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tes-trash-blog · 4 years

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🌙 hmm... an age old question but opinion on the whole Imperials Vs Stormcloaks fiasco Skyrim tried to feed us?

*cracks neck*

Goodbye follower count, I’m going in!

I’m going to preface this with a confession: In my first ever playthrough of Skyrim (2014), I did side with the Imperials. On my second, I sided with the Stormcloaks. Since then, I have done three more playthroughs on the Stormcloak side, and three more on the Imperial side. In four more still my Dragonborn was neutral, slaying Alduin without ever taking a side. In my playthroughs, especially the ones after 2016, I’ve developed my own opinions about the Imperials and Stormcloaks alike.

In order to better articulate my opinion, we must first briefly examine four factors: the American landscape in which Skyrim was conceived, Skyrim itself and its portrayal of the Imperials and Stormcloaks (and the Thalmor), and Umberto Eco, the usage of terms like “fascism” and especially “Nazism” in American popular culture, and how this all relates to the Imperial/Stormcloak fiasco.

So let’s get started.

Part 1: Thanks, Obama.

In 2008, Barack Obama was elected as the 44th President of the United States. It was a landslide victory against Republican runner John McCain, a conserative who frequently brought up his service in the Vietnam War (and his time as a prisoner of war) during his campaign, as well as his years of service in political office. In a move to make his (very white, very male) campaign seem more inclusive in the face of the frontrunners of the Democratic campaign (Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama), he appointed Sarah Palin as his VP. She was the only conservative woman who agreed to be his running mate, as all three conservative women in the Senate already said no, and the Republicans couldn’t find a black conservative.

(I’m not making this up.)

Anyway, come 2008, the conservatives lose their goddamn minds because Bush’s reign of actual terror was over, a Black man is now President and Whiteness is in peril. This was before the term “triggered” became a popular sneer in the conservative dictionary, but “snowflake” was used a lot. Come 2009, the Tea Party emerges. And now we get to the crux of my, uh, observation.

For the young, uninitiated, or non-Americans who are thinking “What the fuck is wrong with America”, the Tea Party Movement was/is a rash of hardline rightwingers who, still licking their wounds from a sound beating by the Democrats in the 2008 election, sought to rebrand themselves. With some bootstrap lifting and millions of dollars in funding from media tycoons such as the Koch brothers, the Tea Party made its official debut in 2010 after the signing of the Affordable Healthcare Act. Their message was simple: It’s time to take America back from the lazy, the entitled, and the “uppity”. What was really just a rehash of a song and dance that’s been turning its ugly white head since at least 1964 gained something of a stranglehold on America, in spite of its relatively small size of active members. It hit all the notes: a populist movement rooted in the perceived threats to their faith, their culture, and their social and economic capital.

They also believed shit like this:

For instance, Tea Partiers are more likely than other conservatives to agree with statements such as “If blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as whites,” and are more likely to disagree with statements like “Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class.” (Williamson, 34)

Like I said. Since 1964.

What made the Tea Party different from the other conservative temper tantrums was one thing: Internet access. All of a sudden, these angry white men had an outlet for voicing their rages, and an open recruiting forum for other malcontents and disaffected youths. I’m not implying the Tea Party had anything to do with Gamergate, nor that Gamergate had anything to do with the rise of the alt-right or whatever these tennybopper neo-Nazis are calling themselves now, but I am saying those circles at least touch in a Venn diagram.

“But tes-trash-blog! What do the machinations of American politics have to do with Elves?” you may ask. Well dear reader, this leads me to..

Part 2: Hey, you! You’re finally awake!

Skyrim was an overnight hit. On release, The Elder Scrolls 5 generated 450 million dollars on its opening weekend alone. This game sold for around 20 million copies, not including Special Edition, VR, or Switch, and continues to see an average of around 10,000 players a week 9 years later (Steamcharts).

And 20 million people see one thing first: A strong, noble Nord in captivity, telling you that you’re on your way to be executed by the Imperials, who are in bed with a scary, sneering bunch of High Elves dressed in black. 20 million people already were told who was the clear bad guy in this game, and it wasn’t the strong, noble Nord in captivity. I’ll be going into this more into Part 3, but suffice to say, the Imperials were already coded as Bad Guy by association. The Imperials decided to execute you, the player. They shot a man in the back because he ran from his own execution. He stole a horse, which was a crime punishable by death in those days. The game doesn’t tell you that part, and is content to say that Lokir was killed because he was in the same cart as the Stormcloaks.

Speaking of Imperials, the Third Empire is written as obtuse, corrupt, uncaring, and cruel. The Septim Dynasty is wrought with scandal and intrigue, plagued by conflict, and powerless to do anything about the Oblivion Crisis that almost ended the world. They flat out abandoned Morrowind and Summerset to better protect their own, offered no help during the Void Nights that destabilized the Khajiit, and worst of all, signed a treaty outlawing Talos worship. That is the crux on which the Stormcloak/Imperial conflict lies. These damned outsiders telling these humble Nords what to do and what not to do. They’re corrupt, lazy, and know nothing of the hardships these people endure, and now the nanny state Empire is telling them they don’t have the freedom to worship what they want? How dare they!

Going further, in the seat of Imperial power in Skyrim is none other than Jarl Elisif, a young widow who relies heavily on the advice of her (overwhelmingly male) thanes, stewards, and generals. She’s weak, thinks mostly of her dead husband, and is written as someone who overreacts to scenarios; the “legion of troops” to Wolfskull Cave over a farmer reporting strange noises, banning the Burning of King Olaf in the wake of her husband’s murder via Shout come to mind. Compare and contrast that to the seat of Stormcloak power, Windhelm. Ulfric spends his time pouring over the map of troop movements and discussing strategy when he’s not delivering his big damn “Why I Fight” speech. Elisif is weak, Ulfric is strong. The Jarl of Solitude is even told to tone it down during the armistice negotiations in Season Unending. She’s chastised by her own general. The first thing you see in Solitude is a man being executed for opening a gate. The first thing you see in Windhelm is two Nords harassing a Dark Elf woman and accusing her of being an Imperial spy.

Both are portrayed as horrific, but only one has bystanders decrying the acts of the offender. Only one has a relative in the crowd proclaim, “That’s my brother [they’re executing]!” The best you get with Suvaris is her confronting you about whether or not you “hate her kind”. Even a mouth breathing racist would be disinclined to say “yes” when confronted with the question of whether or not they’re racist, but that’s how the writers of Skyrim think racism works.

I acknowledge that this was an attempt at bothsidesism, but the handling was.. clumsy.

Part 3: Ur-Fascism, Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Bash The Stormcloaks

And now we move on to Umberto Eco, fiction writer, essayist, and writer of the famous essay Ur-Fascism. In short, Eco summarizes 14 separate properties of a fascist movement; it’s important to stress that this should not be treated as a checklist if a piece of media is fascist, or if a person is actually a Nazi, or to say “X is Bad Because Checklist”. It’s frankly impossible to even organize these points into a coherent system, as fascism is an ideology that is, by its nature, incoherent.

With that in mind, let’s run down the points:

1. “The Cult of Tradition”, characterized by cultural syncretism, even at the risk of internal contradiction. When all truth has already been revealed by Tradition, no new learning can occur, only further interpretation and refinement.

2. “The Rejection of Modernism”, which views the rationalistic development of Western culture since the Enlightenment as a descent into depravity. Eco distinguishes this from a rejection of superficial technological advancement, as many fascist regimes cite their industrial potency as proof of the vitality of their system.

3. “The Cult of Action for Action’s Sake”, which dictates that action is of value in itself, and should be taken without intellectual reflection. This, says Eco, is connected with anti-intellectualism and irrationalism, and often manifests in attacks on modern culture and science.

4. “Disagreement Is Treason” – Fascism devalues intellectual discourse and critical reasoning as barriers to action, as well as out of fear that such analysis will expose the contradictions embodied in a syncretistic faith.

5. “Fear of Difference", which fascism seeks to exploit and exacerbate, often in the form of racism or an appeal against foreigners and immigrants.

6. “Appeal to a Frustrated Middle Class”, fearing economic pressure from the demands and aspirations of lower social groups.

7. “Obsession with a Plot” and the hyping-up of an enemy threat. This often combines an appeal to xenophobia with a fear of disloyalty and sabotage from marginalized groups living within the society (such as the German elite’s ‘fear’ of the 1930s Jewish populace’s businesses and well-doings, or any anti-Semitic conspiracy ever).

8. Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as “at the same time too strong and too weak.” On the one hand, fascists play up the power of certain disfavored elites to encourage in their followers a sense of grievance and humiliation. On the other hand, fascist leaders point to the decadence of those elites as proof of their ultimate feebleness in the face of an overwhelming popular will.

9. “Pacifism is Trafficking with the Enemy” because “Life is Permanent Warfare” – there must always be an enemy to fight. Both fascist Germany under Hitler and Italy under Mussolini worked first to organize and clean up their respective countries and then build the war machines that they later intended to and did use, despite Germany being under restrictions of the Versailles treaty to NOT build a military force. This principle leads to a fundamental contradiction within fascism: the incompatibility of ultimate triumph with perpetual war.

10. “Contempt for the Weak”, which is uncomfortably married to a chauvinistic popular elitism, in which every member of society is superior to outsiders by virtue of belonging to the in-group. Eco sees in these attitudes the root of a deep tension in the fundamentally hierarchical structure of fascist polities, as they encourage leaders to despise their underlings, up to the ultimate Leader who holds the whole country in contempt for having allowed him to overtake it by force.

11. “Everybody is Educated to Become a Hero”, which leads to the embrace of a cult of death. As Eco observes, “[t]he Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.”

12. “Machismo”, which sublimates the difficult work of permanent war and heroism into the sexual sphere. Fascists thus hold “both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”

13. “Selective Populism” – The People, conceived monolithically, have a Common Will, distinct from and superior to the viewpoint of any individual. As no mass of people can ever be truly unanimous, the Leader holds himself out as the interpreter of the popular will (though truly he dictates it). Fascists use this concept to delegitimize democratic institutions they accuse of “no longer represent[ing] the Voice of the People.”

14. “Newspeak” – Fascism employs and promotes an impoverished vocabulary in order to limit critical reasoning.

I did copy and paste the list from Wikipedia, but you can read the full essay here. It’s 9 pages long. You can do it, I have faith in you.

You may notice that you can’t really shorthand these concepts, or at least not in an aesthetically pleasing way. However, you can point to the most infamous of fascist regimes and take their aesthetic instead. You see it in Star Wars with the Empire (hmm) and the First Order, in Star Trek with the Mirrorverse and the Cardassian Dominion (hmm), and in the.. Oh, it’s on the tip of my tongue..

