Kittredge Cherry's Blog: Q Spirit, page 9
August 25, 2016
What if Christ and Krishna made love?
What if Christ met Krishna? Christ and Krishna are two of the greatest teachers of love that the world has ever known. Would they speak of love, even make love? This delightful possibility is considered here today in honor of Krishna’s birthday or Janmashtami (Aug. 25, 2016).
"Jesus and Lord Rama" by Alex Donis
Many have noticed the similarities between Christ and the Hindu deity Krishna, but now the two god-men are portrayed as gay lovers in the work of artistic visionaries like artist Alex Donis, whose work appears at right, and poet Brian Day. His poem “Krishna and Jesus in Algonquin Park” is reprinted in full below.
Those who value love, sexuality and interfaith dialogue may find enlightenment by imagining an erotic encounter between Jesus and Krishna.
Like Christ, Krishna is a savior who taught love. Both are believed to be divinely conceived by God and a human woman, making them human AND divine. Jesus called himself a shepherd and Krishna herded cattle, but both healed the sick, worked miracles and forgave enemies.
One difference between the two is that Jesus is considered celibate in Christian tradition, while Krishna is a fantastic lover who is “all-attractive” to men as well as women. Legends glorify Krishna’s many amorous encounters with all kinds of admirers: female and male, milkmaids and cowboys, human and divine.
A related question is: Did Jesus visit India? Krishna’s worship dates back 3,000 years before the birth of Christ, so they could not have met in the physical world, but it is possible the Jesus did travel to India. One popular theory suggests that Jesus went to India during his “unknown years” between ages 12 and 30, the period that is not documented in the New Testament. There he learned Hindu and Buddhist wisdom that is similar to his teachings in the Bible.
Would sparks fly if these two great teachers of love did meet? Toronto teacher Brian Day writes about their ineffable intimacy in “Krishna and Jesus in Algonquin Park,” a poem from his book “The Daring of Paradise.” The book, which explores the commonalities between multiple religions in a homoerotic way, was released by Guernica Editions in 2013. Many thanks to Brian for permission to reprint the whole poem below. Algonquin Park is a provincial park in Ontario, Canada.
Another Day poetry book, “Conjuring Jesus,” features homoerotic poems about Christ. His book “Azure” includes “The Love Between Krishna and Jesus,” a poem that begins, “They approach one another with cool flowers of language…”
In a related work, California artist Alex Donis painted a sublime interfaith kiss in “Jesus and Lord Rama.” (Krishna and Rama are both blue-skinned incarnations of Vishnu.) It is part of his “My Cathedral” series of kisses between unlikely same-sex pairs.
The Donis exhibit electrified viewers when it opened in San Francisco in 1997. Heated arguments erupted in the gallery, followed by threatening phone calls and letters, and then physical violence. Vandals threw rocks and traffic barriers through the gallery windows—not once, but twice in three weeks. They smashed two of the artworks: first Jesus and Rama, and then Che Guevara kissing Cesar Chavez. The Christ-Rama image and its harrowing story appear in my book Art That Dares: Gay Jesus, Woman Christ, and More
. Many thanks to Alex for permission to post the controversial painting here. Most modern scholars reject the theory that Jesus visited India, but the idea has been explored in many books, including the 19th-century volume “The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ” (The Life of Saint Issa) by Nicolas Notovitch and “Jesus Lived in India: His Unknown Life Before and After the Crucifixion” by Holger Kersten. There is even a movie version, “Jesus in India,” based on the book “King of Travelers: Jesus' Lost Years in India” by Edward T. Martin.
A thoughtful analysis of the similarities of Hindu-Christian philosophies is presented in “The Gospel of John in the Light of Indian Mysticism” (Christ the Yogi) by Ravi Ravindra.
Krishna also plays a central role in another Hindu festival that is especially popular with third-gender people. The Aravan Festival, held in April-May in south India, celebrates the marriage of Krishna and the male deity Iravan, considered the patron god of transgender communities. Iravan’s dying wish was to marry, so Krishna granted his wish by switching to his female Mohini female form and wedding him.
The idea of a queer Jesus shocks and offends some traditional Christians, but he can be liberating for LGBT people and our allies. The pansexual Krishna may serve the same purpose among Hindus.
