#and 'articulating the difficult love we often had trouble expressing ourselves'

[cuntylestat]

The touring production of “Don Pasquale” was a cheap affair, but the soprano was everything Lestat said she would be.

[dirchristophernolan]

The touring production of "Don Pasquale" was a cheap affair, but the soprano was everything Lestat said she would be. And music, that was where Lestat separated man from food. Music pierced his damned soul. And any humans who were involved with the creation of it existed on an elevated plane in his eyes. I was moved to see he too had his human attachments. And this woman sang for us, it seemed, articulating the difficult love we often had trouble expressing ourselves.

Favorite moments from Interview with the Vampire (AMC) | [ 4 / ∞ ]

[divinehumanism-blog]

Without Eugene England, I Probably Wouldn’t Attend Church

Reflections on the Growth-Promoting Gifts of Paradox

First, A Confession

Let me begin with a confession: I often don’t like going to church. I find the experience incredibly taxing, exacerbating, and just plain boring. Rarely am I uplifted. Frequently am I peeved. Paradoxically, and interestingly, I also find going to church one of the most redemptive experiences I am trying to learn to love. It is very difficult for me to articulate the origin, nature, and depth of this love-angst relationship. And to be honest, if I wasn’t aware of who Eugene England was, I probably wouldn’t appreciate the discipline of community that comprises church-going, nor respect its attendant paradoxes. Put differently,without Eugene England, I probably wouldn’t attend church.

This loaded, semi-provocative thesis needs unpacking before it’ll make sense to orthodox ears. Let me drill down a bit.

In 1986, Eugene England, a faithful, critical Latter-day Saint scholar, wrote a game-changing essay entitled, “Why the Church is as True as the Gospel.” Personally, this essay has had a huge influence on me and my relationship with the institutional Church. It has carried me through difficult times in my discipleship, given me a lot of hope, beauty and pragmatic bearing, and has provided invaluable perspective on how “not only to endure but to go on loving what [is] unlovable.” In short, it is an essay that I think all Latter-day Saints should read and become familiar with.

The Power of Paradox: The Gospel and the Church

Much of England’s treatment of effective church-going meditates heavily on the power of paradox. Joseph Smith referred to the concept of paradox when he stated that “by proving contraries, truth is made manifest.” Half a century earlier, the poet William Blake had similarly observed, “Without contraries there is no progression.” Contraries, or oppositions, give energy, force and meaning to virtually everything.

Think about it.

The art you see in a theater, a museum, or historic site has risen from the tension of human conflict and opposition. Economic, political and social enterprises have and continue to emerge from competition and dialogue. Human life itself grows out of pain and controversy. Galaxies form spectacularly amid swirls of chaos and explosion.

The gospels, too, are awash with many paradoxical statements:

To be rich you must be poor. To be comforted you must mourn. To be exalted you must be humble. To be found you must be lost. To find your life you must lose it. To see the kingdom you must be persecuted. To be great you must serve. To gain all you must give up all. To live you must die.

Paradoxes, contraries, or oppositions can sometimes tempt us to think that two conflicting propositions will always be incompatible. Yet, it is often when we sacrifice traditional concepts and change our frame of reference that rival statements of paradox suddenly appear compatible.

A paradox, in other words, is not antithetical to the pursuit of truth, but in fact the very definition of it. In his acclaimed essay, “The Institutional Church and the Individual,” Bonner Ritchie stressed the importance of this pursuit: “By confronting the contradictory constraints of a system and pushing them to the limit, we develop the discipline and strength to function for ourselves. By confronting the process, by learning, by mastering, we rise above.”

“It must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things” is thus a profound statement of abstract theology in our scriptures that describes how vital paradox is to the development of all living things.

From the perspective of paradox, England is armed to build a persuasive case for why the Church (the Work) is as true as the Gospel (the Plan). Upon first blush, this rings like a weighty contradiction that just can’t be. The principles of the Gospel are pure and ideal, we say, but the workings and people of the Church are weak and imperfect. As Hugh Nibley once recognized, “The Plan looks to the eternities and must necessarily be perfect; but the Work is right here and is anything but the finished product.” We seem to envision the Gospel as a “perfect system of revealed commandments based on principles which infallibly express the natural laws of the universe,” says England, but in reality all we have is merely our current best understanding of these principles, which is invariably limited and imperfect. Such an unwieldy divine-human paradox seems to put us in a spiritual straightjacket.

In what world can the Church and the Gospel be as “true” as each other?

Consider first how England uses the word “true.” He’s not bearing down any sort of indexical relationship nor conflating the two with some grammatical set of historical, empirical, or metaphysical propositions. His approach is much more pragmatic and existential in nature. What he means is that the “Church is as true — as effective — as the gospel” because it is precisely the place where we are given a genuine and participating feel to practice the Gospel in specific, tangible ways. “The Church,” he says, “involves us directly in proving contraries, working constructively with the oppositions within ourselves and especially between people, struggling with paradoxes and polarities at an experiential level that can redeem us.”

Callings, for example, draw us into a very practical, specific, sacrificial relationship with others. We learn firsthand how exasperating people can be, how demanding and nagging human diversity often is. Paradoxically, when we work with, serve, and are taught by those who differ from and sometimes frustrate us, we allow ourselves room to become more open, vulnerable, gracious, and willing. When we grapple with real problems and work towards practical solutions with those we serve, we are pushed “toward new kinds of being in a way we most deeply want and need to be pushed.”

The “truthfulness” of the Church thus lies in its ability to effectively concretize the principles of the Gospel, bring them down to earth, down into our bodies, our hearts and minds, giving them corporeal form, thereby allowing imperfect agents to painfully develop divine gifts. And the better any church or organization is at drawing out these gifts, the “truer” it is.

Remember this point: “truth” from England’s perspective gains its meaning in relation to the quality of life, or being, it inspires.

England’s argument follows the late eighteenth century existential tradition of how our pursuit of truth must exist in relation to a more pressing concern than mere historical, metaphysical or scientific claims. Truth must lead us to a certain quality of life and quality of character —what philosophers and theologians have long since called “the good life.” Truth must bear down on the particular, not the general; the concrete, not the abstract. England isn’t elevating one over the other per se. He’s merely exposing the myth that the Gospel (the general) can somehow be salvifically divorced from the Church (the particular), as if pretending that sheer academic knowledge alone, and with it the freedom from dealing with the querulous, niggling life-pulse of a congregation, were sufficient for redemption.

This paradigm, he contends, is misguided.

Abstract and Practical Gospel Living

There are many principles of the Gospel that are conflicting and paradoxical and can’t be effectively lived in the abstract. They must instead be faithfully embodied for them to prove redemptive. Agency and obedience, for example. These two foundational principles are in dynamic tension with another, creating a critical paradox in the Church for how we work with others who may offend us or exercise unrighteous dominion. If God’s anointed leader makes a decision without inspiration, are we bound to sustain that decision? The friction created between obedience to authority and obedience to agentive conscience sparks the creative energy “we need to allow divine power to enter our lives in transforming ways.”

These moments of friction call us to walk an authentic path carved out between two easier paths of blind obedience and blanket rejection. They reveal the truth of how to act and not merely be acted upon.

England continues: “It is precisely in the struggle to be obedient while maintaining integrity, to have faith while being true to reason and evidence, to serve and love in the face of imperfections, even offenses, that we can gain the humility we need [to] …literally bring together the divine [the Gospel] and the human [the Church].”

The confession I began with is a good example of the tension I feel each Sunday while wrestling with these principles in the pews. I’ve attended many wards throughout my life, each replete with a common brand of middlebrow, prejudiced, intellectually unsophisticated types whose opinions I oftentimes vehemently disagree with. I’ve struggled endlessly with socially scripted class discussions, platitudinal public prayer, legalistic watchdogs, and those who proof-text the scriptures to support some idolatrous claim. The people in the Church, to put it mildly, have exasperated me to no end. And it is these very “exasperations, troubles, sacrifices [and] disappointments” that characterize my experience at church that England says “are especially difficult for idealistic liberals to endure.”

But herein lies the power of his thesis: it is precisely in our exasperations with other people at church — those who sometimes piss us off — where we are invited to enter a “school of love,” one that enables us to painfully grow in Christ-like character by “loving what [is] unlovable.”

How might this work?

Not many people I imagine willingly choose to build relationships with those whom they have very little in common with, or who have vastly different temperaments. Paradoxically, when we struggle to serve people we normally would not choose to serve (or possibly even associate with) we enter into a very specific, sacrificial relationship with them that allows us to exercise divine muscles that otherwise may have remained dormant. To accept this challenge, to enter this school, is to potentially become “powerfully open, empathetic, vulnerable people, able to understand, serve, learn from, and be trusted by people very different from [ourselves].”

By entering this school of contraries, we give birth to divinely needed gifts such as patience, compassion, mercy and forgiveness.

These gifts are forged in the furnace of paradox.

Terryl and Fiona Givens have also rightly backed the paradoxes at play in England’s thesis. Sometimes we “imagine a religious life encumbered by fallible human agents, institutional forms, rules and prohibitions, cultural group-think and expected conformity to norms.” Sometimes we “insist on imposing a higher standard on our co-worshippers” by wishing that their prejudices and blind spots did not inflame us. We wish others could simply think about the Gospel like we do. Practice it like we do. Yet when we “submit to the hard schooling of love” the Church offers, we’re able to experience wards and stakes that “function as laboratories and practicums where we discover that we love God by learning to love each other.”

The Church’s perceived weaknesses, paradoxically, are thus actually its greatest strengths.

Each imperfect encounter we experience at church will no doubt stretch and wear down on us, and yet if endured with the right attitude, can act as the very experience, the very gift, needed to become more Christ-like.

If this sounds too sentimental, too lofty, if we would prefer instead our worship services to constantly align with what “we get out” of a meeting, we may be missing the point. England argues, “If we constantly ask “What has the Church done for me?” we will not think to ask the much more important question, “What am I doing with the opportunities for service and self-challenge the Church provides me?” If we constantly approach the Church as consumers, we will never partake of its sweet and filling fruit. Only if we can lose our lives in church and other service will we find ourselves.”

It is a fairly easy exercise to analyze these principles from afar, criticize and make stupid those whose opinions we don’t share. Sometimes we remain too bookish, academic, or idealistic, with little hands-on involvement for the ongoing life of faith. If knowledge and books and abstract learning is where we tap real meaning, and have not charity, the principles we claim to admire so much will have the hollow, disembodied ring of “sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.” We will not know the character-transforming truths that the Church means to imbue us with. It is only when we step into the arena with others, play the game, tussle with their ideas, wishes, and misinformed biases, and try to give constructive answers, that we come to slowly learn the truth of the child-like phrase, “I know the Church is true.”

Or rather: I know the Church is an effective vehicle for divine endowment, despite of, even because of, its very real and imperfect people.

And here is Mormonism asking us to do just that:

Step into the imperfect arena. Wrestle with our leaders. Create an embodied relationship with others. Maintain individual integrity in the face of pressures to obey and conform. Patiently serve those who irritate, bruise, thwart and offend. Love obedience and agency — learn not to resolve their tensions in favor of one conflicting set over the other. Rather, learn to transcend them in our own customized ways while still remaining true to ourselves and our community. Remember, it is not about blind obedience or wholesale rejection. It is about walking the harder path carved out between the paradox. In doing so, we develop divine character in creative ways that no abstract system of ideas (uncoupled from service) could ever produce.

By acting within the zone of this paradox, balancing our individual conscience while serving others and sustaining church leaders, we open doors to prove contraries and encounter truth in tactile ways.

But Really, How Necessary is Church?

Can we not find a framework for practicing divine gifts such as mercy, humility, patience, and service in any number of settings? Of course we can. The Church has not cornered the market on what it means to be a good person nor to practice goodness. All faiths and secular walks of life can be receptive to the larger world of truth and beauty and moral goodness.

Ok, but if the Church doesn’t provide unique opportunities for spiritual practice that can’t be obtained elsewhere, why go at all?