Oh, yeah. The Thalmor. They dress in dark colors, are a foreign power trying to exert their influence on the downtrodden Nord, enact purges, and scream about Elven superiority. The Thalmor express every surface level perception of a Nazi in American popular culture. TVTropes has already pretty well covered this ground in their Video Games section of A Nazi By Any Other Name, so I won’t go too much into here seeing as I’m already at the 2000 word mark. Suffice to say, it’s hard to think Bethesda wasn’t trying to make the player associate the 4th Era Altmer with the 1930’s German.

And in doing so, they accidentally created a group that is.. Well, you’ve read the essay or at least the 14 points. Try and tell me how many of them don’t apply to Nordic culture. What grabs me the most are points 9, 11, and 13: life is a perpetual struggle in which you must emerge victorious, a culture of Heroes impatient to die in a glorious fashion, and the Common Will that is enacted and reinforced by one strongman leader. You see these elements in play in Nord culture, in Stormcloak ideology especially. I, for one, hear what Galmar really means when he says “We will make Skyrim beautiful again”. I hear the echoes in George W Bush’s speeches and McCain’s campaign when Ulfric talks of duty and service, of “fighting because Skyrim needs heroes, and there’s no one else but us.”

It’s less of a dog whistle and more of a foghorn if you ask me. And to go back to part 2, this is a message that 20 million played. Not all of them are Stormcloak stans, but that compelling message was still present. Americans love being a strongman hero in their media; we eat that shit up. The setup was enough: you’re a lone hero about to be executed by milquetoast Imperials and Nazi-coded Thalmor. The story was enough: a strong man rebels against a system gone awry, one that seeks to destroy his way of life.

It was enough to compel a “fashwave” artist to take on the monkier Stormcloak(Hann). It was enough that Skyrim was lauded as a “real” game instead of say, Depression Quest, and to justify ruining a game developer’s life over it.

It was enough that when Skyrim came out in 2011, the game did not do so well in Germany because of these elements, because the game was written for you to be sympathetic towards these very white, very blond and Ayran-coded Nords. I can’t speak for the popularity of the game now in Germany, but when I lived there, there were a few raised eyebrows among my age group about the message of the game.

I think about that a lot, especially when the tesblr discourse heats up about the Stormcloaks. I see how visibly upset people get when someone throws shade at Ulfric. The talk of “it’s just a video game” and “lul get triggered” starts to look less like passive dismissal and shoddy trolling and more a kind of funhouse mirror to how they really think.

I can’t lie, it reminds me so much of 2009, of these angry people screaming racial slurs on the Internet because there’s a Black president or posting sexist screeds because Michelle Obama wanted kids to have access to healthy meals. It reminds me of the kid in my sophomore class who said he was going to “take out” Obama on his inauguration day. He was 15 years old then. He’s a father now.

Hell, it reminds me of right now, of Republican Senators demanding civility and tone policing as they kowtow to an actual fascist. The Stormcloak in the Reach camp “had to do something” about the Empire telling him and his what to do, and the neighbor I used to dogsit for had to do something too. I don’t watch his dogs anymore. When I told him I wouldn’t, he tried to make himself the victim and say I was getting political about dog sitting. It’s just two dogs. It’s just a video game. All political messages are just imaginary, snowflake.

But it’s really not, is it now?

TL;DR and Sources

TL;DR: The imperials are portrayed as weak and effectual, as the bootlicker to the Thalmor, and the writers were so busy trying to make one side look bad and weak they inadvertently made actual fascists.

Even though this is pretty long, this really only scratches the surface of the.. Well, everything. In all honesty this is just a very condensed version of my opinion. Big shockeroo, there.

Do keep in mind that this isn’t a condemnation of Skyrim. Lord knows I love that game, or I wouldn’t have this blog. This also isn’t a damning of people who play the game and side with the Stormcloaks, or think Ulfric is hot, or don’t like the Thalmor or what have you. You do you, fam. You do you. This is my observation and opinion on one aspect of the game, just with some tasty sources to better paint a picture of where I personally formed my opinion.

This also isn’t to say that I’m trying to draw a 1:1 comparison between The Elder Scrolls and reality, or that Ulfric is obviously a McCain/Trump/Hitler expy, but Skyrim is, like all things, a product of the minds that created it. Skyrim didn’t happen in an apolitical vacuum, and apolitical stories about war simply do not exist. Anyone who tells you otherwise is simply reinforcing the status quo, and it is our responsibility as people who consume this media to question it, and that status quo they so dearly wish to hang on to.

Also, Elisif hot.

Sources:

Eco, Umberto. “Ur-Fascism”. The New York Review of Books. 1995. https://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-fascism.pdf>

Williamson, Venssa, Skocpol, Theda and Coggin, John. “The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism”. Perspectives on Politics, Volume 9. March 2011. https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/williamson/files/tea_party_pop_0.pdf>

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Steamcharts.com https://steamcharts.com/app/72850>

Schreier, Jason. “Bethesda Ships 7M Skyrim, Earns About $450M”. Wired. November 16, 2011. https://www.wired.com/2011/11/skyrim-sales/>

Hann, Michael. “‘Fashwave” - synth music co-opted by the far right”. The Guardian. December 2014. https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2016/dec/14/fashwave-synth-music-co-opted-by-the-far-right>

#holy shit this got long #lore overanalysis #the trash talks

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wheelygoodteddys · 5 years

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I don't want to do this!:

I absolutely hate writing about religious discrimination!

Frankly, I wish that I wasn't putting fingers to keyboard about any discrimination.

I also desperately don't want the focus to be on discrimination against everything Islamic and Muslim.

However, sadly, it's the most venomous hated that I have ever encountered, second only to racism against the black human beings of our world.

All my life I must have lived under a rock, maybe I live under a rock now, yet the vileness and outright lies that come out of those obsessed with hating all Islam and Muslims, plus anyone who stands up and says this is wrong, is obscene.

I am disgusted in the way these people respond.

I have had differing opinions with both Muslim men are women yet been addressed with respect and politeness. They are peaceful and not intimidating in any way.

Speak to a person who is anti Muslim, they refuse to listen to anything that may contradict what they want to believe, they will call you a liar and slander you. They intimidate and bully, call you names, question your mental stability, stalk your FB and target your children. The insults and illogical reasoning is unbelievable.

I am horrified that there are people like this in the world!

More horrifying still is for once I can see the appeal in hating the West.

Imagine a young Muslim man, born here, and rather then allowing him to explain what his religion means to him, to try and teach people, that hate everything about him, that he deserves to be not discriminated against, he gets told what his religion is, he is called a murder, a terrorist, a paedophile, a Mysoginist, etc. His sister is spoken to about her husband beating her, being oppressed, asked if she still has her clitorus, threatened with physical abuse, has her hijab torn off, threatened with rape, told she is a bad mother because she sells her baby girls to be raped by old men.

And no matter what they say to try and explain their actual beliefs the abuse flows. And this is from their own countrymen.

Mate, I would want them all gone too! Be honest, who wouldn't!?

Yet if they report abuse or complain about their treatment they are accused of wanting to change things. "They come here and try to change everything", is the cry from the haters!

1) There is NO law that insists that ALL women wear a Burqa in Saudi Arabia: Hijab is only compulsory for Muslim women. Anything else is a choice for those in a practicing Muslim family.

2) Women are not allowed to get an education in Saudi Arabia: I urge you to look up any TV broadcast from local Saudi Arabia telecasts. Women, in hijab, reading the news. This suggests an education. However, both men and women are encouraged to gain knowledge in Islam.

3) WTF does Saudi Arabia have to do with every other Muslim world wide, especially in Australia?

4) FGM (female genital mutilation) is an Islamic practice: Far from it! The Islamic religion urges that both men and women enjoy sex and that a man sexually pleases his wife. FGM is a tribal practice. However, MGM (male genital mutilation) has and still is widely practiced in Australia.

5) There is NO "no go" zones in Australia!: This urban myth was started by a female, Canadian Islamphobe. It was said to be proved when the police removed her from Lakemba for disturbing the peace. The police weren't working for the Muslims to enforce their "no go" zones! How ridiculous. Others tell totally unbelievable stories about women walking there and being spat on for not wearing hijab. Firstly, not all Muslimah wear hijab, even in Lakemba. Also there are numerous non-Muslims that go to these fabled areas to eat, visit, shop, do business, etc. This rumor is absolutely ludicrous!

6) Muslim women are oppressed, even here in Australia!: It is naive that there is no abusive people in any religion or walk of life, however, Muslimah are not oppressed as perf the usual course. Quiet the opposite! Historically, and as it is today, Muslimah have the freedom to do and be whatever they want, just like Muslim men. There is no distinction between what male and females can do. In fact, men are encouraged to wash their own clothes, cook and do housework. Also the Qur'an makes it very clear that the mother is the head of the household.

7) It is always claimed that Muslims want to change things: Yet, the question, "what have they actually changed?", goes unanswered. Muslims are required to live by the laws of the land, and as such, really don't want to change anything but the way they are treated. Especially how the women are treated. Our hero Islamphobes always target women and children because Muslimah are more recognizable.

8) Why are these people so threatened by the hijab or niqab?: For fuck sake it's a piece of material! It's not what's on a woman's head that oppresses her. However, who are those that want to oppress Muslimah? Muslim men or the Islamphobe? I say without hesitation, the Islamphobe! They don't ask a Muslim women how she feels, they don't ask what she may want to wear. They rarely comprehend the meaning of the hijab to a woman but rather try to twist it into some sexually perverse. They proclaim that Muslim women shouldn't wear a head covering. As Australia is a free country, with a freedom of religion and freedom of lawful individually, the real oppression and discrimination, is telling Muslim women what to wear.

9) Telling Muslim women what they are: The idea that, to Islamphobes, Muslim women are stupid and therefore, don't know that they are oppressed, would have to be the most Mysoginist slap in the face ever! All I can say is, "at least Muslim men know a woman's worth is awesome".

10) Muslim men marry girl babies of 5 to 6 years old and Muslim mothers allow it: Firstly, American is the place booming in child brides at the moment. With some states having no minimum age for marriage and also no divorce for women. Compared to Malaysian Clerics, years ago, raising the age of concent to 18. Also contrary to European/western/Christian culture, women have been granted divorce since the 700s in Islam.

11) Women wear the Burqa in Australia: This is actually one of those urban myths, started by Pauline Hanson. To see a Burqa in Australia would be very unusual. Most Australian Muslimah are from cultures that don't don the Burqa. The Burqa is an Afghan tradition and is very rare in Australia. Then why fight "ban the Burqa"? In one word, principle! It is against a woman's basic rights to tell her how much she can or can't wear, within the laws of public decency. There is also a security argument, as a Burqa is rarely worn that argument is rather moot.