People throughout history have pictured Jesus looking like one of them: black Jesus in Africa, white Jesus in the West, and Jesus who looks Asian or Latin American in those parts of the world. It’s OK to add queer Christ to the mix because he taught love for all and embodied God’s wildly inclusive love for everyone, including sexual minorities. Gay Jesus images are needed now because conservatives are using religious rhetoric to justify discrimination against queer people.
If Jesus and Krishna met, would there be conflict or kisses? Brian Day’s new poem offers a beautiful glimpse into how they might love each other.
Krishna and Jesus
in Algonquin Park
By Brian Day
They hoist their canoe to the lichened rocks
and face the smooth light they’ve paddled across.
Shucking the weight of their pale-coloured clothes
and plunging to the knuckly cupped hand of the lake,
they meet in the green, share their scents with the water,
feel their bodies enlivened with cool liquid sensation,
and turn in the still black waters of their minds.
As they ripple the mirror between world and world,
each sights the stroking phantoms of the other’s limbs,
and touches skin as papery smooth as birch.
They climb the smoothed ladder of rocks at the shore,
their abdomens slick and quick with their breath,
and lie with their backs baked sweet with stone.
Blue and clouds tumble to creation in their eyes.
Leading each other down pine-cooled trails,
the air sultry with blueberry and warm golden grasses,
they step to the island’s needled shade,
and each scents the lake-sweet on the other’s skin.
When evening has come and their hungers are sated,
their senses warmed by the perch where they sit,
their thoughts float calm as loons on the water—
then plunge to surface, later, someplace else.
Their bodies as languid as the swaying of trees,
they listen to the applause of breeze in the aspens,
know the touch of each star as it plays on their skin,
and lie down in the circling of heavens on earth.
Reprinted with permission from the book “The Daring of Paradise,” published by Guernica Editions.) ”
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Krishna-like figures are shown in more sexually explicit homoerotic scenes by artist Attila Richard Lukacs. They can be viewed in his “Varieties of Love” series at the following link:
Diane Farris Gallery
Here are other popular images that add Buddha to the mix to depict interfaith friendship at the highest level.
“May Loving-Kindness Abound” by VisionWorks (www.changingworld.com)
“May Loving-Kindness Abound” from Changingworld.com shows figures from three religions offering blessings. Jesus holds a lotus blossom as he sits cross-legged between Krishna and Buddha.
Christ, Buddha and Krisha walk together. Artist unknown.
The above image of three religious figures is often posted online with a quote from bisexual spiritual teacher Ram Dass: “We’re all just walking each other home.”
For more info on Krishna and other Hindu deities who transcend sexual and gender norms, visit the Gay and Lesbian Vaishnava Association at:
http://www.galva108.org
The GALVA website is packed with fascinating material on Hindu saints and deities who embody the full spectrum of gender and sexual diversity, including but not limited to LGBTQ and “third sex.”
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Related book:
“Tritiya-Prakriti: People of the Third Sex: Understanding Homosexuality, Transgender Identity, And Intersex Conditions Through Hinduism” by Amara Das Wilhelm.
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Top image: “Krishna and Christ,” artist unknown
Does anybody know who created the picture of Krishna and Christ at the top of this post? Or the one of Christ, Buddha and Jesus walking together? They are all over the Internet, but I haven’t been able to identify the artists. I would love to honor the artists by name.
Thanks to Mario Gonzalez for the tip about images.
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This post is part of the LGBT Saints and Queer Christ series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. Saints, martyrs, mystics, prophets, witnesses, heroes, holy people, humanitarians, deities and religious figures of special interest to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) and queer people and our allies are covered on appropriate dates throughout the year. The queer Christ series gathers together visions presented by artists, writers, theologians and others.
Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.
http://www.jesusinlove.blogspot.com/
Jesus in Love Blog on LGBT spirituality and the arts
August 24, 2016
Bayard Rustin: Gay saint of civil rights and non-violence
Bayard Rustin was a black gay man and chief organizer of the influential 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington. A follower of the Quaker faith with its pacifist tradition, he brought Gandhi-style non-violent protest techniques to the movement for racial equality and become a close advisor to Martin Luther King. Today is the anniversary of his death on Aug. 24, 1987 at age 75.