When England takes a hard, all-or-nothing line on this question by evoking the traditional, orthodox answer that the Church has the authority to perform essential saving ordinances, his response is less than satisfying. However, there’s another approach that hides in the margins of his thought that better articulates why church-going (or some semblance of formalized community) can be a powerful boon for developing divine gifts.

To start, we might ask:

How often are most people sufficiently finding ways of their own efforts to love those they would normally not choose to love? And what value could there be in loving those we might consider as enemies?

One way to approach these questions is to consider the kinds of people we normally choose to associate with: If, for example, we choose only to surround ourselves with like-minded souls, people who think, feel, share and welcome our commitments, praise our ideas, flower our egos, what reward do we have? If we salute only those who salute us, if we love only those who love us, what good does hearing what we want to hear and having others confirm what we think we already know do for us? In truth, such groupishness is thoughtlessness. It remains too cloistered. Too bubbled. It runs the risk of creating an in-group echo chamber that appraises the status quo while at the same time teaching us to demonize those who disagree.

Admittedly, it is often in the nature of religious institutions to homogenize disparities and command conformity.

We might ask, but isn’t church just some big, sequestered parrot hall where everyone thinks the same, talks the same, gives unfettered assent to the same basic truth claims? Loyalty to an organization of course can and should be a very positive force, but it can also be a careless excuse to unload responsibility for our spiritual lives onto another. Bonner Ritchie has persuasively framed the dangers involved. Loyalty bent on unthinking conformity, he says, can be “a force which victimizes the individual, who feels freed from the burden of moral choice…We cannot allow the dictates of anyone to relieve the burden, pain, or growth that goes with individual responsibility.”

Indeed, religious institutions are enmeshed in shared networks of meaning and moral matrices that tend to lean towards conservative groupthink, sometimes to the point of giving off the appearance of complete doctrinal uniformity and a fierce, hive-minded group homogeny.

Such tendencies and appearances do not yield optimal religion.

We need the wisdom that is to be found scattered among diverse kinds of people, those who can pull us out of the status quo and be willing to create the dynamic tension needed to constructively fight the overbearing cultural orthodoxy. We need people in our congregations who revel in distinctions, variations, and differences, even those we’d deem as enemies — those we would normally not choose to associate with or love.

As Adam Miller contends, our love of people must be fearless, “marked by [our] confidence that every truth can be thought again — indeed, must be thought again — from the position of the enemy.”

To translate Miller into England’s terms: we must learn to love those who differ from us from the position of paradox. While those who differ from us can always be found both inside and outside the institutional walls of the Church, the practice of going to church can have a unique way of positioning paradox and framing our enemies in redemptive ways that might not be as readily available or instinctive on the outside.

Take the Church’s organization, for example.

That congregations are organized at the local level with a lay clergy and are bounded “geographically rather than by personal choice” cannot be overstated in how Mormon culture is shaped. Many members attend the ward they locally find themselves in rather than shopping around for the ideal, heavenly congregation. There are exceptions of course, but the significance of such standard Zion-building creates a particular kind of community that keeps us within intimate range of each other. We’re threaded together with the devout, the wayward, the liberal, the conservative, the feminist, the watch dog, the intellectual, etc. All kinds of disciples and potential enemies abound. We need all kinds of temperaments, too, to complement the full body of Christ, providing a cohesive enough space to bind our temperaments and differences into mutual loving ties.

Callings, as mentioned earlier, then provide constant encouragement, even pressure, to practice this spiritual binding; they help socialize, reshape, and care for people who, if stripped of them, would have less opportunity to make the sacrifices needed to grow and develop divine gifts. As the Givens put it, church attendance causes us to be “forced back to the renegotiating table by an unavoidable proximity” to iron out, smooth over, and make atonement with those who irritate, bruise, and deeply offend. The luxury to click the block or mute button, like on social media, is not readily available. We are commanded instead to be in harmony. To be at one. And that it is up to each individual to get there through prayer, service and ritual. Though difficult, the rewards of such a community are often, paradoxically, the empowered gifts of patience, mercy, humility, charity, kindness, and forgiveness.

Nothing here suggests that non-religious people living in looser communities with a less binding moral matrix can’t find opportunities to equally advance a charitable praxis. Many in fact do. I’d wager to bet there are actually many atheists who care for people better than some religious people do. The point rather is to raise the question of how often we naturally feel compelled to associate ourselves with people of vastly different temperaments, especially enemies. How often do we assume the hard work of paradox, take up the mantle of sacrifice and renegotiation, then strive to love, serve, cooperate, and bless our enemies in ways that better awaken divine gifts?

This question gets at a critical distinction that has less to do with pitting religion against secularism and more to do with how we might better encounter the growth-promoting gifts of paradox. As Patrick Mason has observed, “there are many orbital paths around the sun, but not all are equally suited to maximize opportunities for life to flourish.” We might, for example, join a book club, attend a conference, or volunteer at a homeless shelter. Each of these activities would help foster a sense of community and provide chances to put the gospel into practice.

For England, the Church is the best vehicle “for helping us to gain salvation by grappling constructively with the oppositions of existence.” He doesn’t draw out specifically why church attendance is the best medium above others. Nor does he deny other existing contexts to help promote the good life. He walks the harder path carved out between the paradox that suggests that while the Church may be in possession of sacred and distinctive truths, it by no means owns a monopoly on truth.

It might be noted here that religious ideology, interestingly, even paradoxically, does make one thing obligatory that secularism doesn’t always reveal as instinctive: it sacralizes and binds us to the enemy.

We must do as Jesus says: we must love our enemies, bless those that curse us, and do good to those that hate us. No escape hatch. No transfer to another school. As the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer realized, cheap grace would be to remove ourselves from the “discipline of [this] community.” This distinction, this obligation to love someone who hates us, is ground zero for the greatest manifestation for the life of paradox and divinity to thrive. It is the ultimate school of love that reveals, as England would say, a “frustrating, humbling, but ultimately liberating and redeeming” spiritual praxis. To the extent that people feel a disproportionately powerful gravitational pull of being repeatedly drawn out of their comfort zone to love, serve, wrestle with, and sacrifice on behalf of their enemies, these communities provide the best context to awaken divine gifts. Whether we experience this pull in religious or secular settings is secondary.

What matters first is that we actually feel and experience it.

On a Personal Note

If we need to go to church, like we need ethics or community, it is because we live with other human beings. Who would need church, alone on a desert island? The very act of congregating with others helps us achieve together what we cannot merely achieve on our own. And yet, to be educated and wise is to admit what sometimes we would rather not: however special we believe our spiritual customs are, no church, no God, no system or secular organization has conquered the world so dramatically as to universally compel all human hearts and minds to follow it.

We are all, in our own way, still searching for the ideal community — that place to best awaken divine gifts.

While acknowledging that my community experience at church is far from ideal, I personally have yet to find a better substitute than Mormonism to work through and redemptively prove contraries. I have yet to hear a more compelling story of human potential; one that frames the divine nature of paradox in more educative, purposeful, and ennobling ways to help me realize that potential. In this regard, England is a big hero of mine. He’s opened my eyes to the real redemptive possibility of what the Church means to engender within me. It’s full of nagging, irritable people, yes. The historical record is muddy and replete with skeletons, yes. Our leaders are liable to sin and error and actually have made egregious mistakes, yes. The gospels themselves are rife with contradictory tensions, yes. And our meetings are often so boring and soul-suckingly lifeless, yes. Does this all mean the Church is a scam? That it’s broken? That it doesn’t work?

I believe, like England, that all of these detours and complications are paradoxes that can behave more as blessings than curses, if we let them. They encourage me, though sometimes painfully, to sacrifice traditional concepts of the divine, take risks, become vulnerable, and reassess my assumptions. They become harrowing lessons that help me “engage in not merely accepting the struggles and exasperations of the Church as redemptive but in genuinely trying to reach solutions where possible and reduce unnecessary exasperations.” Church attendance is not about singing kumbaya or blithely picking marigolds while ignoring the Church’s myriad problems, failures, and contradictions. That would be “returning to the Garden of Eden where there is deceptive ease and clarity but no salvation.”

Rather, church attendance for me is about being stretched and challenged, even disappointed and exasperated, in ways I would never otherwise choose to be. I’m meant to be bruised and irritated by the flaws and limitations of others, then called to walk the harder path of working to serve and love and patiently learn from them. These experiences provide lessons in grace, charity, and Christ-centered moral improvement. And when accepting these sacred bonds and obligations to love the unlovable, I’m given “a chance to be made better than [I] may have chosen to be — but need and ultimately want to be.”

Living with contraries is a burden for both the religious and irreligious alike. England has merely reminded me of how to thrive in the face of paradox rather than be frozen by it. He’s provided a redemptive context that’s helped me “see and experience the conflicts [at church and elsewhere] in more positive ways.” He’s framed a particular kind of discipleship that to me is most worth believing and following. Without him, I honestly don’t know how well I’d endure on the path of discipleship.

Who knows, without Eugene England I probably wouldn’t know if the title of this post was meant as hyperbole.

[dailyaudiobible]

03/12/2019 DAB Transcript

Numbers 16:41-18:32, Mark 16:1-20, Psalms 55:1-23, Proverbs 11:7

Today is the 12th day of March. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I'm Brian. It is my joy and honor and privilege to come around this global campfire together with you. I’ve thrown a couple brand-new big logs on. We’ve got a roaring light and warmth here. And, so, we just took come in out of whatever's going on, day or night, out of the cold and out of the dark and warm ourselves around this global campfire as we feel one another's presence. The fact of the matter is that whenever we listen to the Daily Audio Bible we are not listening to it alone. It doesn't matter what time of day were doing it. So, here we are around the global campfire ready to take the next step. The next step will take us back into the book of Numbers and some of the chaos that’s brewing as is the children of Israel get their minds around the fact that they're not going into the promised land, that they’re going to be in the desert for a generation. We’ll pick that story backup today, Numbers chapter 16 verse 41 through 18 verse 32 today.

Commentary:

Okay. So, being betrayed by somebody, especially somebody we trust and hold close, that can be such a profoundly damaging thing to our heart, right, because it touches everything, especially if we love that person. And that betrayal can change the course of our lives. And if you've ever experienced this then you know what I'm talking about. And the fact is that at one point or another during our lives you probably experience some form of the trail and usually when we’re going through that it feels like we’re the only one in the world going through it. So, let me just read a couple excerpts from our reading in Psalms today. “My heart is in anguish within me, the terrors of death fallen upon me, fear and trembling come up on me and horror overwhelms me. Ruin is in its midst. Oppression and fraud do not depart from its marketplace. For it is not an enemy who taunts me then I could bear it. It is not an adversary who deals insolently with me, then I could hide from him. It is, you, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend, his speech was as smooth as butter, yet war was in his heart. His words were softer than oil, yet they were drawn swords.” Okay. So, I mean we’re getting to know David's heart through the Psalms, even though we haven't met David in the Bible yet, although we will. And David wrote this. So, obviously these kinds of feelings have been going on for thousands of years. And David wasn't just a king. He was a well respected poet and musician. And, so, often what we find in the Psalms is like a masterful articulation of the issues that we find in our hearts, but we don't exactly know how to give language to them. And the Psalms gives us language and we can say something out loud. This is how it feels, or this is what I'm facing. Well, then it's exposed, it’s not this nebulous dark cloud anymore. It's a clear obstacle, but we can see it. And in this case David's talking about betrayal and his words are like a hand reaching out over time offering solidarity, hope. And as David reached a crescendo of this particular Psalm, this song, where his hope lies becomes clear in the midst of the madness. And may we hold onto this and may it come clear in the midst of ours. “I call to God and the Lord will save me. Evening and morning and at noon I utter my complaint and moan and He hears my voice. He redeems my soul in safety from the battle that I wage for many are arrayed against me.” So, let's all take heart today. We’re not alone. We’ll never be alone. The Lord hears our voices, right? He will walk with us. He will walk with us and He will carry us, if necessary through this. In fact, He's the only one, right? He's the only one we can let into this wounded place. He's the only one who can heal our broken heart.

