned for finding pleasure(s) on our own. Masturbating was something we all discovered by accident, performed in secret, and never talked about. It was the secret sin that tainted our relationship with God, with our families, with ourselves. The rose is not branded an apostate when it blooms, so why then should we be branded? This is not even mentioning the shame accompanying your masturbatory fantasies if you were anything other than 100% straight.

The rose is not branded an apostate when it blooms, so why then should we be branded?

But our sexual and gender expressions are as integral to who we are as our religious upbringings are. To separate these aspects of ourselves—to separate life as a sexual being from a life with God—is to bifurcate our psyche, like a musical progression that never comes to resolution.

I love the imagery Bolz-Weber (I think from here on out I’m just going to refer to her as Pastor Nadia) uses here. So many of us who were raised in the church had to develop a dichotomy between our spiritual and corporeal identities, thus the bifurcation she’s talking about here. We were all musical progressions never coming to a resolution. If you ask me, we were robbed. That forced separation caused us to become less of ourselves, meaning that in the end we had less to offer God and less to give to others.

That forced separation caused us to become less of ourselves, meaning that in the end we had less to offer God and less to give to others.

What would we be like if this bifurcation had not caused us to tear ourselves asunder? What if instead we read the Scriptures with new eyes?

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is within you, whom you have [received as a gift] from God, and that you are not your own [property]? You were bought with a price [you were actually purchased with the precious blood of Jesus and made His own]. So then, honor and glorify God with your body.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20 (AMP)

At what point did the church carnalize our bodies? When we are taken in totality, no bifurcation is necessary, and if we are to believe the Scriptures, our bodies house (contain) the Holy Spirit. Now, I am by no stretch of the imagination a Bible scholar or theologian, but there’s nothing wrong with my reading comprehension.

When we are taken in totality, no bifurcation is necessary, and if we are to believe the Scriptures, our bodies house (contain) the Holy Spirit.

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, ‘Where are you?’ He answered, ‘I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.’ And he said, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?’
Genesis 3:6-11 (NIV)

Here we see that shame was a consequence of the first sin—before sin, the first humans were naked, without shame, and free.

So what are the implications for us? Because man fell [from grace or right standing with God], we all have an awareness of our nakedness, of our bodies as a site of inherent shame, and this inherent shame is a direct consequence of the serpent’s temptation. So every time a little effeminate boy is called a faggot and beat up by his classmates, or a transgender Black woman is murdered for having the audacity to exist in public, the serpent wins, and the anti-LGBT people of faith rejoice with him. Is that saying a whole hell of a lot? You bet it is. I said what I said.

So every time a little effeminate boy is called a faggot by his classmates, or a transgender Black woman is murdered for having the audacity to exist in public, the serpent wins, and the anti-LGBT people of faith rejoice with him.

I refuse to accept or participate in a faith tradition that excludes some while exalting others, that prizes some bodies above others, or draws lines of demarcation between who can and who cannot be joint-heirs with Christ. He didn’t just die for them. I don’t know which version of the Bible they’re reading, but in every one of the baker’s dozen I own, Jesus welcomed everyone to his table, and there are no garbage tables in God’s Kingdom.

This Just Speaks to Me: Dr. Maya Angelou in Conversation with Oprah Winfrey

We all need a little inspiration from time to time, and this is one conversation I return to whenever I need a spiritual tune-up. I hope it helps you as much as it’s helped me.