I’d like to see a handwriting sample from Dan before I believe him.
Filing under
If he wrote that, then good luck to him getting to his favorite second world.
crosspost from…
Wow! Damn!
Absent the book’s likely tacked-on epilogue, the Book of Job teaches that there is no final victory, no ultimate divine deliverance. As I think about how to respond to the concurrent cataclysms threatening the nation and the globe, I at least want to be Job—not a person with divine patience, but one who cares so much for his fellow mortals that he will spit acidic truth into the face of the Lord to the very end.
Emphasis added!
This tracks from what I see in the corner of the South where I live.
(Attempt at an archive link, hope it works)
https://archive.ph/odNcS
That was a really good read. The conclusion
What’s the alternative? Giving up? Waiting for oblivion? Such an attitude is its own kind of submissive patience. It’s understandable—but when things inevitably get even darker than they are today, it will be about as useful as waiting for God to save the day. What Job has given me is not exactly hope. But it’s something.
is both comforting and (to me) a call to action. Thank you for posting.
(Sorry, that was supposed to respond to @mspie500 's post on Job. Not sure what happened.)
Rachel Pollack’s vision of spirituality may be her greatest accomplishment
Pollack saw miracles in the world, and she was someone who taught other people to see them. Most famously, she did this through the Tarot; she was a world-renowned expert on the cards, consulted and cited by authors like Alexander Chee and Neil Gaiman. Her book on the Rider-Waite, 78 Degrees of Wisdom, is the go-to text for anyone trying to learn the cards. Yet the number and diversity of Pollack’s accomplishments make it hard to sum her up: She was an activist. She was an award-winning science fiction novelist. She was a comic book writer, who created what is widely cited as the world’s first trans superheroine, Coagula, for DC Comics’ Doom Patrol.
I first became interested in Pollack’s life because of one line in her (surprisingly short) author bio: “She was a great influence on the women’s spirituality movement.” It’s a line that can be read two ways: either she was a very big influence, or she was a very good influence, and the latter was sorely needed. Pollack was a trans woman—an out and politically active trans woman, at that—and “women’s spirituality” was one of the most infamously transphobic corners of feminism’s second wave.
Here is another miracle in the story of Rachel Pollack: as early as the 1970s and 1980s, in the midst of a TERF stronghold, a transfeminist lesbian was trying to create a trans-inclusive vision of spirituality. Not only was she not kicked out, but she actually won.
The ironic thing (I guess) is that, as I tried to read this on Sunday, I was interrupted more times than I had been all day.
(ETA: via slacktivist, which someone here led me to in the first place)
Good. It’s about time that we got a more explicit statement of liberation, pro-labor theology!
I guess I take this for granted, because when I was a kid living on Long Island (late 1970s), our head minister associate pastor was a woman. (This was at a Methodist church, FWIW.) In hindsight, I wonder how exceptional that might’ve been. (Also the organist was gay.)
(EDIT: Went & looked it up; she was associate pastor. She’s the one I remember maybe because she had a kid around my age.)
Little by little the world is changing. One step ahead and we aren’t at the same old place.