Prayer:

Holy Spirit, we’ve been opening our hearts to You for a lot of reasons and inviting You to do a lot of things and You are and we’re grateful. As disruptive as it might be, as bumpy as it might be, as less smooth sailing as we might've expected we can feel You in it and it feels like work that needs to be done and so we’re grateful, but in what has been brought up today, we don't need solutions per se, we need You, we need comfort, we need to feel Your presence wrapping around us. We need to know were not alone, we need to know that You’ll get down into the mud and drag us out and carry us forward if that's what's necessary. And, so, we’re reaching to You. We surrender to You. We stop thrashing around in all of this and we calm down like a baby at its mother's breast and invite Your Holy Spirit to come carry us forward. Come Holy Spirit we pray. In Jesus’ name we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, and its home base, and it is where you find out what’s going on around here. So, certainly stay connected, stay up-to-date with what's going on.

The More Gathering for women’s coming up and I have seen lots of broken hearts begin to mend at events like that, which is one of the reasons why we go to all of the effort and the trouble and the warfare and the battling to make it happen. And it's gonna happen one more time in Georgia. One month from yesterday is when it begins, April 11th through the 14th and registration is still open and hopefully you can come. It's time for some healing, if it's time for some new perspective, if it's time for more then this is for you. Hope to see you there. So, you can get all the details at moregathering.com or you can go to dailyaudiobible.com and click the Initiatives section and that'll take you to the same place. And, yeah, we are praying into this and eager to see all that Jesus will do in the mountains of North Georgia. So, check it out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com. There is a link, it’s on the homepage. I thank you humbly and profoundly for your partnership. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And as always, if you have a prayer request or comment 877-942-4253 is the number to dial.

And that's it for today. I'm Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hi Daily Audio Bible my name is Isabella I’m from Nebraska. I’m a little behind on catching up with the Daily Audio Bible and I was listening to February 26th and I the…I heard Chanel from Arizona and kind have been provoked to reach out in asking for prayer for mental health and that was the push I needed to call. It is something I’ve been struggling with my entire life and it recently kind of tipped over again. And I’ve been trying very hard to battle it on my own. And, so, I’m asking for prayer in that to keep faith in God, to not let fear overrun me because that’s what I’ve been doing. This is a community that I’m so grateful for. I listen to it every day and listening to a people’s prayers and encouraging one another gives me the strength to go every day. So, I thank each and every one of you for that. I’m praying for you all. God, bless.

Hello, my DAB family this is Candace from the Oregon. Since losing my husband Brad two years ago March 11th I’ve been thrust into a completely different way of deciding what’s next and understanding out of move forward with God. Brad was my home. But even more deeply Jesus was not only home but love that is truly love and life that is truly life and thank goodness we can’t lose Him. In January I had thought because of the encouragement from my dear friend Yarka that it was time to move ahead on doing some sort of foreign mission work but when I really got quiet before the Lord about if you refocused my attention rather and instead to getting my house in order. Digging out the closets has led to reading prayers and finding significant keepsakes going back through my life. So of the most painful times are difficult to review but at the same time it’s stunning to see how God answered our prayers and is so faithful and true. I do need extra prayers right now even though mostly I just want to thank you for all your love and support. Over the last week I’ve had moments of deep sadness that come and then go. I finally realized it’s because we’re in the first days of lent, that time of year when such a glorious time of my life would end so suddenly. Oh, and it was truly glorious. Such a fulfillment to be in such partnership with Brad loving God and soaking in God’s love. It was a year’s Jubilee except it continued on for two years. The Lord has told me that the best is yet to come. We all know that in the big picture. We will soon get to see our Jesus face-to-face. Meanwhile in the immediate days ahead I receive the Lord’s joy and look forward to his surprises like when he turned up unexpectedly and made breakfast on the beach for the disciples in John chapter 21. Brad was so good at bursting on the scene into what would’ve been a dull day and changing it to delight. He must’ve gotten that from Jesus. The Lord’s name be praised.

I’m Peg from Texas the almost blind grandmother appreciating deeply since I can’t read very well my hearing. What a gift from God. I listen to the DAB in the darkness of the night appreciating Brian’s strong and clear voice, appreciating his expression as he reads as he feeds us with the word. Such to gift. I am grateful also for all of you for the privilege and the joy of praying with you and for you and thanking you for praying for my concerns. I come now to ask for prayer for John and Whitney who Lord willing will marry on March the 16th. I come asking you to pray that both will have a longing to give their lives completely to the Lord Jesus, that they will honor God individually and in their marriage. Pray that they will take the Christian counseling they have received seriously, that the Holy Spirit will give understanding of God’s truth in His word of His claims that both will be drawn to Jesus. Please pray that the service will minister to all, bride and groom, to her family who have never experienced a wedding in a church. Pray for family unity, for family support. I don’t know who in the wedding party understands that God is love, that he sent his son to die for the remission of sin that we might truly live. Pray for the guest. Pray for the __ mothers please. I’m a grandmother concerned longing for all my grandchildren to love and to honor the Lord Jesus in every way with all their hearts. I know that there are other grandmothers and grandfathers with the same burden, the same longing. I join you and pray…praying that God’s claims will be rightly understood and that homes will be built on God’s truth. May the Lord bless all of you. I thank you for praying with me.

Hello Christians, I’m calling today on the marker being separated from my wife for five months and one week. And it’s been the most painful season of my life. And I have much of the responsibility for the season that we’re in, but I have hope and I believe in the power of prayer and if you’re going through something similar I hope that you can take hope and courage in Christ who is our only hope. And I ask for your prayers today, that my wife and I would be able to be so overwhelmed by the love and the grace of Jesus that we can look at each other in compassion, that we can look past our hurts and pains, that we can come to understanding, that we can be reunited. There is hope and I have not lost it and I will continue to put my hope in Jesus regardless of the outcome of my marriage because He’s worthy but I appreciate your prayers for strength and courage to keep doing what is right, to keep moving forward, and for restoration in Jesus’ name. Thank you.

Hi, yes, hello Daily Audio Bible family this is a Guardian from New England. This is my first time calling. I’ve been listening for a few years now, on my third year. First, thanks to Brian and in his family for this wonderful ministry. I’m calling today, I heard a woman call in last weekend from Colorado and I felt compelled to call in. She called for prayers for pastor’s little son Noah who has epilepsy and her call hit pretty hope close to home for me because I have a son with epilepsy as well. And, so, I wanted to call and pray for Noah and ask the whole Daily Audio Bible to pray for him as well. So, and I’m going to apologize in advance if I ask for something to specific and to direct. So, Father, I’m asking today, I’m asking for You to heal little Noah out in Colorado and heal him from his epilepsy, so he can live a normal life like any other little boy. I’m asking…I’m asking that You would do this in such a way that his healing is so complete and so sudden that his healing that he wakes up tomorrow and doesn’t have any more seizures and the doctors are so astounded that they have only one explanation that it was You and You intervened and perform this miracle for Noah. So, I’m asking this in the mighty name of Jesus Christ amen.

[riverheadbooks]

READER HOROSCOPES FOR MARCH 2017

Zodiac consultation from a literary persuasion

 PISCES

 Blow out your candles and smile for the cameras, Pisces! It’s your month and you are letting the whole world know it. The beginning of the year can be such a drag - particularly if you live somewhere that’s cold, grey, and perpetually wet - but with the arrival of March comes the reminder that spring is truly just around the corner! Your optimism is taking you to new heights this month - maybe it’s something in the air, maybe it’s the extra bounce in your hair, or maybe you really are just born with it - but you’re having trouble finding the desire to turn down the part of you that wants to break out the champagne on the weekends. So don’t! However you prefer to indulge yourself - whether it be trying out a new nail color, treating yourself to a second dessert, or taking a luxurious bath after work - this is the month to give in, guilt-free. Be the decadent self you are when you close your eyes at night. Life is too short not to allow yourself to experience the simple magic in treating yourself. Your lucky book this month is an enchanting tale about two gifted orphans who are separated as teenagers and find each other again in the unlikeliest of circumstances. Heartened by the strange twist of fate that brought them back together, they embark on an incredible journey discover anew the glory and fame that could have been theirs as children. Life can be difficult, and dreary, and cold - but it can surprise you with its capacity for magic and intrigue, if you let it.

 LUCKY BOOK: The Lonely Hearts Hotel by Heather O’Neill

 ARIES

 Aries, darlin’, you’ve gotta let me know. Will you stay or will you go? Or if that doesn’t apply, are you going to answer yes or no? Up or down? I think you’re picking up what I’m putting down - your head is currently shaped somewhat like a pretzel, and you have no idea how to choose between the two major decisions facing you right now. Here’s a hint: if you’re still waffling about a project or endeavor of yours that’s been a dormant passion for a long time (and I do mean long) this is your time. There’s a reason that we feel called to certain places, or opportunities, or people. Trust that instinct. Trust yourself. But before you jump in feet first, ease your fears by doing the pre-work necessary to clear the path ahead. All the small loose ends that you’ve been ignoring? Get those taken care of. Pay back those loans, make that difficult phone call, let go of those individuals that have been dragging you down - whatever it is you know you need to do and have been avoiding: do it. Otherwise, taking on that passion project of yours will only end in burn out and regret. Your lucky book this month is the story of a young woman who followed her dreams, clear across the world, and wound up discovering something so much more precious than what she originally sought: a real love story, featuring star-crossed lovers, rather than the story of one in an ancient book. Have faith in what moves you, and allow yourself to move toward it in turn. You may be pleasantly surprised by what you discover.

 LUCKY BOOK: A Word for Love by Emily Robbins

 TAURUS

 You’re winning friends and influencing people left and right this month, Taurus, and it’s a power you should not take lightly! You have very strong opinions to express, whether it be in the board room, living room, or even in your group text, and you’re finding that people firmly agree, more often than not. While this may put you in a position of leadership or advocacy that you didn’t necessarily ask for, don’t shy away - usually, people who are open to speaking up are unwittingly voicing the questions and concerns that most people have, but are too fearful to share. As you continue to speak up for yourself and on the behalf of others, examine who you’re surrounding yourself with. It is often said that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Are you happy with your friend group as it stands? Are you inspired to be a better person by all of them? It’s a natural next step for you to feel drawn to activism or charity work these days, since you’re able to clearly articulate big ideas in ways that people can understand and identify with. Make sure that your increased popularity and demands on your time don’t cause you to overcommit. You can only be good for others when you’re good to yourself - and you can’t right every wrong in the world! Don’t bum yourself out by trying to. You can gather a lot of strength and motivation from your lucky book this month: an incredible account of the creative minds and thought leaders in Iran who worked together to create a completely new form of government in the modern age. It’s a testament to what can be accomplished when people will big ideas are unafraid to say them out loud, and then act.

 LUCKY BOOK: Children of Paradise by Laura Secor

 GEMINI

 Whoa, Gem. You are on the road to success and nothing is getting in your way, particularly during this month. Whatever your chosen field, whatever your preferred hobby or extracurricular activity, you’re amping up the effort and doing your best to jump two or three strides to get even closer to your goal. If that means a bit of ladder-climbing, so be it - don’t let envious detractors make you feel guilty for using the resources at your disposal to get ahead. Speaking of resources, this will be a great month to dust off that LinkedIn account you’ve been abandoning - maybe spruce up your Instagram and Twitter bios as well. You never know who may have stumbled upon a profile of yours, and what they may be looking for. That said, don’t bend over backwards for likes - keep your eyes on the prize and just live your best life, and be honest about the new challenges and opportunities you’re taking and are willing to fight for. It’ll come through to anyone who’s watching closely, believe me. For inspiration, you can’t get any better than your lucky book this month: remember the French artist who walked between the Twin Towers back in ‘74, Philippe Petit? His book on the art of living a highly motivated creative life will be just the guide you need to help you imagine even bigger and bolder ways to get to where you’re going. But don’t worry, they won’t include a tightrope...