Rustin was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, in a White House ceremony in 2013. “For decades, this great leader, often at Dr. King's side, was denied his rightful place in history because he was openly gay. No medal can change that, but today, we honor Bayard Rustin's memory by taking our place in his march towards true equality, no matter who we are or who we love,” President Obama said when he presented the medal for Rustin.
Bayard Rustin
(Wikipedia)
Pushed into the background because he was openly gay in a more homophobic era, Rustin has been called “an invisible hero,” “a lost prophet” and “Brother Outsider.” He summed up his philosophy when he said, “We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers.” He is honored here as a gay saint.
Rustin (Mar.17, 1912 - Aug. 24, 1987) rarely served as a public spokesperson for civil rights because he was openly gay at a time when homosexuality was criminalized and stigmatized. His sexuality was criticized by both segregationists and some fellow workers in the peace and civil-rights movements. In the 1970s he began to advocate publicly for lesbian and gay causes.
From 1955-68 Rustin was a leading strategist for the African American civil rights movement. His decades of achievements include helping launch the first Freedom Rides in 1947, when civil disobedience was used to fight racial segregation on buses. He helped organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and much more.
Rustin’s sexual orientation became publicly known in 1953, when he was arrested for homosexual activity in Pasadena, California. He pleaded guilty to a charge of consensual “sex perversion” (sodomy) and served 60 days in jail. It was not his first stint in jail. He had been arrested before for his pacifist refusal to participate in World War II and he served on a chain gang for breaking Jim Crow laws requiring racial segregation on public transportation.
Mug shot of Bayard Rustin (Wikimedia Commons) taken for failure to report for his Selective Service physical exam
Rustin saw the connections between racial justice, women’s equality and LGBT rights. He made it vividly clear in a controversial speech to the Philadelphia chapter of Black and White Men Together on March 1, 1986. The speech, titled “The New ‘N*s’ are Gays,” is one of several pieces about LGBT rights in his book Time on Two Crosses: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin
. Rustin states:
“Today, blacks are no longer the litmus paper or the barometer of social change. Blacks are in every segment of society and there are laws that help to protect them from racial discrimination. The new “n*s” are gays. … It is in this sense that gay people are the new barometer for social change. … The question of social change should be framed with the most vulnerable group in mind: gay people.”
The following year Rustin died of a ruptured pancreas on Aug. 24, 1987. Late August is also significant for him because the March on Washington held on Aug. 28, 1963. Organized by Rustin, the March was where King gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. An estimated 250,000 people attended, making it the largest demonstration held in the U.S. capital until that time. The full synthesis of Rustin’s black and gay identities -- the “two crosses” of his book title -- came as the culmination of a life well lived.
A campaign is underway to convince the U.S. Postal Servie to honor Rustin with a postage stamp.
Walter Naegle was Rustin’s life partner from 1977 until his death a decade later. As executor and archivist for the Bayard Rustin estate, Naegle continues to promote Rustin’s legacy by organizing programs and providing materials for books and exhibits on Rustin’s amazing life.
Rustin’s biography is told in the film Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin
and books such as Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin
by historian John D’Emilio. The book "I Must Resist: Bayard Rustin’s Life in Letters", edited by Michael Long was a 2013 finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. A chapter on Bayard Rustin by Patricia Nell Warren is included in the 2015 book “The Right Side of History: 100 Years of LGBTQI Activism.”
Rustin appears against a quilted background reminiscent of a rainbow flag in a tapestry portrait by queer Chicana autistic artist Sabrina Zarco. “The implied rainbow and words in the clouds in this work speak to the many causes for which he worked and his love of all things hand made by marginalized artists,” Zarco said in her artist’s statement. “His necktie with musical notes is a nod to his love of music and time as a musician. He wears the 2013 Presidential Medal of Freedom on his chest.” The original artwork was unveiled at a National Black Justice Coalition event after Naegle accepted Bayard's medal. It is now in the private collection of black LGBT activist Mandy Carter, cofounder of the coalition. The image is available for purchase at the artist’s online store.
In the another image, Rustin and Naegle hold hands as an interracial gay couple on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. It was created by artist Ryan Grant Long for his “Fairy Tales” series of gay historical figures. For more on Long, see my previous post Artist paints history’s gay couples: Interview with Ryan Grant Long.