12) Muslim men have lots of wives and children and just live on welfare: This is so silly that it's laughable. Once again, it is rare for Muslim men to have more than one wife these days as it is financially impractical. Also most Muslim men prefer one wife. In Australia, on average, the Muslim family consists of 2 children. With all this being said, usually Muslim men and women are educated and professional people. If not they strive to own businesses. The stupid welfare claims are unfounded and actually go against most Muslim traditions and cultures that have a hard work ethic.

13) They come here are get more welfare than Australians with no waiting period: This information can be researched on government websites. There is a waiting time for new Australians, Muslim or otherwise, which often means charitable families that sponsor them and take them in during this time. When they do receive any benefit, before getting on their feet, it is no more or less than anyone else.

14) They receive a thousand dollar iPhone and designer clothes as soon as they arrive: Is this one even worth answering? I just shake my head in disbelief!

15) Muslims have been Australians for generations: It amazes me how many people actually believe that no Muslim is Australian born. The history of the Islamic people in Australia predates white colonization. Islamic men from Indonesia travelled down and through Australia. There was intermarriage with the Indigenous peoples and even revertion to Islam by some. A more constant move to Australia, by those of the Islamic faith, started in the 1800's.

16) All Muslims are the same because they read from the same book: this is like saying that all Christian denominations are the same because they read from the same book. Most know that this is not the case.

There are many different varieties of Muslim. Yes they have the Qur'an yet addition books vary between the sects.

There are 72 different sects, numerous sects within the main sects, different traditions, different cultures, different regions, different regions, different countries and different families.

As for the Qur'an: there is the subject context, further context, overall context, historical context and spiritual context. Then all the different ways it is interpreted. Also interpretation can be manipulated and cherry picked to suit an agenda or bias. This can be said of the Bible also.

Where interpretation is important is in the understanding of Arabic. To translate a language as complex as Arabic into simple English leaves the meaning truly lacking.

For example: Islam is a very sexually moral religion. Men and women are not meant to sexulise each other, There is no unsupervised dating and dressing is modest. However, it is commonly thought the men will receive a bus load of virgins to have an orgy with in paradise. However, "virgin" more correctly translates to "pure". This is a "spiritual" context and "heavenly beings/angels is probably a better translation into English.

17) Muslims want to kill all Jews and Muslims. The Qur'an tells them to kill all Christians: Unfortunately people are so off the mark on this one. Islam actually says that Muslims cannot destroy a place of worship nor hurt religious "ministers". The Qur'an refers to Christians and Jews as the "people of the book". In fact, the only other women a Muslim man is permitted to marry is either a Christian or a Jew. The wives of these two religions are also not expect to revert as they are seen as sisters to Islam. Christian and Jewish men and women are thought of as brothers and sisters to Muslims.

There is a long list of urban myth, propaganda, rumors and out right lies that are used as ammunition against Islam and Muslims.

The arrogance of the Islamphobe is to tell a Muslim what their faith is! With no other religion would a person, outside that faith, verse another in their religion.

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i-may-have-a-point · 6 years

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Review of 14x10 “Personal Jesus”

So many people were fantastic in this episode, but my review mainly focuses on April’s story as she is the one I connect with the most.

“In a course of one day, Job received four messages with separate news that his livestock, servants, and ten children had all died. He continued to be a faithful servant. He praised God. He persevered. Job’s faith was tested, and he passed the test. And for his faith God rewarded Job with twice what he had before.”

There is an idea in many circles of Christianity that has been perpetuated for years. To really be a Christian, you must prove yourself. You follow all the rules, you stay as far from all forms of sin as possible, and you never question the teachings of the Bible. If you can do those things, and do them well, then maybe you will be a good enough Christian.

April Kepner was taught those same ideas. She grew up believing, knowing, that God is the answer for all of life’s difficulties. All she needed to do was to believe in him and follow his teachings, and life would go according to plan.

Except it didn’t.

It didn’t go according to plan in that hotel room in San Francisco when her feelings for her best friend contradicted everything she had learned about sex and virtue. For the first time in her life, she stopped following the straight path that was laid before her. She took a detour and found, that if she let it, life could be fuller and hold more joy than she ever imagined.

And it was. For a moment.

But the guilt and shame that come from being taught your whole life that good Christians don’t sin quickly caught up with her, and her unshakeable pillar of faith swayed just enough to crack the surface.

Christians fail, though. She knew that. She only needed to ask forgiveness and to reaffirm her faith, and eventually she did. The on-call room escapades stopped, and she grounded herself again, back on the right path. She would work harder at being a better doctor, a better person, a better Christian and eventually, God would reward her.

And the she met Matthew, who was seemingly everything she ever wanted. A kind, handsome man who was strong in his faith and loved her completely. Her world had been set right. Except for that quiet spark, deep in her soul that yearned for more. She heard it in still moments. It would whisper to her that there is more to life than settling for what you are “supposed” to do. She continued to silence that nudging voice, until the day she was supposed to marry Matthew, and the voice became a roar. It was so loud that it was all she could hear as she turned from the altar and ran from the church with Jackson, terrified and overjoyed all at once.

Her faith shook once more, unsure that she had made the right choice, but then peace came.

God had brought her happiness. She married Jackson, they were expecting a baby, and all was right with the world. Until it wasn’t. Until she was given an unimaginable test. Her child was sick, and no medicine in the world could cure him. She held her son and watched him take his last breath. She had no explanation. She prayed for a miracle. Her whole life she had been taught to be faithful and obedient and God would answer her prayers. Yet he didn’t. And this ripped a hole in her faith so large that it could never fully close.

The hole grew as she traveled to Jordan searching for healing, but she lost her marriage instead. Jackson was her rock. He was one of the few people in her life who had ever truly believed in her. Losing him made the hole grow bigger.

Oh, but Harriet. Harriet is her strength. Her reason to keep going. Her light in the darkness.

But she is still hurting. She has to ask herself, how can someone like her, a good Christian, face so much pain? And why would a loving, caring God allow one of his followers to suffer when he could prevent it all?

This season has been building to April being forced to look at her life and the decisions she has made, and this episode is a turning point in that journey.

April walked in to season 14 with a broken spirit when she told Jackson that what they were doing was causing her pain. Her heart was broken over Jackson, and things only got harder from there. All season, she was repeatedly reminded of Samuel, Jordan, leaving Matthew at the altar, losing Jackson, and her insecurities as a doctor.

Like Job, she has been tested. Job lost everything that was dear to him, and yet he still kept his faith. He was patient because he knew that, no matter what, God was with him. April did the same. Through her trials, she kept believing in God and his grace. Until today, when all of her struggles and all of her failures were placed in her path at once.

Paul is brought in as a hit and run victim and April treats him, while Meredith, Jo, and Alex discuss how best to handle the situation. Mer goes into the room to check on Paul’s status, and tells April not to kill him. “You really can’t lose him.” April is constantly being told she is not as good as Meredith, but this is not actually a moment of Meredith distrusting April’s abilities as a doctor. Mer tells her she can’t lose him because she is afraid Jo and Alex will be charged with murder. Unfortunately, April doesn’t know that, and it comes across as Mer doubting her. We see that when April calls after her, “Thanks for the vote of confidence!” Once again, April feels that she is not good enough.

Because she is so trusting, she thought that Webber had asked her to run the contest because she is a good leader. She soon finds out it was simply so he could compete, and now, she is missing out on a great surgical opportunity. This is another small reminder that she is still not valued as a surgeon in her peers’ eyes.

She doesn’t have time to dwell on that, though, because Karen Tayler is very pregnant and will not make it to Labor and Delivery before her baby is born. So, April steps in for Robbins, delivering the baby who turns out to be Matthew’s daughter. It seems that Matthew, the man she left at the altar, has the happy life she dreamed of, and she is forced into a front row seat to witness it. She is happy for him, though. He deserves happiness, and this is reassurance that she made the right decision leaving him. He is happy. Even if she isn’t.

(Side note: Arizona claims she didn’t tell April that she was treated Matthew’s wife because of HIPPA. Arizona sure didn’t care about HIPPA when she told Jackson that April was pregnant.)

Deluca drives the pain in a little deeper by telling April that Matthew’s wife is just like her. At this point she is visibly frustrated, but she spots Jackson and heads over to him, knowing he will understand. They have an adorable exchange about the embarrassment of treating Matthew’s wife as well as the contest. April tries to get Jackson to take back the contest, which he unbeknownst to her, created. He, of course, says no, and we get our first hint that this contest is going to be big for both of them.

Their conversation is cut short as April has another incoming trauma. A twenty-year-old man tried to cut off his own hand because he couldn’t stop masturbating, and according to his interpretation of the Bible, this was the only logical thing to do. This patient is a message directly for April, but also for the audience. The Bible is a book of stories that has wonderful teaching and morality lessons. However, in no way should we interpret what it says literally at all times. It has been translated countless times and was written by human hands. Fallible human hands. It is a guide book and not a how-to manual.

The next trauma is another sign for April that God doesn’t always intervene, even when he can. Eric, a twelve-year-old boy, was shot by a police officer climbing in the window of his own house. Jackson and Bailey are visibly angered by this, as things like this happen too often in our country. He is an innocent child who was shot for no reason other than the officer’s assumption he was a criminal based on the color of his skin. April does not have personal experience with this, but she can see the cruelty and unfairness of the situation. She jumps in to help and the weight of the day’s injustices begin to weigh heavily on her.

Like Jo tells Jenny, “The good outweighed the bad. Until it didn’t.”

Everywhere April looks she sees bad. Paul, Karen and Matthew, Eric, Jackson, her career. But she still has faith, and she tries to explain that to the guy who attempted to cut off his hand. “God doesn’t tempt us beyond our ability. He doesn’t give us more than we can handle.” And one of my favorite lines, “When God created the world, he also created metaphors.”

The only problem with this is that God does give people more than they can handle, and April is feeling that right about now.

Eric’s family arrives and April watches as his parents and Jackson have to fight for him to be treated as a child, a human. How could these cops, who swear to uphold justice, clearly be so wrong?

She exchanges a silent look with Jackson, a look that holds so much tension and unspoken thoughts, but Karen Taylor is in pain, and she is pulled away again before she can decide to speak.

Karen has a blood clot on her vagina, and April finds herself in the embarrassing situation of having to drain the blood clot off of her ex-fiance’s wife’s vagina. Talk about humbling. But that’s okay, because as Karen reminds her, “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle.”

This message is repeated for April because she is feeling overwhelmed with sorrow, but her Christian upbringing has taught her she is suffering this much for a reason. God is teaching her something, and she just has to be patient, like Job.