 LUCKY BOOK: Creativity by Philippe Petit

 CANCER

 Where to next, Cancer? What city is next on your list to discover? This month, you’re so ready to break away from the familiar and explore a place you haven’t been...or maybe haven’t visited in some time. Maybe you just went through a rough split with a former loved one and can use some space from the constant reminders, maybe you have a friend abroad you’ve been promising to visit for years, or maybe you just stumbled across an amazing flight deal and have vacation days to burn. Regardless, you’re in for some unforgettable memories this month, so follow that wanderlust where it leads you. Don’t use this as an excuse to run some something that needs immediate confronting, however. If there’s a difficult conversation you need to have, make the time and figure out exactly what it is you need to say. Make no assumptions - be honest, be willing to listen, and lay your cards out on the table. Your partner will be much more likely to do the same. Your lucky book this month will be another much-needed jolt of honesty. As you take to the road, sea or skies this month, think about the people around the world who are driven to leave their homes in search of new ones. People displaced by circumstances outside of their control. And then, imagine within that: a love story.

 LUCKY BOOK: Exit West by Mohsin Hamid (3/7)

 LEO

 Personal space is vital this month, Leo. You’re feeling a bit jittery and overstimulated, tired of the constant noise, the exhausting pretenses, the sheer anxiety of being around other people. Consider this your permission to take a break. It’s not a crime to need time to yourself, to catch your breath and be quiet for a bit, no matter what you may be telling yourself. Some people simply can’t function in the spotlight all the time, or even adjacent to it, and that’s okay! Taking some time to bask in the intimacy of your special place - whether it be your bedroom, a hidden corner of the library, or by a quiet lake in the park - is a completely normal necessity, and your friends and family should understand that. Be honest about your needs, don’t lie and further enmesh yourself in unnecessary guilt. Sometimes, the very small untruths we tell - to ourselves and others - can lead to the social exhaustion that you’re suffering from right now. Have you been honest in your relationships lately? Is there something you’re afraid of, that you may not be letting yourself admit? What have you been trying to convince yourself of recently? Meditate on these things while you take some time to yourself, and try to figure out ways to break any cycles of deception that may be contributing to your currently uneasy state of mind. And take heed of your lucky book this month: a highly thoughtful exploration of a woman’s heart and mind when her husband, from whom she is already separated, goes missing. You may recognize some similar patterns in her way of thinking that you would probably do well to avoid in the future.

 LUCKY BOOK: A Separation by Katie Kitamura

 VIRGO

 February is over - you’re welcome. Rough one, huh? Take heart: this month, you’re feeling particularly inspired to take on a new project or two, and you know how energy-boosting that shock of creative energy can be. Immerse yourself in planning, sketching, delegating, organizing - all the things that make your Type-A Virgo heart soar. While you’re at it, though, don’t ignore whatever had you so down last month. It can be easy to allow the momentum of a new creative endeavor to bury emotions you’d rather not examine, but this can just lead to an unending cycle of repression and manic output. Small suggestion? Talk things through with someone who can help you make sense of those unpleasant feelings. Even if things don’t feel especially urgent or tragic, meeting with a therapist can do wonders for unlocking emotional vaults you weren’t aware of ever closing. And this month is a perfect time to engage with someone about topics that you find difficult to talk about, because with your newfound burst of motivation naturally comes the skills of articulation needed to talk people into supporting you. This is a transferable skill, even to the pesky emotional stuff. And so, for you: this month, your lucky book is an epic tale of love, belonging, heartbreak, and redemption that is guaranteed to remind you that life, with all of its attendant baggage and emotional nuisances, is well worth living anyway, and living as thoroughly as possible.

 LUCKY BOOK: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz

 LIBRA

 Health is wealth, Libra! This is your month to get yourself back into the gym, yoga studio, dance studio, or wherever it is that you prefer to work up a sweat. Whether or not you’ve decided to give up a vice for Lent, it’s not too late to pinpoint an area of your life that you know you need to work on. Cut back on snacks before bed or resolve to make it to the gym at least twice a week. Start small and let yourself get used to following a regimented plan before you try to make it more strict. And speaking of plans...you know what else is wealth? Actual wealth! Alongside your compulsion to make getting fit a priority this month, you’ll want to make sure finances are in order as well. Honestly assess your budget and spending habits over the past few months. Are there areas in need of trimming? Can you cut back on certain expenses and to save a few extra dollars every month? Again, choose one to two usual expenses that you can go without, and see how those spare dollars add up when you stop blowing them on things you can go without. Find a good place to invest and watch that money grow. This is a month of serious responsibility for you, paying such strict attention to your physical health and financial standing. You’re going to need a break from the mental and physical exertion you’re about to put yourself through, which is where your lucky book comes in. It’s a story collection like none other, told from a most eccentric and hilariously unusual perspective. It’s the kind of book you turn to when you’re looking for a drastically different way of looking at the world, and it comes in concise, but weighty chunks. Go on and binge, guilt-free!

 LUCKY BOOK: Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett

 SCORPIO

 Work it, Scorpio! You’re feeling completely fabulous this month, and when you feel fabulous, you aren't afraid to let the entire world know. Wherever your gifts reside, that is where you are expressing yourself loudly, boldly, and unapologetically. Some may even go so far as to say you’re tapping into your latent diva tendencies - but you know what? We all need and deserve a chance to be proud of who we are, and not care who knows it. And if you got it, flaunt it, right? Who knows what might happen tomorrow, so why not celebrate yourself today? Don’t let your head swell so much you can’t focus on what’s in front of you, however. This is especially important in your close relationships. A diva attitude will not get you far with the people who need vulnerability and honesty from you, so try to curb those flamboyant impulses when you’re picking up on a totally different vibe from your significant other or close friends. If and when problems arise, approach them with a sober mind, thinking through the problem with solutions in mind, not simply your immediate emotional reaction. Dramatic speeches and door-slam feel great in the moment, but they do little to solve issues as hand, and can only further the divide that you should be attempting to close. If you’re having trouble coming back down from the more fanciful state of mind you’re in, channel all of that high-strung energy into your lucky book for the month: an enthralling short story collection centered around locks and keys, filled to the brim with elements of magic and intrigue that will more than satisfy your need for a larger-than-life perspective this month. It’s the kind of book you read to feel less alone in your madness, while receiving small shocks of reality that offset the fantastical in an even more fabulous way.

 LUCKY BOOK: What is Not Yours is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi

 SAGITTARIUS

 Spice up your life, Sag! This Women’s History Month, you’re reveling in the feminine energy around you, and taking strength in the powerful and enduring influence of the amazing women [pin your family, workplace, and friendships who inspire you to be better every day. Take your appreciation a step further and reach out - who has been a particularly guiding light for you lately? Who has offered you encouragement when you were feeling down? Who have you been admiring from afar for her incredible leadership and insight, but have been too shy to tell directly? Now is the perfect time to make yourself known - who knows, you may wind up with a new mentor, or friend! In matters of the heart, don’t be surprised if a certain someone from your past resurfaces. Don’t take second changes lightly - who knows why the universe has put them back into your life? This could be a chance to learn from past mistakes. That means that whatever issues you had before, you now have the advantages of time and distance to gain some much needed perspective and apply the wisdom you’ve gained in the meantime. And with your circle of sisters and all of the nourishing and empowering energy their presence brings, imagine how you can revolutionize your approach to relationships from this point on! For more revolutionary ideas, look no further than your lucky book this month: the story of the Russian feminist punk rock group, Pussy Riot, and the way the incredible way they mounted their resistance against a corrupt government and sparked a global movement. Who runs the world?!

 LUCKY BOOK: Words Will Break Cement by Masha Gessen

 CAPRICORN

 Not even a full week into March and your social calendar is nearly full, Cap! You're quite the popular kid this month, from work events, happy hours, movie nights, and everything in between. How do you do it? A secret time turner, or perhaps an expertly-placed clone or two? Whatever it is, your seeming omnipresence will go a long way towards ensuring your name on everyone’s lips for quite some time. Take advantage of all the chances you have to rub shoulders with all sorts of fascinating people within your network and outside of it - you simply never know when you may need to call on a new contact in preparation for a new exciting opportunity, offer someone else a chance to pursue something in line with their interests, or simply have a new friend to catch new art exhibit with. Don't underestimate the power of shared experiences - they help to further our mutual understanding and make sense of the world as a whole. Knowledge doesn't exist in a vacuum - it's the result of individuals banding together, forming communities, and teaching and learning from each other. While you are surrounded by old friends and new this month, take a few moments to reflect on how much better off you are for the shared knowledge you've gained, and how much further in life you can advance because of it. You'll find many more examples of this incredible feat of human nature in your lucky book for this month, as well as a humbling look at the inverse: just how much we don't know on our own.

 LUCKY BOOK: The Knowledge Illusion by Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach (3/14)

 AQUARIUS

March is going to be a doozy, Aquarius - you ready? You’ve got time and energy to burn, and that’s a great thing. You’re pretty much all work and all play - and if that math doesn’t seem to add up, just wait. You’re crushing it at work, with offers and exciting new assignments coming at you from all sides - so keep your calendar app pulled up at all times, and get serious about organizing your timetable in a way that keeps you on top of your various responsibilities. The universe wants to give you the financial compensation you deserve for your hard work, but that still means you need to work to earn it. You know what else that means? Giving yourself some playtime to balance out the intensity of your workload. Remember what I said about having energy to burn? Your friends and family may not know how you’re doing it (no seriously, what is it?? Green smoothies? Exercise? Coffee beans?) but your PM social calendar is nearly as full as your AM one, with friends vying for your attention and company several nights a week. Have all the fun you can handle, but here’s a handy way to cut corners and not leave anybody out: schedule group hangouts when you can, that way everyone gets a piece of you, but you aren’t running yourself ragged by mid-month (yes, even that impressive energy store has its limits!). Your lucky book for this month is a perfect match for the level of intensity you’re operating at right now: an unforgettable story of war, heroism, and the power of sacrificial love, as told through the lens of the Korean War, and the profound effect it had on the world thereafter. You’ll laugh, you’ll weep, you’ll feel unmistakably alive. Most of all, you’ll savor this essential reading during those rare quiet moments this month - that’s a guarantee.

LUCKY BOOK: The Surrendered by Chang-rae Lee

[loneberry]

Mari Ruti on love and desire

[Excerpt from Chapter 7 of The Summons of Love]

The Bedrock of Desire

I have already proposed that there are lovers who stand out from the rest because we experience them as so irreplaceable that even a definitive parting of ways does not entirely banish their imprint. The reason for this is that such lovers touch what I would like to call the “bedrock” of our desire. This bedrock is the deepest kernel of our being, articulating what is most archaic, least socialized (and therefore most idiosyncratic) about us, particularly about our ways of seeking satisfaction in the world. As a consequence, whenever a lover manages to awaken this kernel, he or she almost by definition cuts into unconscious layers of our interiority that are absolutely fundamental to our being yet also a little mysterious—shrouded, as they are, in the impenetrable mists of our prehistory. More specifically, such a lover activates currents of desire that are so essential to our sense of self that we would not recognize ourselves without them.

In chapter 1 I mentioned that although we may, across the span of our lives, meet numerous people who pique our curiosity, there are usually only a few who raise our passion to a feverish pitch. Those who do are the ones who—often unintentionally and without being fully aware of their power—brush against the bedrock of our desire. They stir our desire on such a primary level that we sense that our destiny is inextricably intertwined with theirs. This is how we sometimes come to feel that certain people are “fated” for us—that we do not have a choice but to respect the thrust of our desire even when this desire gets us in trouble.

The famous French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan explains that whenever this happens, our lover comes to coincide with what Freud already called “the Thing”: the unnameable object of desire that we incessantly circle but can never attain. This Thing, in Lacan’s rendering, is a fantasy object that we imagine having lost and that we therefore spend our entire lifetimes trying to refind. It connects us to our first objects of desire (usually our parents) so that when we meet its echo in another person, we tend to feel the agitation that Plato linked to the transcendent yearnings of the soul; we tend to feel as if we were in the presence of something unfathomably valuable. Indeed, there is nothing in the world that incites our desire as forcefully as a lover who seems to reincarnate the Thing. However, because the Thing is a fantasy object rather than something that we once actually had (and then lost), we can never recover it in any decisive sense. We can only ever move toward it in an imaginary way.

