nataliewiggstevenson

[nataliewiggstevenson]

Transgressive Devotion

In the aftermath of the day I stopped believing in God, I prayed the only prayer adequate to the task of facing the Void: my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Echoing from the psalms to the lips of God, Godself, and up through my throat, across my tongue to mix with moisture hitting air, the path of my return to God had to wind its way back to the foot of the cross.

[nataliewiggstevenson]

Transgressive Devotional

Performance understood this way reframes the negative connotation of inauthenticity to emphasize instead that we all live in the gap of our own becoming. We are not yet who Christ is calling us to be, so who we truly are is always unfolding as a curious theological experiment. We are not so much already made in God’s image as we are being made into it, even as we look at it through a glass, dimly. I am free to live as if I am saved because I have died with Christ, but I won’t actually live with God fully -- that is, face to face -- until I’ve shaken off this moral coil. My fragmentation does not mean I’m inauthentic. It means that I am human. And this might be the precise form of humanity from which theology needs to be written.

[nataliewiggstevenson]

Transgressive Devotional

The metaphor of performance disrupts the hegemony of an academic text just enough to write this theology as a broken prayer instead. A prayer that takes us into, out of, and back into unknowing once again, and again and again. These pages are full of old stories, doctrines and Scriptures that had shaped the faith in my bones and that I hoped would come to feel true once again. The unwanted guests, the tongues with which I’ve spoken, the ecstasies and unravelling that have brought me to both pleasure and destruction. These are the stubborn ghosts that can’t be exorcised from the theological traditions I’m performing. Each one a forgotten déjà vu that’s both assault and inspiration, caught up in the swoop of God’s desire.

[nataliewiggstevenson]

Transgressive Devotional

Modern, rational (and decidedly less magical) academic theology exiles these oddities from its canons for reflection. Still, when I traded my capacity to speak in tongues for a doctorate, I didn't quite know what I was giving up. Transgressive Devotion is, among other things, my yearning in each and every direction as an attempt to get it back. Or, at least to find a new way to perform it.

[nataliewiggstevenson]

Transgressive Devotional

But when the lightness of the darkness of the silence is just right -- when a nightmare continues for a split-second past waking and I feel enough of a weight upon my chest -- I might spend a minute praying (and not in a mindfulness way to calm myself down that I might do with an app on my phone, which has been clinically proven to have neurological and psychological benefits). But more instinctively and definitively for the protection that only comes through the blood of Christ. I have stopped my car in the middle of the street at night to dance and shake out of my fingers the energetic overflow from God’s Spirit rushing through me. You can take the girl out of charismatic Christianity, but you can’t take the charismatic Christianity out of the girl.

[nataliewiggstevenson]

Transgressive Devotional

There is no universe -- as far as I know -- in which I could write in a scholarly way about the time I heard the audible voice of God; the times I’ve been caught as collateral damage in spiritual warfare; or the spirits who have visited me briefly at the borders of asleep and awake (even now I’m tempted to write: the time I thought I heard God’s voice; the time I felt caught up in the battle between good and evil; the time I mistook the borders of consciousness for something else entirely

[nataliewiggstevenson]

Transgressive Devotional

My performance of faith is, in many ways, the mis-fit of any given role’s constrained restraint. Such limits do not deny but, rather, produce the substance of things unseen. Faith is not the rabbit pulled out from the magician’s suit pocked. It is the abundant overflow of a cup that will always and, almost by necessity, remain too small. It’s not the proverbial coin stashed between the cushions of a sofa to be unearthed. It is, instead, the deviant cry that erupts from script carved into flesh left uncontained. The performance of Christian faith is the slight misfire by which all other performances, and even its own performance begin to break down. Not the gem of truth that’s hidden within but, rather, the sub-titles of a three-penny opera reminding you that none of this is real. Faith turned to devotion is both the sum of these pages and their remainder.

[nataliewiggstevenson]

[nataliewiggstevenson]

Mark 15:42-47

42 When evening had come, and since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the sabbath, 43 Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council, who was also himself waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. 44 Then Pilate wondered if he were already dead; and summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he had been dead for some time. 45 When he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the body to Joseph. 46 Then Joseph bought a linen cloth, and taking down the body, wrapped it in the linen cloth, and laid it in a tomb that had been hewn out of the rock. He then rolled a stone against the door of the tomb. 47 Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where the body was laid.

[nataliewiggstevenson]

Jesse Short, Wake Up! - Resilience

[nataliewiggstevenson]

Transgressive Devotional

Psalm 31:21-24; Mark 15:42-47

Devotion only remains transgressive until time’s end, when we hope we’ll see God face to face. Transgressive Devotion is not a theology for right now, this moment. It’s not intended to last forever, or even until tomorrow. Just one small performative repetition in the mode of both disruption and consolidation. Purely provisional, we can embrace the false projection that keeps us yearning. But return to these pages and they will mean something else. ‘Don’t go trying to use the same route twice.’ Transgressive devotion is fragmentary touch, the fleeting presence of a stranger in the dark. It encircles a place we name as holy, and then we wait on God to arrive. 

[nataliewiggstevenson]

[nataliewiggstevenson]

Jessie Short, Sweet Night (still from film)

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[nataliewiggstevenson]

Psalm 31:21-24

21 Blessed be the Lord,    for he has wondrously shown his steadfast love to me    when I was beset as a city under siege. 22 I had said in my alarm,    “I am driven far from your sight.” But you heard my supplications    when I cried out to you for help.

23 Love the Lord, all you his saints.    The Lord preserves the faithful,    but abundantly repays the one who acts haughtily. 24 Be strong, and let your heart take courage,    all you who wait for the Lord.

[nataliewiggstevenson]

Jessie Short, Aesthetic Arousal

[nataliewiggstevenson]

Jessie Short, Wake Up!