“Bayard Rustin - Pride” by Sean J. Randall
A different kind of rainbow portrait created by Portland artist Sean J. Randall. He adds rainbow colors to Rustin’s mug shot to emphasize his gay pride.
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Related links:
Rustin.org
Walter Naegle, Activist Bayard Rustin’s Partner, On Rustin’s Enduring Legacy (Lambda Literary)
For Bayard Rustin’s partner, an effort to preserve legacy (Washington Post)
Bayard Rustin: One of the Tallest Trees in Our Forest by Irene Monroe (Huffington Post)
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Top image credts:
Detail from “Bayard Rustin” art quilt by Sabrina Zarco
“Bayard Rustin and Walter Naegle” by Ryan Grant Long
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This post is part of the LGBTQ Saints series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. Saints, martyrs, mystics, prophets, witnesses, heroes, holy people, deities and religious figures of special interest to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) and queer people and our allies are covered on appropriate dates throughout the year.
Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.
http://www.jesusinlove.blogspot.com/
Jesus in Love Blog on LGBT spirituality and the arts
August 20, 2016
Saints Bernard of Clairvaux and Malachy: Honey-tongued abbot and the archbishop he loved
“Bernard of Clairvaux” by Rowan LewgalonSee how I yearn, and longing turn to Thee!Yield to my love, and draw me unto Thee!--Bernard of Clairvaux
Bernard of Clairvaux was a medieval French abbot who wrote homoerotic poetry about Jesus had a passionate same-sex friendship with the Irish archbishop Malachy of Armagh. Bernard is best known for founding 70 monasteries around Europe and for his mystical writings. His feast day is Aug. 20 (today).
His first love was Jesus, but he showered Malachy with kisses during his lifetime. After Malachy died in his arms, they exchanged clothes. Malachy was buried in Bernard’s habit. Bernard put on Malachy’s habit to lead the funeral and wore it until his own death five years later. Bernard was buried beside Malachy, again in Malachy’s habit. Malachy (1094-1148) became the first native born Irish saint to be canonized.
Bernard (1090-1153) was advisor to five Popes and a monastic reformer who built the Cistercian order of monks and nuns. He is known as the last of the Church Fathers. The most famous saying attributed to him is: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
He was a man of his time who engaged in rigorous ascetic practices and supported church teachings on celibacy. People today might say that he had a homosexual orientation while abstaining from sexual contact. Medieval mystics created alternative forms of sexuality that defy contemporary categories, but might be encompassed by the term “queer.” They directed their sexuality toward God and experienced God’s love through passionate friendship with another human being.
Monasteries and convents provided a social structure outside marriage, attracting many people that today would be defined as LGBT. Medieval monks and nuns who lived in same-sex communities under a vow of celibacy developed alternative ways of same-sex living and loving.
“Christ Embracing St. Bernard of Clairvaux” by Francisco RibaltaBernard’s strict asceticism was balanced by sweetly erotic visions that earned him the title Doctor Mellifluus (“honey-tongued doctor.”) He chose to use the Song of Songs, the most erotic book in the Bible, as a major vehicle for his teaching. He began his “Sermons on the Song of Songs” in 1135 and had completed 86 sermons when he died nearly 20 years later with the series still unfinished.
“Jesus to me is honey in the mouth, music in the ear, a song in the heart,” he wrote in his 15th sermon on the Song of Songs.
His lesser known works include “Life of Saint Malachy of Armagh,” which is his idealized tribute to the man he loved, and “Salve Mundi Salutare” (quoted below), a love poem to Jesus whose original homoeroticism has been suppressed. It became the basis for the popular English hymn “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded.”
Bernard of Clairvaux’s legacy is a mixed blessing for contemporary progressive readers because he also helped rally soldiers to kill Muslims in the Second Crusade and undermined the work of theologian Peter Abelard, a champion of reason. But he spoke out against Christian mistreatment of Jews and supported another queer mystic, Hildegard of Bingen, in her efforts to get her visions published.
Bernard was born to a noble family in 1090 on the outskirts of Dijon in Burgundy. According to legend, his mother had a dream during her pregnancy that a white puppy was barking in her womb. This was interpreted to mean that she would give birth to God’s watchdog. The white dog became one of Bernard’s attributes, a symbol used in images of the saint.