Our inchoate sense of having lost the Thing makes us feel that we have been deprived of existential fullness. Arguably, this is precisely what gives rise to the human condition of lack that I talked about earlier in this book. At that point I emphasized that, contrary to what might at first appear, this primordial malaise is productive because it induces us to pursue various forms of secondary satisfaction. Lacan’s analysis of the Thing augments this insight by revealing that the trajectory of our pursuit is by no means random but consists of a very specific configuration of passion in that the shape of our desire corresponds to the shape of the loss we infer having endured. It is because the Thing for which we seek substitutes spawns a very particular nexus of fantasies that only a precious few of the objects that we chance upon manage to satisfy or engage us. We are constantly, and sometimes quite compulsively, on a lookout for the exceptional object that, we believe, can make us whole. As a consequence, we fall in love when the object we find appears to fit into, and even to seal, the void within our being; we fall in love when we (unconsciously) sense that we have discovered a little piece of the Thing. In this manner, even when we are unable to identify what it is that we are searching for—even when we cannot explain the “why” of our yearning—the Thing as an unconscious object of longing gives us the treasure map of our desire.

In a sense, our inability to find the Thing underpins our continued capacity to love others. After all, it is to the extent that the Thing remains absent that we are motivated to insert one object after another into the empty slot left by it. We fall in love over and over again, only vaguely aware of the fact that each new lover can merely approximate what we are looking for. However, some lovers come much closer than others to embodying the lost Thing. And the ones who come the closest galvanize the bedrock of our desire, enigmatically conjuring up the Thing for us. When this happens, we may feel that what we desire in the other is something “more” than who he is, that there is, as Lacan puts it, “something beyond all good” about the other that attracts us irresistibly. This something “more” defies classification. It is an ineffable, intangible, indefinable, and incommunicable quality that cannot be equated with the other’s personality—that is, as it were, “in excess” of who he or she is as a culturally intelligible entity. It is as if, “within” the other, our desire was pursuing something that the other has come to represent, but that does not entirely correspond with who he or she is. This elusive quality inspires us even as it confounds us.

What is so wonderful about this quality is that it has little to do with cultural conventions of desirability. It should be obvious to anyone living in our society—a society saturated with standard images of airbrushed and idealized beauty—that our desires are frequently almost pathetically conventional. We are conditioned to want what everyone else wants. We value certain physical characteristics because our culture esteems them highly. Certain body parts—hair, eyelashes, breasts, biceps, legs, etc.—become fetishized and carry forms of collective desire. According to this account, we are all to some degree alienated from our desire in the sense that we do not fully “own” it but receive it from the culture around us. This is why certain individuals (movie stars, singers, models, etc.) manage to trigger desire relatively easily and are desired by large numbers of people. We consider such individuals fascinating for the simple reason that they possess an unusually high concentration of culturally attractive traits—the kinds of traits that we have learned to perceive as appealing.

The mysterious bedrock of desire is something more elemental than this. Although certain characteristics of the person we desire may come to symbolize this bedrock, they are never synonymous with it. Rather, it expresses an inscrutable substratum of magnetism that resides somewhere between, beneath, or beyond our lover’s definable attributes. It cannot be reduced to the coordinates of what our culture deems desirable but, quite the contrary, tends to reveal itself, intermittently, and in a somewhat baffling manner, through the cracks of our lover’s social persona. Perhaps it conveys a slice of his or her true self. Perhaps it has to do with some potentiality or inner intensity that has not been fully actualized. Or perhaps it is related to some unspoken point of deep vulnerability—to what our lover most carefully guards from the probing gaze of the external world. We might never know. Yet we feel uniquely enlivened by it. On those rare occasions when we sense that we have managed to draw close to this substratum, we may feel that our existence finally has a purpose, that we have at long last found what we have spent a lifetime looking for. We may feel that what is in principle inaccessible to us has miraculously become accessible—that we can touch the mystifying kernel of our desire even as it remains veiled.

Love’s Apprenticeship

Hitting the bedrock of our desire can be just about the most thrilling thing that could ever happen to us. Indeed, even though our quest for the Thing may cause us to make bewildering romantic choices, these choices are not necessarily erroneous. Our desire for the Thing is not a mistake, even if it is unrealistic—even if the Thing-in-itself will always remain unattainable. In other words, although our pursuit of the Thing is hopeless in the sense that there is no way to refind what we never had in the first place—that there is no way to recover a wholeness we never actually possessed—there is still an accuracy to this pursuit in the sense that it can lead us to lovers with whom we feel a special kind of connection; it can usher us to the arms of partners who meet the needs of our true self much better than the average, run-of-the-mill lover ever could. It is, in short, safe to say that our most momentous loves tend to be ones that bring us within the Thing’s aura.

Equally important, the Thing’s power to displace socially predictable patterns of desire at times empowers us to find merit in individuals we might otherwise discount. If we frequently fall into routine patterns of perception that determine what we appreciate—and if these patterns make it difficult for us to desire along lines that go against the grain of cultural conditioning—the Thing compels us to assess differently. It causes us to sit up and pay attention so that our habitual ways of determining which people we look at (and therefore conjure into existence) and which we let languish in the shadows (and therefore in irrelevance) suddenly become utterly immaterial. It prompts us to elevate a specific person into the venerated status of worthy-to-be-desired not because he or she meets cultural standards of desirability, but because he or she meets an enigmatic inner standard of ours. This is why our love choices can sometimes be quite surprising—why we often fall for the kinds of lovers we could never have envisioned in the abstract.

This, of course, in no way protects us from pain. If anything, because the reverse of uncommonly strong passion tends to be utter defenselessness, the price we often pay for our most life-shaping alliances is bottomless suffering. Although there is no automatic connection between the bedrock of our desire and pain—and although we sometimes manage to sustain devoted relationships with lovers who animate this bedrock—there is no way around the fact that those who reach us in this deep manner are frequently also the ones who hurt us the most. For example, in cases where we are unable to let go of an unrewarding relationship, it may be because our lover appears to personify our bedrock with unusual accuracy. He or she seems to contain this bedrock, with the result that we find it virtually unbearable to shift our attention to another person even when we, on a rational level, know that we should. Our need for what our lover represents can be so relentless that we are incapable of opening a space for new kinds of emotional possibilities even when it is clear that our alliance undermines us.

An excessive fixation on the bedrock of our desire can cause us to stay with a lover who lacks the capacity for meaningful emotional connection or who may even treat us badly and disrespectfully. We may end up tolerating abusive, demeaning, disparaging, wounding, or mortifying relational scenarios because we are unable to sever our attachment to a lover who seems to epitomize what we most desire. We may even become so entirely caught up in our desire that we allow the rest of our lives to collapse (so that all of our other concerns fall to the sidelines). When we cannot undo the unconscious link that unites our lover with the bedrock of our desire, we may feel that without him or her our lives have no meaning. At times we may even remain obsessively preoccupied long after we have been rejected, long after our lover has told us that we are not wanted.

It would be easy to place a moralistic judgment on this dynamic, and to say that being unable to break an addiction to a past lover or (even worse) to an abusive relationship means that something is wrong with us. However, because we are dealing with the bedrock of our desire—with something that is both unconscious and intensely binding—it is difficult to know exactly what to make of such situations. What is it that our desire is ultimately looking for? Is there a lesson to be learned from being stuck in a hurtful relationship? What might this stuckness be attempting to communicate? Is it maybe gesturing toward dimensions of our being that are undergoing a difficult apprenticeship—one that will at some future point reward us in one way or another? Are we engaged in some secret alchemy of the soul that will eventually convey us to a place of insight? Or are we simply masochistically courting pain?

Such questions usually lack easy answers. But we might as well admit that trying to relinquish a person who incarnates the bedrock of our desire—and who consequently feels irreplaceable to us—can be agonizing. Yet sometimes we need to do exactly this in order to survive. Thankfully, we do not usually experience too many of such losses during our lives. But when we do, we are altered beyond reckoning. Even if we over time manage to get our lives back on track, we will never be the same as we were before this love and its loss. When we surrender a person who represents the bedrock of our desire, we give up a part of ourselves. And we give up the fantasy of ultimate satisfaction; we give up the promise of unconditional love. There is no way to go on with our lives without carrying the melancholy trace of this event into our future. There is no way around the fact that we will always bear (and transmit to others) the deep wound inflicted by it. The wound will fade over time, of course. But it may never heal completely.

[nancyxvalentine]

Milestone Moments and Mourning

It’s no secret that I grew up in a single-parent immigrant household. In fact, that’s the way I openly describe my upbringing when asked about my childhood. I’m very proud of my Chinese American mother, the ways I have watched her overcome hurdles of hate and blossom into the resilient powerhouse that she is. I’m also very proud of the independent and creative woman I am today because of the “Tiger Mom” that guided and disciplined the yesterdays of my youth. What is a secret, that I haven’t even realized until now, is that I will be mourning the death of my father for the rest of my life. His absence still impacts me and it’s hard for me to talk about. For those that are unaware, my father, Michael Valentine, passed away on April 23, 1996 of cirrhosis of the liver caused by malnutrition and prolonged alcohol abuse. I was only 3 years old. To me, Michael Valentine isn’t a person, he’s the representation of “dad” as a concept. The truth is, I was too young to know who my father was as a person, the good or the bad, but I wasn’t too young to understand the role he could have and should have played in my life had he put down the bottle. My dad’s death is something that’s always just felt like one of those “facts of life” that I paid very little attention to on the daily. I don’t mean to sound insensitive here, I just mean to say that my mother filled all those obvious “dad gaps” when raising my brother and me. For instance, she taught us how to hook worms on our fishing poles, repair things when they’re broken, and respect our elders and others different from ourselves and our own upbringings. And yet, despite the ways my mom went above and beyond to ensure we never felt “fatherless,” I still bawled my eyes out when I realized I was the only kid in my entire private Christian school who only had one parent listed in our K-6 student directory. Throughout the rest of my junior and high school years, I found myself filled with frustration, angst and envy. There were a few friends who knew, but when in public, I often found myself referring to my mom as my “parents” so as to avoid any awkward conversations that may be met with pity-filled expressions and obligatory condolences.Those awkward developmental years are littered with what I call “milestone moments” and as a result, in those four years of “firsts,” I was forced to confront the fact that my dad wouldn’t be there to be a part of any of them. With few to confide in and even fewer who could relate, I would spend hours in my bedroom seeking solace in sketchbooks and drowning out any sorrow I felt with shitty music I found on Myspace. My college years were ones where I thought about my father a lot, but in a different sense. For a few years I was heavily involved with a local Christian Church and spent countless hours lamenting over my inability to connect with the concept of “God as a Father” in various bible studies and small groups. My grievances were met with responses filled with action - meaning a few “dads” in the Church community would come around to “step in” or “look out for me” from time to time. The most tangible example of this being when one of these Church Dads made all the necessary arrangements for my vehicle to get towed to a shop and paid for a replacement when I blew a tire on the freeway while driving to a church-related event. Though I was and am still grateful, it was difficult for me to know how to accept their care and kindness without feeling like some type of pity project. I still struggle with this. Fast forward to now: I’m nearly 28 years old and I’ve done most of the things an “ambitious young person” is supposed to do - along with all those milestone moments - by myself. I’ve earned my baccalaureate, travelled internationally, own my vehicle, work in a stable position for an incredible nonprofit, exhibit my artwork in galleries and group shows, actively serve my community and have even found a therapist that I like and trust enough to listen to. On paper and by society’s standards I am considered a “well-rounded” individual and “on the right track.” However, the next station on my life track is one that I didn’t anticipate being so fricken emotional: buying a house. As someone who's been financially independent since the age of 17, the actual process of purchasing a home felt scary, but not unfamiliar. Much like when I first ventured into the realm of financial literacy and investing for my retirement - I researched the steps online, attended some seminars and webinars, built up my credit and eventually applied for the loan that felt right for me and my financial situation. The day I received notification of my pre-approval, I put an offer on a beautiful, yet quaint house on a lake in a rural town adjacent to the one I grew up in. Less than 24 hours later, the sellers accepted my offer! When sharing the news with my partner and a few loved ones, excitement and congratulations exploded from every person except for one: me. Owning a home is a life goal of mine, so it’s not that I don’t have feelings of excitement or pride about getting to this point. What I’m feeling is a mixture of that plus something else. Something familiar, but not something I’ve ever taken the time to process or had the words to articulate until now: grief. Yes, I can acknowledge the accomplishment of “figuring things out on my own,” but that doesn’t negate the grief that comes with the realization that I did it all on my own because I had to, there was no other option. Here’s the thing: I know I’m smart, capable, strong, resilient, blah, blah, blah - those aren’t the things I’m wrestling with. What I’m wrestling with is feeling proud of myself for the accomplishments and milestones in life because the sad reality is, part of me wishes my dad was there to be a part of, well, all of it. That’s tough to admit...and even more tough to mentally and emotionally process. I read a Huffington Post article by a woman named Brittney Wong, who writes about the loss her father to pancreatic cancer when she was 18. The article is titled “What Milestones Are Like When You Lose A Parent At A Young Age” and somewhere in the middle she wrote: “When a parent dies when you are young, it’s like you are left to free-fall without a parachute while everyone around you is getting helicoptered-parented well into their 30s.” Though our experiences are quite different, my heart still echoes her sentiment. I’m at an age and stage of life where I’m confident that I can “adult” relatively successfully. I know a little about a lot, have the initiative to figure out the basics of what I don’t, and when I absolutely can’t do something by myself, I call on my “village” for help. However, the work it takes to navigate the emotional landscape of each succinct milestone on my own, again, is where I feel the most sorrow and least support. Losing a parent is a very personal type of grief that others have trouble empathizing with until they experience it themselves - even more so when that loss is experienced as a toddler. What I’m starting to recognize is that because I lost my father at such a young age, I have carried my grief with me, but never faced it. It’s not that I needed a dad, it’s that I felt the absence of my dad when facing every milestone moment. I will never know what it’s like to have a loving, supportive father who swoops in to save me when I call. I’m past the point of wanting one and I have no need for one. But now, as I face this major milestone moment, what I do need is the grace and space to mourn. Obviously this isn’t the first or last milestone moment that Michael Valentine will miss, but it feels like a major one and I can finally admit: I wish he was still present to be a part of the process.