During Eric’s MRI, April hears about the discrimination Jackson faced from police and she realizes there are things she doesn’t know about Jackson, but again, she doesn’t have a moment to get deeper into what he tells her because she is paged back to Karen Taylor.

Karen is still waiting for a room, and she ends up catching up with Matthew while they wait. She gets to hear all about how Karen is the love of his life. Even after April hurt him so much, he found something better. “She the love of my life, you know? Of course you know. You have that with Jackson.” In that moment, we all heard April’s heart break. Jackson is the love of her life, but she feels that she failed in that, too. Instead of telling this to Matthew, she pretends to be happy. At least something good came from her leaving him. God gave Matthew a great life and she doesn’t want to take away from that. But that happiness is hard to fake when Matthew says, “I heard from the pastor that you were pregnant. So, you have, what a three-year-old now?” Samuel. He would have been three had he lived. “I had – I have – We have Harriett. We have a beautiful daughter named Harriett. She’s one. She is the light of my life.” And the love that April has for her daughter is heard in the emotion that comes through in that line. Harriet is her life at this point.

Matthew is happy for her. “So, it worked out perfectly for both of us, didn’t it? God used that pain and turned it into something beautiful. Guess he knew what he was doing all along.”

He returns to his wife, and April’s face falls as she walks away.

Karma reaches Paul’s room as he injures himself in his angry fit, causing a head injury that leads to him being brain dead. Can’t say I’m sad. Jo is told that she gets to make the call on what to do with Paul. Her reaction from laughter to tears was perfect. And the way she reached out for Alex’s face for support and relief was everything.

Robbins finally shows up to help April with Karen who is in extreme pain just as Eric crashes.

April, Jackson, and Bailey get him to the O.R., and Bailey tells April they can take it from there. April backs away feeling helpless, only to turn back to run into Karen’s O.R. She is shamed as usual by her co-workers, and she is overcome with guilt. Maybe she isn’t a good enough doctor. Maybe she did something wrong. Did she cause this like she caused all the other bad things in her life?

In this time of despair, she turns to the only source of strength she can think of – God. She heads to the chapel to pray for her patients, only to find an angry Matthew. He leaves her, and she sits, beginning to pray for healing and good, but the words of the prayer fail her. She hears no answer. And all she can do is cry.

Cry for Karen, whose body is failing her when her child and husband need her the most.

Cry for Eric’s family, who have to bury their child way too early.

Cry for Jackson, who has to live with bias in his life every day because of his skin color.

Cry for a system that has failed. A system that is supposed to be good. “How am I supposed to have any faith in a system like that?”

Cry for Ben and Bailey who have to explain their son how not to get killed by the police.

And she cries because she has no answer for the patient who questions his own faith.

“Then tell me what to do! If I can’t trust this, if the word of God is just a bunch of stories, what does anything mean? What is any of this even for?”

And that’s the question April cannot answer. That is the questions that brings her faith tumbling to the ground. What is the meaning of a new mother dying and leaving her daughter motherless? What is the meaning of a twelve-year-old boy being murdered outside his house? What is the meaning of her son, Samuel, dying? What is the meaning of her marriage to Jackson ending? What is any of this for?

She has spent her life being good because that is what she is supposed to do as Christian, or so she believed. But why? So she can die with no explanation one day? So she can experience suffering and loss over and over again? So she can watch good people suffer daily? Why is she trying so hard to be good when God allows these terrible things to happen? Why isn’t he doing anything? Because if he is not going to intervene, then there is no reason to try to live this perfect life. There is no point to any of this.

“My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? Job asked the question, too. But he kept the faith. And what did he get for it? Replacement children. PTSD. Was it worth it, to be a faithful servant? Or would it have been better to just curse God’s name from the beginning? Where was God throughout all of Job’s suffering? He was winning a bet with Satan. Makes you wonder where he is through all of the unfairness and inequity and cruelty in the world. Where is he now?”

To April, God has forsaken her. She was a good and faithful servant. She was patient. And it got her nothing. So, she is done being faithful. We saw the pain on her face as she drank herself numb at the bar and as she stood in the shower, desperate to wash off the pain of the day, the light in her eyes burnt out. This is where April’s journey begins.

Her decision to let Vik in the shower had nothing to do with love or lust. It was just one more thing to numb the pain. She sees no reason to continue to always do the right thing because it has gotten her nothing. She is alone and broken, and those feelings will guide her decisions from now on. So stop saying that the show made April a slut or that this decision was out of character. The character we know as April is not the one who made this decision. This decision was made by a woman who feels abandoned and lost. This decision reflects her hope leaving. I agree that April only having been with Jackson was beautiful, but calling her a slut perpetuates the idea that women, particularly Christian women, should be shamed for having multiple partners. April has felt that shame her whole life. That statement would never be made about Jackson, or any other character on the show for that matter, and April should be given the same grace.

But as Sarah said, this story is not over. Job’s story did not end in the middle of his pain. It ended with him being rewarded with twice as much as he had before. I believe that is where April’s story will end, too. She will come full circle and find her faith and happiness again, so don’t be angry at the turn of events in this episode. Just wait for the moment that forces April to feel again. The moment that forces her to stop being numb. That is the moment when everything will change for the better. Because even though April was reminded over and over again that God doesn’t give us more than we can handle, that’s just not true. He does. He gives us so much to handle that we need to turn to him for help and answers. April knows this, but in this moment, she doesn’t believe it. But she will find her faith again. Good things are coming for April, and I still believe for Japril as well.

#grey's anatomy #14x10 #japril #give sarah drew all the awards

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agameforgoodchristians · 6 years

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Miriam Cursed for Being Racist (Numbers 12): On Racism, Prejudice, and Other Things that make you Uncomfortable at Church]

One day Miriam and Aaron, Moses' older siblings, blindside him about his wife:

While they were at Hazeroth, Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married (for he had indeed married a Cushite woman) (Numbers 12:1).

Seems pretty racist, right?

Why does everything have to be about race?

Excuse me?

Why does everything have to be about race?

Everything isn’t about race.

Well, why does this have to be about race?

You’d have to ask Miriam and Aaron.

Gah. Why is this story really about race?

Keep reading.

The Argument Against A Racist Interpretation

(Even though it's mostly wrong)

Our interrupting friend's last question has been the source of biblical debate for centuries. This is because, despite what seems to be a racially-charged beginning to the story, Miriam and Aaron do go on to say:

“Has the Lord spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us also?” (Numbers 12:2)

It seems that there is a case to be made that this story is more about sibling rivalry than racial animus. This argument is made more compelling when the events of the previous chapter are taken into account.

Numbers 11 records the repeated complaints of the Hebrew people as they traveled from slavery in Egypt to freedom and prosperity in the Promised Land. Complaints that almost got them all killed by the God who was making provision for them the whole time. In the midst of this chapter, Moses wants to walk away from his role as desert tour guide for a cranky classroom of kindergartens (Numbers 11:10-15). To help Moses keep his sanity, God orders Moses to appoint 70 elders to help him bear the burden of leadership.

It is with this backdrop that we begin chapter 12: Moses’ own siblings, his own family, leaders who know and care for him the most, are apparently trying to usurp his authority. There is a power struggle over who speaks for God. And since Moses is too “humble” to fight for himself (vs 4) [which is an odd choice of words, since the narrator has already told us that Mo don’t want this job no mo’], God gets involved.

God calls Miriam, Moses, and Aaron before The Tent of Meeting, appears as a pillar of smoke, and tells Aaron and Miriam to shut the sheol up. God explains that He has a special relationship with Moses, different from their own. God doesn’t communicate using dreams and visions with Moses. No: Mo gets the face to face treatment (vs 5-8).

And because a stern talking to is not enough, God cursed Miriam with a skin aliment, turning her white as snow. Aaron, after screwing up in a major way, once again, receives no punishment whatsoever (#WTF #SmashThePatriarchy). Perhaps seeing that this is completely unfair, or perhaps being a good little brother trying to protect his sister (#OkPatriachyHasSomeUses), Aaron turns to Moses, humbles himself, calls Moses “my lord,” and asks Moses to ask God to spare their sister (vs 10-12).

Moses advocates on Miriam's behalf and God, after using a parable about a father shaming his daughter by spitting in her face (#BackToPatriarchySmashing), decrees that Miriam's aliment will clear up after seven days. However, she must remain outside the Hebrew camp alone, returning only after she is healed. Thankfully the people decided to wait for her instead of continuing their nomadic trek to the Promised Land (vs 13-16).

So there you have it: this was not about race.

Yes. Yes it was.

But you just said…

Have you seen how long this Card Talk is? Clearly we’re not done yet.

But...

We're not done yet. Also, there is an obvious question you should have asked by now...

Who Was This Woman?

Did you forget that this passage starts with Miriam and Aaron throwing disrespect at Moses' wife? What happened to her part in this story? For that matter, who the heck is she? This is a question that anyone who survived some form of Sunday or Saturday school (or watched The Prince of Egypt), should be wondering.

The Bible says that Moses had a wife named Zipporah, and she was pretty badass. She threw her son's freshly circumcised foreskin at her husband's penis to win an argument with God. Is this the woman Miriam and Aaron are talking about? We don't think so because there are multiple problems with this interpretation.

First, why would Miriam and Aaron suddenly have a problem with Zipporah? She's been with Moses for a long time. She's even been in the biblical narrative longer than Aaron has (Zipp shows up in Exodus 2. We don't even know Aaron exists until Exodus 4). Second, and more important, Zipporah is not a Cushite. She was a Midianite (Exodus 2:15-22). We're to believe that Miriam and Aaron are throwing racial invective, but suddenly forgot what country/tribe their sister-in-law is from?

Over the centuries, some Jewish and Christian scholars have attempted to square this round peg by simply saying that the wife mentioned in Numbers 12 was Zipporah. Why? Because the Bible only records Moses having one wife. Other scholars point to this very passage as emphatically saying the opposite: Moses did have more than one wife, hence the narrative's emphasis at the end of vs 1:

While they were at Hazeroth, Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married (for he had indeed married a Cushite woman)

So if this is wife #2, where did she come from? When, in the midst of his nomad lifestyle, did Mo have time to court another wife? The top two scholarly contending answers are:

1. Moses married an African woman in his younger days, specifically between fleeing Egypt and arriving in Midian (sometime during the second chapter of The Book of Exodus). This makes Zipporah his second wife, as Moses would have met the Cushite woman before arriving to Jethro’s house in Midian.

and

2. Moses met this woman in Egypt while trying to convince Pharaoh to let God's people go. Exodus 18:2 tells us that Moses had sent Zipporah and their children away during the whole Egypt escapade. The family was reunited once the Hebrews were on their way to The Promised Land.