Bernard and a white dog, both with icy blue eyes, appear together in a striking contemporary portrait by Rowan Lewgalon. She is a spiritual artist based in Germany and a cleric in the Old Catholic Apostolic Church.
When Bernard was 19, his mother died and he decided to join a small new community that had just started in the area. They were called the Cistercians, and their aim was to reform monasticism with a return to the more austere rules of St. Benedict. Within three years Bernard was sent to found a monastery nearby in a place whose name has become part of his own: Clairvaux.
About 25 years later Bernard met Malachy (whose Irish name is Maelmhaedhoc O’Morgair). He was primate of all Ireland when he first visited Clairvaux around 1139. Bernard was nearly 50 years old and Malachy was four years younger. They soon became devoted, passionate friends. Malachy even asked the Pope for permission to become a Cistercian, but the Pope refused.
Malachy traveled to see Bernard again in 1142. They were so close that Bernard covered him with kisses in a scene that is described well by Orthodox priest Richard Cleaver in “Know My Name: A Gay Liberation Theology”: “Bernard's account makes deeply romantic reading for a modern gay man. “Oscula rui,” Bernard says of their reunion: “I showered him with kisses.”
Their relationship had lasted almost a decade when Malachy reunited with Bernard for the third and final time. Malachy fell sick when he arrived in Clairvaux in 1148. He died in Bernard’s arms on All Soul’s Day, Nov. 2. Again Cleaver tells the details based on accounts by Geoffrey, Bernard’s secretary and traveling companion:
“Geoffrey of Auxerre tells us what happened later. Bernard put on the habit taken from Malachy's body as it was being prepared for burial at Clairvaux, and we wore it to celebrate the funeral mass. He chose to sing not a requiem mass but the mass of a confessor bishop: a personal canonization and, incidentally, an example of using liturgy to do theology. Bernard himself was later buried next to Malachy, in Malachy’s habit. For Bernard, as for us today, this kind of passionate love for another human being was an indispensable channel for experiencing the God of love.”
After Malachy’s death Bernard lived on for another five years. He forbid sculptures and paintings at the monastery during his lifetime, but by the late 15th century the altarpiece at the Clairvaux Abbey had a painting of Christ’s baptism jointly witnessed by Bernard and Malachy.
Bernard died on Aug. 20, 1153 at age 63. He was buried at the Clairvaux Abbey next to Malachy, wearing Malachy’s habit. He had lived for 40 years in community with other men whose loving relations with each other brought them closer to God.
“Bernard of Clairvaux” by Tobias Haller“Bernard of Clairvaux” was sketched as an intense man with a rusty beard by Tobias Haller, an iconographer, author, composer, and vicar of Saint James Episcopal Church in the Bronx. He is the author of “Reasonable and Holy: Engaging Same-Sexuality.” Haller enjoys expanding the diversity of icons available by creating icons of LGBTQ people and other progressive holy figures as well as traditional saints. He and his spouse were united in a church wedding more than 30 years ago and a civil ceremony after same-sex marriage became legal in New York.
A prayer written by Bernard’s secretary Geoffrey shows how the community at Clairvaux understood and celebrated the man-to-man love between Bernard and Malachy. He thanks God for these “two stars of such surpassing brightness” and “twofold treasure.”
As a monk, Bernard naturally directed much of his erotic energy toward Jesus Christ. This attitude is beautifully expressed in his poem “Salve Mundi Salutare” (Savior of the World, I Greet You). He wrote seven sections, each addressed to a different parts of Jesus’ crucified body: his feet, knees, hands, side, chest, face, and finally his heart.
The poem is traditionally attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux, although some modern scholars believe it may have been written by another Cistercian abbot, Arnulf of Leuven. It is also known as the “Oratio rhythmica ad singula membra Christi a cruce pendentis” (Rhythmical Prayer to the Sacred Members of Jesus Hanging on the Cross), or more simply as the Rhythmica oratio.
The original poem, in all its erotic glory, is generally not included in books that collect Bernard’s “essential writings.” It lives on in ancient, hard-to-find editions and heavily edited versions and translations that remove much of the homoeroticism and sometimes even add heterosexual references that are absent from Bernard’s original Latin. The original is also blessedly free from churchy terms like “Lord,” speaking only of the love between “I” and “thou.”