[representingblacknessinhp]

How a Group of Harry Potter Fans Became Social Activists

By Henry Jenkins, Marilyn DeLaure, Moritz Fink 

Using both quantitative surveys and qualitative field research, the Youth and Participatory Politics research network (of which I am a member) is documenting and interpreting the political lives of American youth as they negotiate the opportunities and risks represented by the current media landscape. Joseph Kahne and Cathy Cohen (forthcoming) offer this definition of participatory politics:

These practices are focused on expression and are peer based, interactive, and nonhierarchical, and they are not guided by deference to elite institutions. ... The participatory skills, norms, and networks that develop when social media is used to socialize with friends or to engage with those who share one’s interests can and are being transferred to the political realm. ... What makes participatory culture unique is not the existence of these individual acts, but that the shift in the relative prevalence of circulation, collaboration, creation, and connection is changing the cultural context in which people operate.

Everyday experiences within a more participatory culture shift expectations about what constitutes politics and what kinds of change are possible. Right now, young people are significantly more likely to participate in everyday cultural or recreational activities than political activities. For many young people, now and historically, there’s a hurdle to entering politics. They are often not invited to participate, and they may not see rich examples of activists in their immediate environment. Those activist groups that have been most successful at helping young people find their civic voices often have done so by tapping into participant’s interests in popular and participatory culture. Cohen et al. (2012) found that youth who were highly involved in interest-driven activities online were five times as likely as those who weren’t to engage in participatory politics, and nearly four times as likely to participate in the forms of institutional politics measured in their survey.

While this research is focused on the United States, such trends have global implications. Linda Herrera (2012), for example, interviewed young Egyptian activists in order to map the trajectory of their involvement with digital media prior to becoming revolutionaries. For many, their point of entry to interacting with media online was through recreational use: downloading popular music, gaming, trading Hollywood movies, or sharing ideas through online discussion forums and social networking sites. Mundane involvements in participatory culture exposed them to a much broader range of ideas and experiences than allowed within mainstream Egyptian culture, encouraged them to acquire skills and discover their personal voices, and enabled them to forge collective identities and articulate their hopes for the future. As Herrera concludes, “Their exposure to, and interaction with, ideas, people, images, virtual spaces, and cultural products outside their everyday environments led to a substantial change in their mentality and worldview (343).

Some theorists have used the term “latent capacity” to describe the ways that everyday online activities help participants build skills and acquire social capital that can be deployed toward political ends “when the time comes.” Cohen et al. (2012) identify an enormous amount of “latent capacity within the contemporary American youth they survey (altogether, more than 3,000 respondents, 15 to 25 years in age). The overwhelming majority of American youth across races—Asian American (98 percent), Latino (96 percent), white (96 percent), and black (94 percent)—have access to a computer that connects to the Internet. Seventy-six percent of youth spread messages, share status updates, or chat online on a weekly basis (and roughly 50 percent engage in these practices on a daily basis). Overall, 58 percent of youth share links or forward information through their online social networks at least once a week. Most youth do not translate these practices into political participation, but a growing number do. Fifty-one percent of young people had engaged in at least one act of participatory politics during the twelve months prior to the survey. Moreover, the distribution of these practices is surprisingly consistent across racial categories when compared to more traditional kinds of institutional political activity, such as voting, petitioning, or boycotting.

These new digital media platforms and practices potentially enable forms of collective action that are difficult to launch and sustain under a broadcast model, yet these platforms and practices do not guarantee any particular outcome. They do not necessarily inculcate democratic values or develop shared ethical norms. They do not necessarily respect and value diversity, do not necessarily provide key educational resources, and do not ensure that anyone will listen when groups speak out about injustices they encounter. In his critique of the concept of participatory culture and politics, James Hay (2011) writes, “It would be too simplistic to generalize blogging, photo-shopping and social networking (media revolution) as the condition for an enhanced democracy” (666). So, the challenge is to identify the mechanisms that help young people move from being socially and culturally active to being politically and civically engaged.

Our Media, Activism and Participatory Politics research team at the University of Southern California has been developing case studies across a range of different movements—interviewing young activists, following their media productions, observing their social interactions, and otherwise attempting to understand the processes by which they recruit, train, motivate, and mobilize their participants. We tend to pay close attention to younger participants who are entering the political sphere for the first time. ... Writing about the Harry Potter Alliance and the Nerdfighters (two of our cases), Neta Kligler-Vilenchik (2013) describes the processes of “translation” through which these organizations tap the cultural fantasies and social connections young people feel toward forms of popular culture franchises for launching political awareness campaigns. In particular, she stresses three dimensions of these groups—their creative deployment of shared mythologies, their encouragement of grassroots media production and circulation, and their willingness to provide a space where political conversations are accepted as a normal part of the group’s activities—which contribute to their ability to bridge members’ cultural and political interests. Many young people report that they find the language through which we conduct “politics” both exclusive (in that it makes sense only if you are already enmeshed in its frame of reference) and repulsive (in that it encourages partisan bickering). On the other hand, the use of pop culture references, an appeal to shared rather than conflicted values, and an emphasis on embedding political discourse in everyday social interactions help young people to navigate the often-difficult transition into civic engagement. In part because of this, the Harry Potter Alliance is one of the case studies featured in Beautiful Trouble, and its founder, Andrew Slack, is one of the contributors.

The Harry Potter Alliance, Cultural Acupuncture, and Fan Activism

Established in 2005 at the peak of the hype and hysteria around J. K. Rowling’s best-selling children’s book series, the Harry Potter Alliance has, by its own estimate, mobilized more than 100,000 youth in 90 chapters worldwide (thought mostly in the United States), who are engaged in various forms of human rights activism (Jenkins 2012). As Neta Kligler-Vilenchik and Sangita Shresthova (2013) explain, “The organization... connects fans through campaigns and calls to action, a loosely knit network of chapters, and an online presence that includes discussion forums, a well-designed national website, and a presence on wide ranging social media platforms. There is a core leadership and staff at the national level, but also a constant give and take with local leadership and chapters” (49). Among the HPA’s successes has been donating more than 100,000 books to local and international communities, registering approximately 1,100 voters through Harry Potter–themed “Wizard Rock” concerts across the country, and raising more than $123,000 in partnership with Partners in Health in Haiti in a two-week period (altogether, five cargo planes’ worth of supplies). Through the years, HPA’s efforts have addressed such diverse issues as marriage equality, immigrant rights, labor issues, environmentalism, teen suicide, and food justice, thereby demonstrating the capacity to move beyond a single-issue focus while maintaining and growing its base of support. As the organization’s website explains, “Our mission is to empower our members to act like the heroes that they love by acting for a better world. ... Our goal is to make civic engagement exciting by channeling the entertainment-saturated facets of our culture toward mobilization for deep and lasting social change” (quoted in Kligler-Vilenchik and Shresthova 2013, 50).

Slack (2010) and his supporters call this approach “cultural acupuncture”:

Cultural acupuncture is finding where the psychological energy is in the culture, and moving that energy towards creating a healthier world. ... A marketing campaign that goes beyond the importance of a brand of soap and instead focuses on a brand of becoming something bigger than ourselves, something that matters because it speaks to the higher nature of who we truly are on this interdependent planet, where each one of us plays an indispensable role. (Par. 4–6)

Recognizing that the news media was more apt to cover the launch of the next Harry Potter film than genocide in Darfur, Slack saw the HPA as a way to identify key cultural pressure points, thus redirecting energy toward real-world problems. Pinning political and social causes to Harry Potter works because this content world has a large following, is familiar to an even larger number of people, has its own built-in mechanisms for generating publicity, and is apt to attract many subsequent waves of media interest. Harry Potter constitutes a form of cultural currency that channels fans’ emotional investments and wider public interest in ways that can carry HPA’s messages to many who would not otherwise hear them.

The issues that motivate Slack (2012)—including a deep skepticism about Madison Avenue manipulation and about the ways media concentration constrains and distorts the kinds of information we need to act meaningfully and collectively as citizens—are more or less the same ones that motivated [Mark] Dery’s (1993) culture jammers. Yet Slack has turned their core metaphor on its head. Cultural acupuncture seeks to reshape and redirect circulation, rather than block or jam the flow.

From the start, the culture jamming movement operated from what [Naomi] Klein (1999) described as an “outsider stance” (283), seeing popular culture largely as the debased product of the culture industries. As Klein notes, a jammer’s self-perceptions as empowered and resistant “cannot be reconciled with a belief system that regards the public as a bunch of ad-fed cattle, held captive under commercial culture’s hypnotic spell” (304). The movement’s contempt for the masses is perhaps best summarized by Adbusters graphics from the early 1990s depicting consumers as pigs slurping up slop, as pale-faced zombies hypnotized by the glow of the television screen, or as slack-jawed supplicants with brand logos tattooed across their bodies. Even the more recent reframings of culture jamming found in Beautiful Trouble, such as [Stephen] Duncombe’s (2012a), still largely embrace that outsider perspective, seeing activists as people who will need to immerse themselves in other people’s popular culture before they can learn to appeal to a broader public. Writes Duncombe, “You may not like or be familiar with Nascar, professional sports, reality TV and superheroes, but they are all fertile arenas of culture to work with. It may take an open mind and a bit of personal courage, but it behooves us to immerse ourselves in, learn about and respect the world of the cultural ‘Other’—which, for many of us counter-culture types, ironically, is mass culture” (par. 6). While Dery (1993) celebrated culture jammers as “Groucho Marxists” seeking “joyful demolition of oppressive ideologies” (7), culture jammers have, in practice, been more often plain ol’ grouchy Marxists. Their critiques are tone deaf; they have not respected (or even understood) the much more multivalent relationship many youth enjoy with the popular culture they often use to express their identities or make sense of the world.