While these ideas may be offensive to our modern (and/or Sunday School flannel graph) sensibilities, this was an age of polygamous relationships (for men #UghPatriarchy), so the idea that Moses had multiple wives should not be considered too scandalous. This idea wasn’t a problem over the centuries for such Jewish biblical luminaries as Josephus, Rashbam, and Moses Mendelson whose works all record some variation of the argument that Moses had at least two wives.

Okay fine. Maybe Moses had multiple wives like most of the patriarchs in the Bible. Maybe it’s even weird to think that he didn’t have multiple wives when, like everyone else did. But that doesn’t make this story about racism. I mean, God. You showed how this whole story is obviously about Miriam and Aaron’s attempted power grab-- them trying to usurp power from their younger brother who was God’s chosen. Why do you liberal snowflake progressive millennial tree-hugging Prius driving milksops always find yourselves triggered by everything except hummus and almond milk, and make everything about race? Maybe not everything is about racism. Some people are just jerks or are power hungry and that’s not about race. It just is, like, sin. People sometimes suck. I mean, yeah.

You done?

…

Okay. Let’s unpack the ideas in that word-salad. But that requires the definition of terms.

Racism Defined (Sociologically)

Racism

Racism is the system of privileges and advantages given members of a society based on their race. Members of a society, who are not a part of the preferred race, are disenfranchised from the aforementioned privileges and advantages, either in part or as a whole. Some refer to this a "structural racism," "institutionalized racism," "cultural racism," but they amount to the same thing.

In layman's terms: if you’re in the “good” race, you get a leg up in society. If you’re in the “bad” race, you get screwed.

Keywords: system, privileges, advantages, race.

prejudice

A mental bias or negative outlook a person holds against another person or group, based on perceived status or characteristics of that person or group (e.g. age, gender, ethnicity, nationality, race, sex, sexuality, socioeconomic status, etc.). This bias is not based on reason or empirical evidence: prejudices are beliefs held independently of the actual facts about a person or group. It is an attitude that, when enacted, leads to discrimination. Prejudice is not confined to the culturally dominant groups in a society: anyone can be prejudice. However, when the discrimination born from prejudice is codified into a system, it is often the culturally dominant who receive privileges and advantages (e.g. ageism, classism, racism, sexism).

In layman's terms: anyone can be a dick, but it's easier for some people than others. And dickitude can become the cultural norm in a society.

Keywords: in group bias, anyone, dicks

But I don’t like those definitions. That's not what I see when I do a quick Dogpile search online.

Whether you are comfortable with those def… wait. Why the hell are you still using Dogpile to do a search? You also rocking AskJeeves on your T-mobile Sidekick? Anyway, whether you are comfortable with these definitions is irrelevant. The meaning of words don’t change to suit your cultural preference in the midst of an argument, no more than a Bible verse will adapt to the sin you’re trying to justify. The sociologists and linguists who research and write about race and racism are no more swayed or impressed by your discomfort, than Paul or James would be with your Joel Osteen-eque prosperity gospel replacing their argument over salvation by faith or work. The experts are not confused about what words mean, but they are frustrated with the layperson’s determination to be right. Arguing that you didn’t read this in your online dictionary is like arguing with an astrophysicist about the definition of “gravity” you got in middle school. So once again: The experts /who write about this stuff for a living / don't care / that you don't like /their definitions, but feel free to click on any of those links to read what the experts say (Spoiler: they call "racism" a race-based system of privileges and advantages).

But while we're here, let's drill down on something, because it is important for when we return to Moses and his siblings.

If you live in a racist system,

and you are a member of the race that gains privileges and advantages from that system,

you gain privileges and advantages from that system.

No, that wasn't a typo. That's exactly what we meant to say. If you are given privileges and advantages, you are given privileges and advantages.

Stop pretending like you're not.

This applies internationally and it's not all about White people. The Japanese have a problem with racism, but it’s not about White people. A White person in Japan can’t be racist because the system is not set up to give them prime advantage. But White people in Japan can be prejudiced. Some argue that post-apartheid South Africa has a problem with racism, that the current system oppresses White people. This claim might be dubious, but we’ll let it stand for now. If this claim is true, a White person in South Africa can’t be racist because the system is no longer not set up to give them prime advantage. But they can be prejudiced. In Brazil, man that is a whole complicated mess, but still adheres to the definitions above. And hopefully you get the idea.

And since we need to say it, in the United States, the only people who can be racist are White. Everyone in the US can be prejudiced, but only White people can be racist.

So all White people in the US are racist?

You don't listen very well. No. It means that racism exists in the US and that White people benefit from the system. Once more for the cheap seats: You can benefit from racism even if you’re not personally racist.

While socioeconomics, education, gender, sexuality, sexual identity, family/friend connections, and a whole host of other demographic and contextual factors, as well as good/bad luck and divine intervention/meddling, impact every interaction in our lives, race matters too.

In the US, because the system favors it, a White person will get that job, obtain that house, be granted that permit, get out of that speeding ticket, be allowed to walk in and out of a Starbucks with a licensed AR-15 without getting shot by the cops, and be given the benefit of the doubt, more often than others who are not White. If you disagree, ask your non-White friends about it, but then keep your mouth closed while they take a deep-breath, get a far away look, and decide if they have the energy to have this conversation with you while sober.

And we’re going to cut you off before you start talking about “affirmative action” and “diversity initiatives” because 1) your understanding of those terms is probably woefully inaccurate (get out your Sidekick and do a very slow search for how many White people, esp. White women and White folk in rural areas, benefit from the programs you’re trying to tear down), and 2) the very existence of those ideas proves the point that racism exists. They are attempting to counteract a system of privilege and advantage that is largely based on race.

And we're going to shut you down before you start talking about "Black on Black crime," "White on White Crime," "All lives mattering," "Blue Lives mattering," "Chicago," or anything else that is really off topic. People can be evil to other people no matter their race. Yes. If you've read through at least the first 5 chapters of the Bible, you know that to be true. If you've turned on the news today, you know that to be true. Man's inhumanity to man is rampant. That's (in part) why Christians believe in the sacrificial and salvific work of God through Jesus the Christ. Yes. Everyone can hurt everyone else. Everyone can be prejudiced. Everyone can be a dick to other people and should work hard to stop being one.

But not everyone can be racist.

To be racist is to not only benefit passively from the system of PRIVILEGES and advantages, but to actively use those PRIVILEGES and advantages to oppress and further DISENFRANCHISE those who do not have them.

{deep breath}

Now, back to Miriam, Aaron, and their racism.

Why This Story is About Race

(And Why Ignoring the Racial Elements Shows There is Something in your life You Should really Pray About)

To recap, the Bible explicitly begins the story by saying that Moses was confronted by Miriam and Aaron about his wife, whoever she was, because she was a Cushite (or "Ethiopian," or "from the Sudan" depending on your translation), "for he had indeed married a Cushite woman." Serious readers of the text recognize that they cannot merely sidestep this language. In his translation of the text, the renowned Evertt Fox admits that, if this is referring to her as an Ethiopian, this is “clearly a racial slur.”

The mention of this woman's nationality focused on her "otherness," specifically her race, her color: In Biblical literature, Cushites (Ethiopians/Nubians) were knows for their darker skin (see Jeremiah 13:23).

Even if you argue that the text is ultimately an argument about who wields divine authority, just like our comments in "That time Jesus was Racist" we still have to wrestle with the manner in which Miriam and Aaron broached the subject with Moses. We can't ignore the words they used to start the conversation/confrontation.

One rabbinical reading is that, for some reason, Moses wasn't sleeping with his second wife (not Zipporah). According to this reading, in confronting him, Miriam was not speaking against the woman's "blackness," she was advocating for her: “If you’re not going to sleep with the woman, making her a full, honest wife, why the hell are you with her?!” To us, this reading stretches credibility.

A more popular reading (*cough* cop-out *cough*) is to assert that Miriam and Aaron's mentioning of this woman's race/color was a red herring: they were getting Moses off-kilter before diving into the real conversation about authority and power. By this reading, it wasn't that they were saying, "What gives?! You married a [fill in racial/ethnic slur] woman from outside of our race: how can you say that God only speaks through you when you make decisions like that?" Instead, we are supposed to believe, they were merely using racist rhetoric as a ploy, but they really didn't mean it. Those who subscribe to this interpretation/fantasy, also find an interesting explanation for God's initial silence: God knew that they weren't really being racist, so He didn't speak up when they sounded racist. God knew it was really about a power grab. So God waited and responded when they finally got around to issuing challenges to Moses’ power, and thereby God’s authority in choosing His own speaker.

We have three responses to this final argument.

1. Are you Serious right now?

No really? You said that out loud. With all the other options, you're going with that one?

2. No. Really: Are you Fucking serious right now?

How is saying,"You married a [fill in racial/ethnic slur] woman from outside of our race..." as a rhetorical tactic, as a way to gain political traction, a good outcome in your mind? How is that a better interpretation?

How is that less racist?

Okay. Try some of these out:

“No no. Chad's not racist! He just tells racist jokes sometimes. Don't be so over-sensitive.”

“Martha doesn’t have anything against racial minorities, she just doesn’t think they work very hard to get where they are. They're just not as qualified as other people. You know, "Affirmative Action" and all that.”

"Honey, your mother and I want you to have a diverse set of friends, but we forbid you from dating anyone from another race. We just don't want you to deal with all the intolerant people out there sweetheart. And think about what your children would have to go through being mulatto halfsies..."

“Look: just because he refuses to condemn the actions of the KKK, the alt-right, neo-nazis, think moving confederate statues to museums will result in a change in objective history, calls Mexicans rapists and murders, and refers to Africa and Haiti as "shithole countries" [even though Africa is a continent], does not make him a racist!"

Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks (you brood of vipers).

3. Look at Miriam's Punishment

Look at it. Look at Miriam. Look at her punishment

Look at her skin.

When the cloud went away from over the tent, Miriam had become leprous, as white as snow. And Aaron turned towards Miriam and saw that she was leprous. (Numbers 12:10)

Miriam singled out a woman for her darker skin. God punished her with skin so white and disgusting that Moses compares her to a premature, stillborn baby (Numbers 12:12). But this was only the first part of her punishment. For when Moses intercedes on her behalf:

...the Lord said to Moses, “If her father had but spit in her face, would she not bear her shame for seven days? Let her be shut out of the camp for seven days, and after that she may be brought in again.” So Miriam was shut out of the camp for seven days; and the people did not set out on the march until Miriam had been brought in again. (Numbers 12:14-15)

God, her father, "spits in her face" and sends her outside the camp, outside of her race of people. She is excluded from her own community, just as she would have excluded her darker sister-in-law.

And what about the challenge to Moses' authority? What? God can't kill two birds with one stone? Racism and an attempted coup all caught in one leprous cursing. Doubt this? Spend more time reading the Bible: the writers tend to show God doling out punishments that fit the crime in clever/creative ways. But also, put this in the context of Who we are talking about.

