(1) Humans exist as bodies - not only as bodies, but never not bodies. The integrity of every human body and of the Earth itself as a body is sacred and must be kept from violation and degradation.These are not perfectly or finally formed, but they are on-the-spot, in-the-moment, best attempts to name something worth living, struggling, and, if necessary, dying for. I welcome your help in discovering more of what my (embodied) heart is trying to say.
(2) Humans exist within networks and structures of power-relations that seek to degrade and violate the bodies of many people and of the Earth for the bodily comfort of a few people. Such networks and structures are the dominant logic of the world's organization.
(3) Who each of us "is" is who we perform our bodies to be. In, with, and through our bodies we perform multiple subjectivities (somehow) gathered into unitary-yet-multivalent identity with respect to a world organized by body-degrading and body-violating structures. Such identity involves co-occuring, always-provisional possibilities of both reinforcement of the world's order and resistance to it.
(4) "Justice" and "love" exist in moments of striving and struggling to shape one's body-performed identity in resistance to a body-degrading and body-violating world-order and in accountability with a world-order that secures and sustains the integrity of every human body and the body of the whole Earth.
Thursday, February 1, 2007
My rudimentary creed.
I sat in on a class today and was posed with a question that seemed somewhat innocent at first and then stunned me into deep reflection: what are the basic sources that are authoritative for you as you understand and interpret the world and your place in it? And as I started to think how I might respond, I was forced in a moment to grasp for what I would define to be my fundamental commitments or beliefs. I was able to break it down into three or four things that, at least at present, are non-negotiable in my life as norms and paradigms for how I think and theorize about and seek to act in the world.
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2 comments:
Jeremy,
I wonder if you might comment on a portion of the Apostles Creed: "I believe...in the resurrection of the Body"?
You might even try out how your four statements would bring out a particular interpretation for the rest of the Creed.
Recently, I've started working through what I call a "gospel of vulnerability." I've been looking at the Creed from the viewpoint of vulnerability which is largely a consequence of having a body. The phrases, "born of the virgin Mary" and "suffered under Pontius Pilate" can take on strong meaning in view of bodily vulnerability. Pregnancy and child birth, for example, involve extreme vulnerability, something I had not begun to comprehend until my wife became pregnant. Still the Incarnation would not be conceivable apart from the Mary's most intimate consent and physical vulnerability. We have a whole theology of the Cross, but we might also consider a theology of the birthing stone.
Warm regards,
James
Jeremy,
Here's some hopeful news for you: People change their minds, and I'm one of them.
Over the last two years I've gone from being the Calvinist former vice president of the College Republicans to being a Buddhist supporter of same-sex marriage. Leaving the U. of C. Law School for the outside world and then Divinity School made all the difference.
On the mind-body relationship, have you read Dewey's Experience and Nature? Have you read any A.N. Whitehead or Charles Hartshorne? Are you familiar with process theology generally?
Dewey expresses his unified conception of the mind-body relationship in contrast to classical Western dualism by analogy to different conceptions of social and political power relationships. Classical Western metaphysics denigrated the body and exalted the soul in precisely the same way as it denigrated the working class and exalted the leisured ruling class.
Whitehead's conception of the creative process of the world as the synthetic unity of feeling events could provide a systematic framework within which to understand the "somehow" of your "multiple subjectivities (somehow) gathered into unitary-yet-multivalent identity."
I wish you well, Jeremy.
John
P.S. Congratulations on getting the Dalai Lama at Emory. Not my kind of Buddhism, but what an amazing leader.
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