Dery sought, at times, to extend his culture jamming model to include forms of fan cultural production. However, from the start, the fit was an uncomfortable one for all involved. Fan cultural production is motivated by both fascination and frustration, which is only partially captured by accounts that read it purely in terms of resistance. Dery sympathetically quotes Mark Crisipin Miller (1987): “Everybody watches it [TV], but no one really likes it. ... TV has no spontaneous defenders, because there is almost nothing in it to defend” (3). Given such a starting point, how would fans, for instance, fit into this picture? Later, though, paying tribute to my own notion of “textual poaching” (Jenkins 1992), Dery acknowledges that fan fiction writers, especially those writing homoerotic “slash” stories about Kirk and Spock (then the most visible example), worked from “feminist impulses”; Dery proposes at one point that the term “slashing” might be productively extended to “any form of jamming in which tales told for mass consumption are perversely reworked” (8). The term “perverse” here is doubly problematic, first because it is such a loaded concept when applied to homoeroticism, and second because the fans themselves did not necessarily feel that they were “perversely reworking”—or imposing “subversive meanings” on— the texts that they loved. Rather, they saw themselves as recovering the homoerotic subtext within mass media’s construction of homosocial relations, seeking textual evidence to support their interpretations and to ground their own erotic fantasies about the characters.

While Dery sees culture jammers as directing their creative efforts “against” the culture industries, fans often seek to reform from within, even when they also recognize themselves as operating on the margins of the intended audience for their favorite programs. While Dery’s culture jammers deconstruct popular narratives, “rendering their seductions impotent” (7), textual poachers reconstruct, rewrite, and remix them: they are seeking to draw out themes that are meaningful for them, even as they also often end up critiquing corporate, patriarchal, and homophobic ideologies that fans feel damage the integrity of their shared mythologies. While Dery’s culture jammers often deploy metaphors of “disenchantment,” seeking to awaken a public being fed nothing but dreams to the reality of the world’s problems, textual poachers—as Slack (2013) explained recently—contend that “fantasy is not an escape from our world, but an invitation to go deeper into it.” Of course, in practice, it may be more difficult to maintain such a strong distinction. Culture jammers, as Klein (1999) notes, often worked within the advertising industries they were seeking to dismantle. Meanwhile, many fans—especially female, minority, and queer fans—feel excluded from the ways fan culture gets depicted within mainstream media or the ways that fans are addressed by industry insiders, even at a time when fan participation and engagement have been more fully incorporated into the business models informing entertainment franchises.

Slack’s (2010) cultural acupuncture starts from the premise that there is power and meaning in stories such as Harry Potter, which have been embraced by significant numbers of people around the world. As Slack seeks to translate the core insights from his organization’s success for a broader range of activists in Beautiful Trouble, he states frankly, “Meet people where they’re at, not where you want them to be. ... Remember to speak your group’s language and start with the values they would most readily respond to” (par. 8). As a community organizer working within the fan community, Slack’s efforts start by fully and unambiguously embracing the core values of the Harry Potter narratives and then deploying them as a conceptual frame through which to translate real-world concerns for his young supporters.

Slack (2012) has developed a theory of creative mythology that operates on at least three levels: the personal narratives of supporters (including, for example, his own stories of growing up within a divorced family, surviving a depressed father, struggling with issues of self-esteem, and confronting high school bullying); the collective narratives of the community (such as their history of conflicts and collaborations with “the Powers that Be” that control the future of the narratives that matter to them); and the mythological narrative in which they are invested (in this case, Rowling’s stories about how Harry and his Hogwarts classmates formed “Dumbledore’s Army” to challenge evil in their society). One of the HPA’s strengths is its ability to move smoothly among these three levels of analysis, often using metaphors from the books to explain real-world issues (say, the closeting of werewolves to talk about other forms of discrimination) or tapping into the infrastructure of fandom to rally support behind HPA campaigns (for example, using Quidditch Matches, Wizard Rock concerts, film openings, or fan conventions as opportunities to register people to vote or soliciting signatures on petitions).

More recently, Slack (2013) has sought to expand the HPA’s reach to a range of other fandoms under the banner of “Imagine Better.” In a talk delivered at the TEDxYouth conference in San Diego in 2013, Slack constructs a composite mythology (framed around the concept of “orphans” versus “empires”), stitching together themes and images from, among other popular culture narratives, The Wizard of Oz, Hunger Games, Doctor Who, Star Wars, Superman, Batman, Once Upon a Time, and The Lion King—each of which, he suggests, explores how people who feel locked outside the system can nevertheless overcome powerful foes and change the world. Reaching his crescendo, the energetic Slack calls for his enthralled audience (which is, by this point, engaging him in call-and-response) to join forces in creating “a Dumbledore’s army for our world, a fellowship of the ring, a rebel alliance” that might fight for social justice and human rights.

For these young fans, the Harry Potter narratives are not just books they read or films they watch; they represent, on the personal level, landmarks by which they measure their own passage from childhood to adulthood and, on the collective level, shared experiences of meaning-making, creative expression, and sociality. When culture jammers sought to détourn advertisements, they often spoke of brand icons as shiny yet empty signifiers into which they could insert their own meanings. At most, jammers sought to “decrypt” the hidden implications of those brand messages. For fans, though, these mythologies run deep, with many levels of meaning and affect that need to be respected and valued. It matters to these fans that Rowling herself once worked for Amnesty International, that she has advocated for the role of empathy and imagination in human rights struggles, and that her books have such strong and overt themes of prisoner rights and respect for diversity (Jenkins 2012).

HPA members are, in short, still acting as fans even as they are also acting as activists. For the purposes of this discussion, “fan activism” refers to forms of civic engagement and political participation that emerge from within fan culture itself, often in response to the shared interests of fans, often conducted through the infrastructure of existing fan practices and relationships, and often framed through metaphors drawn from popular and participatory culture. Historically, fan activism has been understood through an almost exclusively consumerist lens, focusing on fan efforts to keep favorite programs on the air. Such examples have been sometimes used as a demonstration of the ways that a growing number of interest groups are using tools such as petitions, which were designed to serve political purposes, toward nonpolitical ends. Yet, even these fan efforts are often struggles over representation—both in terms of what does or does not get included within textual representations and in terms of whose interests do or do not get reflected in the marketplace. However, in a growing number of cases, fan activism is being deployed toward explicitly political ends.

Not in Harry’s Name

To better understand the mechanisms through which the HPA enables fan activism, let’s examine a specific campaign, “Not in Harry’s Name,” which aimed to help motivate young participants to engage in actions directed against the very corporation, Warner Brothers, that produces the Harry Potter franchise. Fan activists have often been accused of doing nothing more than fighting for their right to consume. Here, however, these fans were deploying their roles as consumers (including threats of boycotts) in the name of ethical production practices. The central issue in this campaign concerned whether chocolate frogs (and other confections) produced and sold by Warner Brothers at the Harry Potter attraction at Universal’s Island of Adventure theme park were produced under Fair Trade conditions. As the group explains, much of the cocoa grown in West Africa for use in commercial chocolate is made using underpaid—and, in some cases, enslaved—child labor. Complicity in such practices is part of what allows American-based manufacturers to sell chocolate products at such low prices in the global North. Fair Trade organizations have demanded greater transparency about chocolate contracts in order to allow consumers to make meaningful choices about whether they want to contribute to these exploitative labor conditions or join the larger efforts toward corporate transparency and accountability that Klein discusses in No Logo. Concerned about what was being done by Warner Brothers “in Harry’s name,” the HPA partnered with Free2Work to investigate Behr’s Chocolate, the company contracted to produce the chocolate frogs. The project revealed that Behr’s did not post any information about the choices they made regarding where and how they contract their labor, resulting in a “failing grade.”

The HPA saw the issue of who produces “chocolate frogs” as a powerful focal point for educating their young supporters about the issues of fair trade and corporate transparency. As Lauren Bird (2013), a young HPA staff member, explained in a videoblog, HPA supporters felt directly implicated in these suspect labor practices deployed to produce the candy their community consumes:

We chose Harry Potter chocolate because that chocolate comes with a story that is not only near and dear to our hearts but is a story about justice and equal rights. Plus, it is chocolate being sold primarily at a theme park for kids. It is pretty disturbing to think that the chocolate these kids are eating at this magical, wonderful place was possibly coercively made by kids like them in another part of the world. ... We are Harry Potter fans. That means that this chocolate matters more to us than whether Snickers Bars are ethically made. But this also means we’re going up against our heroes, the people behind the story. (Thehpalliance, 2013)

Bird discusses openly the fans’ ambivalence about launching this campaign, especially the HPA leadership’s uncertainty about publically calling out a studio whose goodwill they depend on for other work they do. Yet, wearing black-rimmed glasses (reminiscent of Harry Potter) and a fan themed t-shirt, Bird insists that fans have a right—and an obligation—to call out corporate media for what’s being done “in Harry’s name.”

In the campaign’s first phases, the HPA attracted more than sixteen thousand signatures on a petition calling for Warner Brothers to make all Harry Potter chocolate Fair Trade. In order to stress the effort’s grassroots nature, they had more than two hundred members send along pages of signatures. Even this tactic was motivated through references to the core texts: “Remember what happened when Uncle Vernon tried to ignore Harry’s Hogwarts letters? More letters showed up. This is exactly what we’re going to do” (Harry Potter Alliance 2012a).

The studio responded to the HPA petition by (some would say patronizingly) reassuring their fans that they cared deeply about the Fair Trade issue, that they were complying with all operative international laws and their own internal standards, and that they had investigated the companies producing their chocolate and were satisfied with their labor practices. Everything here was consistent with the corporate rhetoric Klein (1999) dissected in her book:

If any busybody customer wanted to know how their products were made, the public-relations department simply mailed them a copy of the code, as if it were the list of nutritional information on the side of a box of Lean Cuisine. ... Codes of conduct are awfully slippery. Unlike laws, they are not enforceable. And unlike union contracts, they were not drafted in cooperation with factory managers in response to the demands and needs of employees. (430)

Companies often obscure the labor that generates commodities behind brand mythologies. Klein calls for anticorporate activists to explicitly link the brand to the conditions within the factories where its products are manufactured.

Rather than accepting the company’s self-representations at face value, the HPA demanded that the studio release its own internal report. This time, the group gathered more than sixty thousand signatures on their petition and, in the process, brought much greater media coverage to the issue. As Slack explains:

For fifteen months, we have given WB every possible opportunity to partner with us by making all Harry Potter chocolate Fair Trade. They have turned down each of those opportunities because they underestimate us. It’s now a matter of time before the entire world sees that fans of the Harry Potter series are responsibly advocating for children while the leaders of WB are acting irresponsibly. If the research they cite exists then they should be able to produce it. They should have nothing to hide. (Harry Potter Alliance 2012b, par. 3)

For more than four years, Warner Brothers remained nonresponsive, choosing to sit out the storm of bad publicity rather than open up their labor practices and subcontracts to closer public scrutiny.

Throughout these efforts, the HPA employed tactics that playfully evoked the content world or otherwise played upon shared knowledge of the fan community. Rather than seeing the licensed candies as mere commodities, the HPA evaluates them according to their meaningfulness within the content world. Chocolate has magical powers in Rowling’s narrative—serving, for example, to alleviate some of the symptoms of Dementor attacks; thus, the HPA playfully asked whether chocolate produced under such dubious circumstances might still carry these beneficial effects. They also frequently link their struggles against child labor to Hermione’s efforts to stop the enslavement of elves within the wizarding world.