A God of Salvation Has No Time for Racist Bullshit

(And neither should you)

This is the God of the Hebrew Bible, the God of salvation, when “salvation” wasn’t about feel good spirituality, or the soul not spending an eternity in Hell. It was about physical and tangible trouble in the here and now. Hence the metaphors of God in the Bible: a shepherd fighting off actually lions, tigers, and bears (oh my). An ever-present help, pulling people out of pits dug by enemies with too much time on their hands. A warrior-king fighting alongside His servants, as arrows fly and swords clash. The God who brought His people out of bondage, out of slavery, in Egypt.

Think about that last one: think about where the people in this story JUST came from.

They JUST came out a slavery:

They JUST came out of a system of privilege and oppression, based on schemes of racial superiority and inferiority.

And since they JUST received the Law (Torah), God has JUST told them they will not perpetuate that system.

The Torah is full of prohibitions against treating those of other cultures, nations, and/or races poorly. We've written about this before, twice. But staying within our present book, Numbers 15:11-16 goes so far as to say that Jews and foreigners living among them are judged by the same law. That supposed outsiders, like this Cushite wife of Moses, participate in the most sacred rights of the people, standing in equality before God. Leviticus 19:33-34 gives the clearest picture of how God feels about all this.

When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.

Notice the two most prevalent reasons God gives for treating all of humanity with equity are

1) "because I am the LORD your God, and I said so!"

and

2) "because you were JUST treated like shit in Egypt!"

In layman's terms: YOU didn’t like racism, did you?

So don’t be racist.

Idiot.

(That almost sounds like, wait, how does that go? "Do onto others as you would have them" something something...)

Perhaps those social justice warrior snowflakes you sometimes mock are correct when they see the injustice of racism, even in a biblical narrative.

If you were offended by this post in some way, perhaps you should do some serious soul searching as to why.

Perhaps you need to acknowledge the advantages and privileges you hold based on your race, even if you aren't "rich," "male," "heterosexual," "educated," "upwardly socially mobile," "able-bodied/able-privileged," or any of the other demographic areas where you may feel real prejudice from another group. If you're White, and live in a country that favors White skin, you have a leg up. Acknowledge it.

Perhaps you should spend more time addressing the ways your actions, and your silence, perpetuate systems of inequity in our world, our country, our region, our cities, our communities.

If you go to a church that never talks about racism, prejudice, or injustice, perhaps you should start asking why: why the pulpit is silent and why you go to that church.

But what do we know: we made this game and you probably think we're going to Hell.

Linguistic Afterword/sidenote:

Numbers 12:1a reads:

וַתְּדַבֵּר מִרְיָם וְאַהֲרֹן בְּמֹשֶׁה = "And Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses"

The verb in this sentence is piel imperfect, feminine, second person, singular. For non-Hebrew nerds, this means in a nutshell, that the sentence seems to be signifying that only one speaker, who was female, addressed Moses.

This is noteworthy because some have used this linguistic oddity to explain why Aaron was not cursed alongside Miriam. Two schools of thought on the matter.

1. Aaron was a later addition to the story. In the original versions of the tale, only Miriam spoke out against Moses. Aaron was later added to the narrative, but the grammar was not changed.

2. The grammar was changed to screw over Miriam. In the original version of the story, both Miriam and Aaron were present in the confrontation of Moses. However, scribes changed the grammar to insinuate that the whole episode was Miriam's idea, so Aaron is really not to blame for going along with his big sister, and/or Aaron stood there silently, as Miriam was racist and power hungry.

#BiblicalFeminism #FoodForThought

P.S. And if you have to have a conversation with someone who is acting racist as hell, this is a useful resource

#Miriam #Racist #Racism #Moses #Aaron #Family Drama #Prejudice #Numbers 12 #Reality hurts #d

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ahsokalivesbitch · 6 years

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Are you for or against Jedi, even in spite of their mistakes?

Okay so I’m going to have to sincerely beg your pardon forbringing my own personal religion/spirituality into this discussion, but itabsolutely plays a role in how I view the Jedi, and the question of whether Ithink it’s important this saga have the Order eventually reestablished, orwhether it really and truly is ‘time for the Jedi to end’. I am in no waytrying to push my religion on anybody else, or even trying to coerce anybody toagree with me about the Jedi. This isall, 100%, just me expressing my own personal thoughts and observations. Iunderstand if others don’t agree with them.

Philosophically speaking, I am a very proud, you might even say ‘devout’,Christian. I’m also proudly bisexual,devoutly feminist, pro-gay and transgender rights, pro-abortion, anti-capitalist,and a lot of things certain people would have you believe is decidedly non-Christian.

In my own very personal study of religious philosophy, I don’t believethat my stance on any of the aforementioned issues is in any way incongruentwith the teachings of my Lord. In fact it’s the exact opposite for me: I amcompletely and irrevocably convinced that my God has always and will alwaysstand on the side of the marginalized and oppressed.

That’s not to say I’m unaware of the very real and veryproblematic ideas espoused by certain other figures in the Bible. Or the rolemany powerful religious institutions have and continue to play in upholdingoppressive attitudes rather than tearing them down. While I’ve never feltcompelled to give up my faith of choice, as I don’t blame God for humans whoexercise their free will to be shitbags, I’ve certainly wondered whether itwould be best for me to give up the title ‘Christian’ and all the baggage thattends to come with it. Rebrand myself as something else to better distancemyself from these ‘communities’ who dedicate themselves to things I cannot reconcilewith the God I know. And I know I’m not alone. Hell, even William P. Young,author of the bestselling novel “The Shack”, incorporated a very candidconversation into his book where Jesus bluntly asks the main character, “Do Ilook like a ‘Christian’ to you, Mack?” Honestly, that line hit home for me in a very real way.

But what has kept me from turning my back on the legacy ofChristianity altogether is the fact that my religion is not a monolith. Not all priests and pastors arebible-thumping, fire-and-brimstone-spewing judgmental monsters who want nothingmore than to put the fear of hell into you. Many if not most are very genuinein their desire to serve and help others, and I’ve had the fortune of connectingwith a number of them who not only welcome LGBTQ individuals like myself intotheir churches with open arms, but also proudly perform gay and lesbian weddings,rebuke discrimination and denial of women’s reproductive rights from theirpulpits, and advocate openly for gay and transgender rights.

On a more broader level, for centuries there have been innumerable churches around the world who devote countless time, money,and resources to feeding and clothing the poor, sheltering the homeless, providingresources to single mothers and orphans, providing sanctuary for hunted-down immigrantsand refugees, helping abandoned and abused animals. There also have and continue tobe MANY Christian minority groups (not just in America) who were able to drawupon the religion as inspiration to push back against their oppressors and succeed. There were thousands ofChristians present at the Women’s March, Black Lives Matter, and Muslim banprotests this past year alone.

On a very personal level—both times my sister was diagnosed withcancer, not a day went by when she didn’t receive a letter, phone call, goodiebasket, you name it, from one of her pastors or fellow parishioners. Wheresomebody didn’t offer to come and help her watch the kids, clean the house,cook her food, whatever she needed.

Two months ago I came to receive the very same response from myown Christian friends when my father was diagnosed with bladder cancer.

I’m in no way suggesting Christians deserve giant gold medals fromthe rest of the world for any of this. This, in my opinion, is just doing their fucking job. But these acts do matter, even in the shadow of all the horrible thingsother, more powerful institutions who use the Christian ™ label to advancetheir shitty causes perpetuate. Because they demonstrate that being a judgmental,small-minded, holier-than-thou hypocrite is not inherently some ‘consequence’ of what itmeans when you decide to become ‘Christian’. In fact the true purpose of thereligion always has been just theopposite.

So tying all of this into my view of the Jedi—it’s very hard toargue that, just from the stuff we’ve seen in the films/tv shows themselves,the Jedi Order didn’t operate under some pretty fucked-up ideals. Separatingchildren from their parents at infancy? Forbidding emotional attachment,marriage, a family of one’s own forever?That’s downright deplorable! And the canon itself frames how this directly leadto a number of people who couldn’t possiblyfit into such restrictive ‘ideals’ turning to the Dark Side of the Force,Anakin Skywalker himself being the most notable example. Based on all this, I understand entirely where certain peoplecome from when they think it might be better if Rey just dumps the mantle of ‘Jedi’altogether and starts an entirely new institution. Just like some days Iwish I could come up with a new way of framing my religious identity other than‘Christian’.

But here’s the thing—the Jedi also did a lot of things RIGHT. Theyespoused selflessness, serving the needs of the weak and helpless first, compassion, justice, therestoration of peace, fighting for the rights of those threatened by fascistideals, and using their abilities to defend others rather than gain any sort ofpower over them. You could also be literally ANY species or gender under the sun to be welcomed into their fold and climb high in their ranks. They pushed back ceaselessly against greedy, opportunist, discriminating and oppressive forces in all forms and fought and gave their lives to try and uphold aRepublic that, while arguably equally flawed, at least stood resolutely fordemocratic ideals and equality among all species.

One of the things I LOVED LOVED LOVED most about Luke’scharacter development over the course of the OT is that he recognizes where his masters’ old ways of interpreting the will ofthe Force failed, while not forgetting where he also very much succeeded in learning from them. Becauseyes, the training and encouragement he receives from Ben in ANH (however brief)was absolutely ESSENTIAL to his ability to “trust the Force” and ultimately destroythe first Death Star. In TESB, his journey with the Force continues to be strengthenedexponentially by Yoda’s insistence he must forget all the arbitrary limitations convention taught him to believe about himself.That moment in the swamps of Dagobah where Yoda lifts the X-Wing after Luke’sattempt failed is very powerful, because it is here that Luke FINALLY learns heneeds to stop doubting himself, dammit tosucceed.

But even in spite of all that, Luke never, not once capitulatesto his masters’ insistence that he have to let go of all emotional attachmentfor good to win the day. He knowsintrinsically this is wrong. And ultimately it is his refusal to adhere tothis faulty principal, to abandon his friends in their time of need or killVader even when not one but TWO of his masters tell him he must (one frombeyond the grave), that ultimately leads to the long-promised achievement ofBalance in the Force. “I am a Jedi—like myfather before me.” It’s a very multilayered statement because he’s not justsaying ‘I’m a Jedi like my Dad’. He’s also saying “Like my Dad, I’m a Jedi whoembraces unconditional love and attachment, even in the face of my destruction”.