Studios have long sent fans cease-and-desist letters protesting unauthorized use of intellectual properties and shutting down websites or removing videos or fan fiction. Drawing on this history, HPA encouraged fans to draft and send their own cease-and-desist letters, accusing the studio of inappropriate use of their shared mythology. In Rowling’s novels, Howlers are blood-red letters sent within the wizarding community to signal extreme anger and embarrass the receiver. The sender’s voice is amplified to a deafening volume, and then the letter combusts. HPA urged fans to record their own video Howlers to send to the studio executives, signaling their extreme disapproval of their continued silence about the report. The videos often included an HPA-produced bumper sequence showing an Owl delivering a letter in a red envelope and then closing with the image of the letter bursting into flames. Perhaps most intriguingly, the HPA contracted with a Fair Trade chocolate company to produce and market (through the HPA’s website) their own chocolate frogs, complete with wizard cards, as a means of demonstrating that such products could be produced without relying on companies with exploitative working conditions.

Read full article here. 

[psychotherapyconsultants]

When Family Members and Friends Don’t Understand Depression

We’ve come a little way in reducing the stigma that’s associated with mental illness, but not nearly far enough.

Consider these results pulled from a public attitude survey in Tarrant County, Texas, conducted by the county’s Mental Health Connection and the University of North Texas in Denton to determine the community’s view of mental illness:

More than 50 percent believe major depression might be caused by the way someone was raised, while more than one in five believe it is “God’s will.”

More than 50 percent believe major depression might result from people “expecting too much from life,” and more than 40 percent believe it is the result of a lack of willpower.

More than 60 percent said an effective treatment for major depression is to “pull yourself together.”

Unfortunately, these beliefs are often held by those closest to us, by the very people from whom we so desperately want support.

Resenting them for their lack of understanding isn’t going to make things better, though. It almost always makes things worse. Whenever I hit a severe depressive episode, I am reminded once more that I can’t make people understand depression any more than I can make a person who hasn’t gone through labor understand the intense experience that is unique to that situation. Some people are able to respond with compassion to something that they don’t understand. But that is very rare.

Don’t Mistake Their Lack of Understanding for a Lack of Love

Whenever I try to open the doors of communication and express to a family member or friend how I am feeling, when I try to articulate to them the pain of depression, and am shut down, I usually come away extremely hurt. I immediately assume that they don’t want to hear it because they don’t love me. They don’t care enough about me to want to know how I am doing.

But distinguishing between the two is critical in maintaining a loving relationship with them. My husband explained this to me very clearly the other day. Just because someone doesn’t understand depression or the complexity of mood disorders doesn’t mean they don’t love me. Not at all. They just have no capability of wrapping their brain around an experience they haven’t had, or to a reality that is invisible, confusing, and intricate.

“I wouldn’t understand depression if I didn’t live with you,” he explained. “I would change the subject, too, when it comes up, because it’s very uncomfortable to a person who isn’t immersed in the daily challenges of the illness.”

This is a common mistake that many of us who are in emotional pain make. We assume that if a person loves us, he or she would want to be there for us, would want to hear about our struggle, and would want to make it better. We want more than anything for the person to say, “I’m so sorry. I hope you feel better soon.”

The fact that they aren’t able to do that, however, does not mean they don’t love us. It just means there is a cognitive block, if you will, on their part — a disconnect — that prevents them from comprehending things beyond the scope of their experience, and from things they can see, touch, taste, smell, and feel.

Don’t Take It Personally

It is incredibly difficult not to take a person’s lack of response or less-than-compassionate remark personally, but when we fall into this trap, we give away our power and become prey to other people’s opinions of us. “Don’t Take Anything Personally” is the second agreement of Don Miguel Ruiz’s classic The Four Agreements; the idea saves me from lots of suffering if I am strong enough to absorb the wisdom. He writes:

Whatever happens around you, don’t take it personally … Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves. All people live in their own dream, in their own mind; they are in a completely different world from the one we live in. When we take something personally, we make the assumption that they know what is in our world, and we try to impose our world on their world.

Even when a situation seems so personal, even if others insult you directly, it has nothing to do with you. What they say, what they do, and the opinions they give are according to the agreements they have in their own minds … Taking things personally makes you easy prey for these predators, the black magicians. They can hook you easily with one little opinion and feed you whatever poison they want, and because you take it personally, you eat it up ….

Protect Yourself

I have learned that when I fall into a dangerous place — when I am so low that mindfulness and other techniques that can be helpful for mild to moderate depression simply don’t work — I have to avoid, to the best of my ability, people who trigger feelings of self-loathing. For example, some people in my life adhere tightly to the law of attraction and the philosophies of the book The Secret by Rhonda Byrne that preach that we create our reality with our thoughts. They have been able to successfully navigate their emotions with lots of mind control and therefore have trouble grasping when mind control isn’t enough to pull someone out of a deep depression.

I struggle with this whenever I fall into a depressive episode, as I feel inherently weak and pathetic for not being able to pull myself out of my pain, even if it means simply not crying in front of my daughter, with the type of mind control they practice, or even mindfulness or attention to my thoughts. This, then, feeds the ruminations and the self-hatred, and I’m caught in a loop of self-flagellation.

Even if they aren’t thinking I’m a weak person, their philosophies trigger this self-denigration and angst in me, so it’s better to wait until I reach a place where I can embrace myself with self-compassion before I spend an afternoon or evening with them. If I do need to be with people who trigger toxic thoughts, I sometimes practice visualizations, like picturing them as children (they simply can’t understand the complexity of mood disorders), or visualizing myself as a stable water wall, untouched by their words that can rush over me.

Focus on the People Who Do Understand

In order to survive depression, we must concentrate on the people who DO get it and surround ourselves with that support, especially when we are fragile. I consider myself extremely lucky. I have six people who understand what I’m going through and are ready to dole out compassion whenever I dial up their numbers. I live with an extraordinary man who reminds me on a daily basis that I am a strong, persevering person and that I will get through this. Whenever my symptoms overtake me and I feel lost inside a haunted house of a brain, he reminds me that I have a five hundred pound gorilla on my back, and that my struggle doesn’t mean that I am a weak person not capable of mind control. At critical periods when I’m easily crushed by people’s perceptions of me, I must rely on the people in my life that truly get it. I must surround myself with folks who can pump me up and fill me with courage and self-compassion.

Depression support groups — both online and in person — are invaluable in this regard for offering peer support: perspectives from people in the trenches who can offer key insights on how to deal with the invisible beast. I created two online groups, Group Beyond Blue on Facebook and Project Beyond Blue, but there are many forums worth checking out, like the ones at Psych Central. Actual support groups hosted by such organizations as National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA), and support offered by a therapist, are also great resources to help give you the coping tools you need to get by in a world that doesn’t get it.

Join Project Hope & Beyond, the new depression community.

Originally posted on Sanity Break at Everyday Health.

from World of Psychology https://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2017/04/25/when-family-members-and-friends-dont-understand-depression/

[yes-dal456]

Why You Shouldn't Go To Bed Angry

There is an old saying that if you never have a quarrel in a marriage then the first time can end in divorce. So the good news is it's ok to have little spats every now and then. We have been married for over 30 years, and Inevitably there are times when one or even both of us loses it. We are, after all, very human. We've been there, done that, and collected a whole range of tee shirts! But, in all that time, what we have never done is go to bed angry with each other. What we soon realized is that any disagreement is less about the issue and more about the need to be right. So we try to focus on what is really going on. Anger is a powerful and complex emotion--when it grabs hold it is difficult to control ourselves. But there are often layers of conflicting feelings hidden beneath the anger, such as insecurity, grief, or fear, trying to make themselves heard. The power of rage is such that it can act as a defense mechanism that overshadows these other emotions, causing us to lose touch with ourselves and struggle to articulate what we are really feeling. Getting angry may really be a cry for contact; having lost our connectedness with both our own feelings and each other it may be expressing feelings of rejection, loneliness, or a longing to love and be loved. Often anger is saying "I love you" or "I need you" yet we are hurling abuse at each other instead. As psychotherapist Maura Sills says, " I come from a family that was angry; it was the way we related to one another. I believed that if people had trouble with my anger, it was their problem, and I had a right to act the way I wanted. But when we express anger, we are creating more pain and suffering in ourselves than in others." Taking anger to bed is one of the most damaging things we can do. During the day we have a chance to process anger and let it go, to see what it's really saying. But at night it can become intensified and build from a simple story to a major drama. So here are five reasons why not to go to bed feeling angry: 1- Anger is toxic. It floods our body and brain with chemicals, so it will disrupt our sleep and could create nightmares 2- We dwell on it, making it grow into something bigger than it really is 3- It can create irreparable damage with our loved one, when what we really want is to reach out and be friends 4- We can wake up feeling even worse, causing us to repeat it and drag it out through the day 5- Forgiveness is a far more energy-efficient option. It releases us from the drain of holding a grudge, setting us free to love and laugh again Only by recognizing what the real emotion is behind the anger can there be more honest communication and heart opening. Forgiveness meditation can be very helpful here, as it not only invites us to witness anger but also to make friends with it. Meditation may not be a cure-all; it may not make all our challenges go away or suddenly transform our weaknesses into strengths, but it does enable us to rest in an inclusive acceptance of who we are. This does not make us perfect, simply more fully human. **** Ed & Deb are authors of many books. Deb is the author of Your Body Speaks Your Mind, now in 19 languages. They have three meditation CDs. See more at EdandDebShapiro.com

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from http://ift.tt/2kfQrwh from Blogger http://ift.tt/2j2uRyk

[imreviewblog]

Why You Shouldn't Go To Bed Angry

There is an old saying that if you never have a quarrel in a marriage then the first time can end in divorce. So the good news is it's ok to have little spats every now and then. We have been married for over 30 years, and Inevitably there are times when one or even both of us loses it. We are, after all, very human. We've been there, done that, and collected a whole range of tee shirts! But, in all that time, what we have never done is go to bed angry with each other. What we soon realized is that any disagreement is less about the issue and more about the need to be right. So we try to focus on what is really going on. Anger is a powerful and complex emotion--when it grabs hold it is difficult to control ourselves. But there are often layers of conflicting feelings hidden beneath the anger, such as insecurity, grief, or fear, trying to make themselves heard. The power of rage is such that it can act as a defense mechanism that overshadows these other emotions, causing us to lose touch with ourselves and struggle to articulate what we are really feeling. Getting angry may really be a cry for contact; having lost our connectedness with both our own feelings and each other it may be expressing feelings of rejection, loneliness, or a longing to love and be loved. Often anger is saying "I love you" or "I need you" yet we are hurling abuse at each other instead. As psychotherapist Maura Sills says, " I come from a family that was angry; it was the way we related to one another. I believed that if people had trouble with my anger, it was their problem, and I had a right to act the way I wanted. But when we express anger, we are creating more pain and suffering in ourselves than in others." Taking anger to bed is one of the most damaging things we can do. During the day we have a chance to process anger and let it go, to see what it's really saying. But at night it can become intensified and build from a simple story to a major drama. So here are five reasons why not to go to bed feeling angry: 1- Anger is toxic. It floods our body and brain with chemicals, so it will disrupt our sleep and could create nightmares 2- We dwell on it, making it grow into something bigger than it really is 3- It can create irreparable damage with our loved one, when what we really want is to reach out and be friends 4- We can wake up feeling even worse, causing us to repeat it and drag it out through the day 5- Forgiveness is a far more energy-efficient option. It releases us from the drain of holding a grudge, setting us free to love and laugh again Only by recognizing what the real emotion is behind the anger can there be more honest communication and heart opening. Forgiveness meditation can be very helpful here, as it not only invites us to witness anger but also to make friends with it. Meditation may not be a cure-all; it may not make all our challenges go away or suddenly transform our weaknesses into strengths, but it does enable us to rest in an inclusive acceptance of who we are. This does not make us perfect, simply more fully human. **** Ed & Deb are authors of many books. Deb is the author of Your Body Speaks Your Mind, now in 19 languages. They have three meditation CDs. See more at EdandDebShapiro.com

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from Healthy Living - The Huffington Post http://huff.to/2k0uzaY