Because he KNOWS the Old Jedi’s interpretation of this issuewasn’t just wrong, it was actually downright COUNTER to what the Light Side ofthe Force really stands for (again, it was his unwavering love for his fatherthat brought him BACK TO THE LIGHT). But he doesn’t throw the baby out with thebath water either! He had enough insight to understand (before Disney and RianJohnson screwed this up for UNFATHOMABLE reasons), the best way to proceed inthe Force is to build on all the goodthat the Jedi espoused and accomplished, while preening away all the bad elementsat the same damn time.

Because, when you come down to it, if every successive generationjust throws away everything the previous generations learned and accomplishedbecause of how muddied or imperfect their general approach was in retrospect, nothing gets built. No legacies stand. Invaluablelessons inevitably get lost along the way as we just dismiss all of ourancestors’ insights as ‘meaningless’. And ultimately what would happen isanything anyone would attempt to build would just get burned to the ground over and over again as every humaninstitution tries and fails to achieve perfection. That’s not how people themselves work. We don’t abandon everything we are every time we realizewe need a major shift in our world view. We build upon all that we’ve already learned and experienced throughout ourlives, keep the good while casting off all the toxic bullshit. So why shouldour institutions be in any way different?

So yes, I am very much pro-Jedi, in spite of their many, many egregious mistakes. In fact(and this was actually a very good message that would have been SO MUCH BETTER COMMUNICATEDhad it not been delivered in the context of Luke’s shitty character retrograde)I DO believe failure is an invaluable teacher and absolutely 100% necessary ifany institution or humanity as a whole is to grow and improve on what camebefore. What I WANTED to see Luke achieve, but hopefully we’ll see through Rey,is a Jedi Order that, while probably never ‘perfect’, learns how to balancelove, family, and attachment while never abandoning the virtues of selflessnessand commitment to justice, compassion, and equality the Jedi always dedicatedthemselves to. There’s a beautiful legacyalongside all the fuckery there and, imo, it doesn’t deserve to be burned away alongwith all of the bad.

#rochester-born #the jedi #anti tlj #christianity #religious issues

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marymosley · 4 years

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NoFundThem: Conservative Commentator’s Fundraising Blocked Over Floyd Criticism

I previously wrote a column about the rising calls by Democratic leaders and activists for different forms of public and private censorship. Indeed, the recent extreme demands and controversy at the New York Times shows how speech controls have been a virtual article of faith for many. Twitter’s actions against Trump tweets are another example of the inconsistent use of such controls. Now GoFundMe has taken it upon itself to censor causes that it views as offensive in closing down a fundraiser by conservative political commentator Candace Owens in support of an Alabama cafe whose co-owner criticized the George Floyd protests. The question again is not whether we agree with such sentiments but the free speech implications of these forms of private censorship. Rather than respond to such controversial statements, critics today focus on silencing the speakers or barring their views or causes to be heard by others. What is interesting is that, by abandoning neutrality, GoFundMe is now affirming that it does regulate content and will face demands for more such action. That could undermine the position of these companies against the loss of immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

Birmingham’s Parkside Cafe, whose co-owner Michael Dykes said Floyd was a “thug” and protesters were “idiots” in a text message to a co-worker that was posted online. The comments in my view were offensive and inflammatory but they are not my views. Dykes was expressing his personal view and the result is that he was given death threats and the cafe boycotted.

Owens, who is African American, shared the views of Dykes. She has also been criticized for statement like this one:

“The fact that he has been held up as a martyr sickens me. George Floyd was not a good person, I don’t care who wants to spin that. I don’t care how CNN wants to make you think he changed his life around, He was just after his sixth or fifth stint in prison.”

On Sunday, Owens disclosed that her campaign to support Dykes’ cafe was suspended by GoFundMe after the company found her fundraiser “to be in support of hate, violence, harassment, bullying, discrimination, terrorism, or intolerance of any kind.”

Candace Owens

@RealCandaceO

After raising $205,000 in a few hours @gofundme decided to halt my campaign for the Parkside Cafe in Alabama. At their discretion, they deemed that funds raised for a conservative business constitutes “intolerance” They WILL however give the funds raised thus far to the cafe…

38.6K

8:44 AM – Jun 7, 2020

Twitter Ads info and privacy

Owens ironically on Twitter:

“Guess my message to little kids would be for them not to idolize men that: Get high on fentanyl, get high on meth, use counterfeit bills, shove guns into the stomaches of pregnant women while robbing them, go to prison 5 times. What a truly horrible message I carry.”

Candace Owens

@RealCandaceO

Guess my message to little kids would be for them not to idolize men that:

Get high on fentanyl Get high on meth Use counterfeit bills Shove guns into the stomaches of pregnant women while robbing them Go to prison 5 times

What a truly horrible message I carry. https://twitter.com/comediantmoney/status/1269664318833885185 …

Tarrell Wright

@ComedianTmoney

Replying to @RealCandaceO

Fuck 2016 what are you teaching little kids who have to listen to you bring up a dead man’s past. Are you teaching them to not care about people who have less them they do? Fuck 2016 fix your slip its showing. You should flip flop again because you look really bad.

33.1K

1:14 PM – Jun 7, 2020

Twitter Ads info and privacy

Again, my interest is not in the content of these comments but the role of previously neutral forums to engage in content based private censorship. Both the owner and Owens were expressing their views of Floyd. Many other have expressed equally controversial opinions about police officers, Trump, and others. Will they all be now banned from raising charitable donations?

The immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is based on the theory that these sites are not responsible for content. Courts have interpreted the provision to give sweeping immunity for companies like Twitter and Facebook because they simply supply a forum for others to express themselves. These cites are now actively engaged in forms of private censorship.

As many on this blog will attest, I take a simple approach to free speech. The solution to any bad speech is good speech, not silencing of those with whom you disagree. I would take the same position with shutting down voices on the left as with the right. GoFundMe is a forum for people to express themselves through fundraising. It, like Twitter, is an important place for people to engage in free speech and association. I do not see why that mission is not enough. GoFundMe does not have to endorse such causes to allow people to gather at its site. Now however there will be additional claims made by those who want to silence people with opposing views. GoFundMe has invited such demands by engaging in content-based regulation.

NoFundThem: Conservative Commentator’s Fundraising Blocked Over Floyd Criticism published first on https://immigrationlawyerto.tumblr.com/

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reginasrandomthoughts · 6 years

Text

So when I finished reading chapter 4 (”Survival”) of A History of the World in 10 and a half chapters I knew that that was pretty much the end of the progress I made today with my reading list. For one, I have stuff to say about and for two, I have other stuff and exams to prepare for. (Hey, ho! Icons on Film essay, I am so not happy to see you)

So, I usually ramble on for myself and I have no structure to anything at all, so here I will try something different, and just write small reminders for me about each element or theme. Or will try. I know me and I have no illusions left.

I think that it is only fitting to start with the reindeer since that is what the story starts with. The reindeer that had premonition on Noah’s Ark and tried to run away from man, who will bring that bad thing on. The reindeer and animal cruelty.

Animal cruelty, animals paying for man’s sin is an established theme at this point and here it is very explicit: the Soviets exploded a nuclear bomb over Siberia and the radioactivity poisoned the food the reindeer ate and that poisoned the reindeer. But what humans cared about was that they could not eat its meat anymore. Since it became inedible for humans and they did not want to bury it, they fed it to an animal they thought unpleasant: the mink. This is how the story presents it. The mink of course gets slaughtered for its fur to make coats out of it and it still gets to humans, but the kind who would wear that coat presumably does not care about the radioactivity.

Another point of animal cruelty is the cats. Her boyfriend, Greg argues that they need to neuter Paul, the cat because he is too aggressive. Kath (whose name’s similarity to the word cat probably is not a coincidence) wholeheartedly disagrees. She thinks that mutilating an animal is a sin. ( I kinda agree with her on this. As a fellow owner of a male cat). But Greg is not the only one who is cruel to animals to fit his needs: in one version of the story Kath picks up another cat, Linda and keeps them on a boat with her and nearly starves them to death bc she is ignoring reality.

Now, here is a quote from p87:

“Burying things gives you a proper sense of shame. Look what we’ve done to the reindeer, they’d say as hey dug the pit. Or they might, at least. They might think about it. Why are we always punishing animals? We pretend to like them, keep them as pets and get soppy if we think they’re reacting like us, but we’ve been punishing animals from the beginning, haven’t we? Killing them and torturing them and throwing our guilt at them?”

For Kath this is purely a reference to the reindeer and what the government did to them. But she also connects to it through bringing in another topic, the inability to face reality and projecting. Out of Kath’s two alternative storylines she is torturing her animals: she disregards reality and does not notice that she is hurting them, argues that she is doing something good for them, feeding them fish (that she has no problem killing) but in reality she is starving them. An argument for this timeline can be made by her first claim that she feeds fish only to the cats while she eats canned food. She does not eat fish, because there is no fish to be eaten and reverts to eating the hallucination when she runs out of real food. In the alternative story, Kath’s reality, she is projecting her guilt on them, regardless of how real that version is. She is saying that she left everything behind to save them, as a modern Noah, she acts like protecting them will make her life better and wash the human sin off of her. And in case she is starving them, she projects her guilt onto them via the illusion: she feels guilty so she pretends they are getting fatter rather than thinner.

Since both the upper mentioned topics are still very big and interconnected let’s tackle two smaller ones first discrimination and abuse (and Kath).

Discrimination is going to be the easiest to start with, because I already talked about it. It is a major theme of the book. So far we have seen humans discriminating between animal species (ch1), humans discriminating between human nationalities (ch2), humans discriminating between species (human and animal in ch3) and now we see humans discriminate between genders. Kath and Greg, I am sorry to say, are both sexist: Greg thinks Kath is stupid and doesn’t get what the men are talking about because she is a woman. He degrades her by calling her a cow, he figuratively lowers her to the level of an animal, to something less than human. Kath, in turn views all men as irredeemable. All the man must be like Greg because to Kath Greg is the “typical bloke” and since he is an abusive jackass, the antagonist of her life, all men must be villains as well.

And Greg is abusive. He slaps Kath around, he degrades her, he belittles her. Yet Kath says that this is typical. Ordinary:

“Greg was an ordinary bloke. Not that I wanted anything different when I met him he went to work, came home, sat down, drank beer, went out with his mates and drank more beer, sometimes slapped me around a bit on pay-night. We got on fair enough.”

To Kath, him hitting her, a man hitting a woman is ordinary. Just part of the package. She was not looking for anything else. She oddly enough draws a direct connection between him hitting her and them getting on well by putting the two sentences next to each other. And from the hospital storyline (I am calling it that) we learn that that is, indeed, the case: Kath was looking for someone just like Greg, someone abusive, that she has a history with dating men like that, that she has Persistent Victim Syndrome. Now, in one timeline this is bollocks. In the other Kath is ignoring reality, really hard: she ignores that Greg being abusive is not okay, she ignores her dating history, she ignores the break-up. In this timeline there is no war, there is just one big fight, a bad break-up, the fall-out, and a post-Greg timeline, where kath is pushed to the breaking point and reality starts to slip because of all the stress and abuse of her life, and perhaps a natural tendency to ignore reality.

Kath has a tendency to ignore reality. She believes that reindeer can fly just so she can believe that anything is possible. Her faith in that is unshakable. She is a sensitive, deeply empathetic woman who is easily touche by the suffering of animals and is attuned to the stress and dangers of her time. She has a tendency to cling to the unreal even in the face of evidence to the contrary and she may or may not be going insane.

As a throwaway, I found it interesting that her name is Ferris. The first associations from that, for me, are ferris wheel, something that is just going round and round in circles, and ferryboat and ferry as in carry something. With these associations Kathleen Ferris fits into the theme about Noah and his animals: she like Noah gets on a boat to carry her animals to safety, but in the hospital timeline she ends up delusional and going in a circle, like a ferris wheel and, as she points out, humanity. In her-reality timeline, she insists that she is starting over again, and if that is the case she is starting again from the beginning, her being the new Noah, but purely for cats. Also in the hospital timeline, she herself becomes the ferryboat, carrying these ideas in her own head taking them away from reality, that has become uninhabitable for her. She says she does not look at the way she came because she does not intend to go back and in the end she makes up her mind to accept the her-reality to be the real reality.

Now as the finale let’s talk about the two timeline of events and how ignoring reality and projecting comes into play. There are two possible timelines:

In the hospital timeline Kath breaks up with Greg and that combined with the stress of a looming nuclear war makes her snap and she becomes delusional, believing that the war did broke out and that she needs to get her cat, and the other cat she randomly picked up, away from the war. She gets stuck on a boat where she goes around in circles while her cats starve. She becomes ill and tears her hair out but gets rescued and has lucid moments in the hospital that she interprets as a hallucination until she finally retreats into her make-believe world.

The other timeline, the her-reality is where everything is as Kath says: the war breaks out she grabs the cats, gets onto the boat, feeds them fish, gets sick from the whatever poison got into the air, finds an island where her cat Linda gives birth to the kitten of her other cat, Paul.

Now, me being a born pessimist, I lean towards the hospital timeline. But I guess each to their own? I guess. Anyway, what we are talking about is themes and not definitive answers. The Theme of ignoring reality play a part in both of those and roughly the same way.

In the hospital timeline Kath ignores reality from the point onwards when she broke up with Greg, so everything after that is just her blocking out reality. To her a fictional reality where she can step away from the complicated human society that has so many stress-inducing problems is appealing even at the cost of having the new reality that probably most people are dead now and the air is poison. This post-apocalyptic fantasy is escapism, escape from humanity, its sins, its problems. And Kath can escape from her own life and own choices as well: the choice to date Greg, the break up, everything. And because she retreats from reality she has to project her own into its place: her reality.

Her reality is that humans are ignoring the signs (we are) and that it has gotten t a point where the nuclear war broke out without anyone noticing. They are ignoring the reality to project a peace and to push the responsibility to solve the problem onto someone else. Now, in this line of events the flashes from the hospital-timeline are the delusions: they are Kath’s struggle to let go of the old world, to fight against escaping into a fantasy land where all of this is just a bad dream and she is just sick but will get better.

So from the perspective of the themes it really doesn’t matter which timeline is correct.

#Regina shitposts literature #getting better at it? idk but i hope so #i hereby declare these posts my daily writing practice that are here to get me to write more #next step is to write when i am not dead tired and can actually think #the history of the world in ten and a half chapters

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muslimmommyusa-blog · 7 years

Text

REVERT Series: Sister Keyla-After Surviving a Traumatic Past as a Child, Struggled with Faith & Identity, Allah Brought Her to Islam

Asalamu Alaikum,

My name is Keyla, I am a twenty-five year old American-Latina woman, and this is my conversion story.

I grew up in Long Island, New York where there are not very many Muslims. If there are, they have completely assimilated into the western culture.

The only reference I ever heard about Muslims was when the 9/11 attacks happened. I remember being sent home from elementary school. I had no idea what the fuss was about, and I've never heard of the Twin Towers.

I just knew something big was happening in the world.

Those attacks made the Western world fear terrorist, which they associated only with Muslims and Islam. I may have not been educated enough to understand what was going on in politics, but I did understand that no religion promoted hatred.

“A bad person, is a bad person”.

Religion in my family was never enforced. My parents believed in the Bible, and they were raised with Roman Catholic beliefs, but we never really attended church.

We celebrated Christmas, which was more about who got the best gifts from the 'Big Guy'.

Since baptism and the first communion was important in my culture, I had to participate. And everyone in my family would've asked why we didn't do it, if we didn't. We were going through the motions, and never for religious reasons.

Growing up as a teen, I struggled with faith and identity. I wasn’t a terrible kid, but I never really had a good relationship with my mother, which affected me as a person. But that’s another story in itself.

At the age of eight, I experienced something no child ever should.

I was sexually abused by a close relative. Then after, my voice was silenced by the parent - who was my baby sitter - of my rapist. My complaints were swept under the rug.

The only person I confided with was my sister, because she was also sexually abused. These types of situations are prevalent, hidden and are never discussed within my culture. There are many girls who fall through the crack, simply because no one knew, and no one listened.

After my abuse, I acted out. I was hurt. Angry. I needed a way to heal. But I was not the 'terrible' child my family labeled me as.

I was troubled. In pain. Suffering.

I cut class, smoked cigarettes, lashed out in anger, ran away, and disobeyed my parents. It took me a while to find solace. Forgiveness. That what happened to me was not my fault.

I know now those weren’t the best ways to handle pain. But through those lash outs, I still managed to get good grades and be the first person in my family to graduate High School.

Consequently, I found myself wandering into a church when I ran away from home. But I never felt complete. Something was still missing inside. I didn’t feel that genuine connection with God.

Part of it had to do with the uncomfortable feelings I got from the stares people gave me.

They would size me up and down, check out how I was dressed. And if you were five minutes late, even when you were quiet coming in, those people would turn around like it was the end of the world. Their eyes were always judging you.

I started having doubts toward Catholicism because there were many different interpretations of the Holy Bible, and each one claimed to be the 'correct' version. I did not want my life to be guided through someone else’s interpretations that has been translated to manipulate thoughts, not facts.

Why was I worshipping an object? A cross for that matter? These idols believed to be Jesus, peace and blessing be upon him.

When I prayed, I didn’t actually know any Catholic verses, I just spoke to God, as if He was in front of me, sub han Allah.

Whenever I was in prayer, I did not pray to Jesus as God. In my heart, I believed Jesus was not and could not be the 'son of God,' but was a prophet - such as Abraham and Moses, peace and blessings be upon them.

Sub han Allah, I was Muslim without even knowing it!

My early twenties was unfavorable. I partied too hard, and drank too much with no worries. Though it was a type of release from my stress, I wasn’t happy inside. I searched for love in unhealthy situations, and made irrational decisions.

I was consumed by depression, and sunk into the sad reality of my emotions. Nothing in my life was going the way I wanted it to go, and I was lost. The same eight year old 'self' I thought was gone, came back.

My sister told me to look for help. She urged me to go to church or speak to a counselor. I told her I never received any benefit from going to church, and decided to look elsewhere for guidance.

I knew the life I was living was disruptive to my future.

I met a man from Yemen later, and we became very good friends. We got along and dated for a little while, but we had a 'falling out,' so we broke it off.

One day I found myself lost and locked up in my room. While I was in there, I suddenly received a text from the Yemeni brother, asking me if I was okay, and if he could talk to me. He called me after a few minutes later.

From my tone of my voice, he knew I needed help. I told him I was searching for something. Before I could finish my sentence, he stopped me and said "I am going to send you a book. I want you to read it in it’s entirety, and I promise you will feel so much better." It was the best gift I received in my life.

The Qur'an.

I didn’t know what I was going to find in it, but in my heart I felt this is what I always needed. I started watching lectures on the internet from different scholars. I happened to stumble on and watched an animated movie of our beloved Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessing be upon him.

Tears were flowing from my eyes. There was never more clarity than in what I learned within the pages of the Qur'an. I even read everything I grew up learning in Cathacism!

It was as if my soul was enlightened.

I took my Shahada in the summer of 2014, and alhamdulillah. Allah guides who he wills, because the person who helped me recite my shahada is the person I am married to today - the brother from Yemen.

After more research, I learned that there is one interpretation of the Quran left that existed - la ilaha illa Allah; Muhammadur Rasul Allah! - which strengthens my belief in Islam even more.

Sub han allah, the doors of clarity were opening for me. I was able to memorize Surat Al-Faatiha in Arabic just a month after my conversion. I was excited to have accepted Islam.

Coming out to my family in the summer of 2014 about my conversion was not as bad as I thought.

I eased them into it slowly, and didn’t want them to think this was just another phase in my life. They were all happy that I finally found something that will straighten me out, and give me a sense of guidance that I couldn’t really get from my parents.

The biggest give away that I became Muslim was when they fed me pork, and I didn’t know. I immediately ran to the bathroom and started washing my mouth out profusely!

The second sign of my reversion, was turning down alcoholic drinks from my family - Dominicans are known to be huge partiers and drinkers! My wardrobe was another obvious 'tell.'

I took Islamic courses in college, which covered politics and geography. It wasn’t until the middle of class semester that I told myself I wanted to observe the hijab outside my prayers. But I was afraid of what people may say.

It was my sister who convinced me that it was going to be okay, reassuring me that this is for my self, not for anyone else. So the next day I wore my hijab, and became late for class.

It felt like church again with those stares! Awkwardly, I felt my classmates thought I was a new girl, until the professor pointed me out! What's more, alhamdulliah I met other Muslims in that class.

It was a blessing from Allah!

Two years later, I decided to get married for love - to my Yemeni friend, and now my husband. Although, culturally it is hard for us to be accepted in his family, we are still managing to live only by our deen.

He is truly amazing. He met me at my worst, and he helped through my healing process. I met his sisters and they welcomed me into the family.

They showed me how to put the hijab on the correct way, and started wearing formal abayas every day. I finally have a chance to build a family I always wanted to grow up with - with the love, peace, and strong values Islam teaches.

I’m not going to say everything has been all 'daisies.' Of course, with all the wars going on I have faced my own share of discrimination from ignorant people, especially within the workplace.

I know it’s all a test, and “sabr” [patience] is what I need most to move forward with our future.

Furthermore, the knowledge that my life is within Allah's will, washes all of my worries away.

Asalam alaikum wa rahmatullah wa barakatu.

#convert #islam #muslimah #identity

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