The poem is the basis for important musical works such as the hymn “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded” and the Baroque oratorio “Membra Jesu Nostri” (usually translated as “The Limbs of Our Jesus”) written by Baroque Danish composer Dieterich Buxtehude in 1680, more than 500 years after Bernard died. The cycle of seven cantatas is considered to be the first Lutheran oratorio. The entire oratorio can be heard on video at this link.
The rapture of this poem is expressed in the painting at the top of this post: “Christ Embracing St. Bernard” by Francisco Ribalta. The Spanish Baroque artist apparently painted this masterpiece for the Carthusian monastery of Porta Coeli in Valencia, Spain around 1625.
The website for Spain’s Prado Museum in Madrid, where it is now housed, states: “The scene is based on one of the saint’s mystical visions, drawn from one of the most popular religious books of the Baroque era: Pedro de Ribadeneyra’s ‘Flos Sanctorum’ or ‘Book of the Lives of the Saints,’ published in 1599.”
The whole poem contains 74 verses of five lines each -- way too many to reproduce here. But it is extremely hard to find, so a selection of the more erotic, lesser known verses are reproduced here in the original Latin with an English translation from by Emily Mary Shapcote. Her translation was published in the 1881 book “St. Bonaventure’s Life of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” The online version of that book contains the entire poem in its appendix.
In a few cases a computer-generated English translation is also included here because it captures the directness and immediacy of the original. Much of the homoeroticism is implicit in the fact that this love poem was written by one man to another -- from Bernard to Jesus with love.
References to this poem and numerous paintings of Bernard with Christ are included in a whole chapter devoted to Bernard in the 2013 book “Saintly Brides and Bridegrooms: The Mystic Marriage in Renaissance Art” by Carolyn D. Muir, art professor at the University of Hong Kong.
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To the Hands
Ad Manus
IX.
O Jesus, place Thy sacred Hands on me,
With transport let me kiss them tenderly,
With groans and tears embrace them fervently;
And, O for these deep wounds I worship Thee;
And for the blessed drops that fall on me.
Manus sanctse vos amplector,
Et gemendo condelector,
Grates ago plangis tantis
Clavis duris, guttis sanctis,
Dans lacrymas cum osoulis
To the Side
Ad Latus
VII.
Lord, with my mouth I touch and worship Thee,
With all the strength I have I cling to Thee,
With all my love I plunge my heart in Thee,
My very life-blood would I draw from Thee,
Jesus, Jesus I draw me into Thee.
Google translate version:
You happen to my mouth,
And I ardently embrace
SOAK you in my heart,
And a warm heart, tongue,
Me all over you.
Ore meo te contingo,
Et ardenter ad me stringo
In te meum cor intingo,
Et ferventi corde lingo,
Me totum in te traiice.
To the Breast
Ad Pectus
VIII.
Abyss of wisdom from eternity,
The harmonies of angels worship Thee;
Entrancing sweetness flows, Breast, from Thee
John tasted it as he lay rapt on Thee;
Grant me thus that I may dwell in Thee.
Tu abyssus es sophise,
Angelorum harmonise
Te collaudant, ex te fluxit
Quod Joannes Cubans suxit,
In te fac ut iuliabitem.
To the Heart
Ad Cor
VI.
O sinner as I am, I come to Thee;
My very vitals throb and call for Thee;
O Love, sweet love, draw hither unto me!
O Heart of Love, my heart would ravished be,
And sicken with the wound of love for Thee!
Per medullam cordis mei,
Peccatoris atque rei,
Tuus amor transferatur,
Quo cor totum rapiatur,
Languens amoris vuluere.
VII.
Dilate and open, Heart of love, for me,
And like a rose of wond'rous fragrance be,
Sweet Heart of love, united unto me;
Anoint and pierce my heart, O Love, with Thee,
How can he suffer, Lord, who loveth Thee?
Google Translate version:
Spread, open,
Wonderfully smelling like a rose,
Join you in my heart,
MARK and anoint it,
Who does what he loves you!
Dilatare, aperire,
Tanquam rosa fragrans mire,
Cordi meo te conjunge,
Unge illud et compunge,
Qui amat te quid patitur!
IX.
Mv living heart, O Love, cries out for Thee;
With all its strength, O Love, my soul loves Thee;
O Heart of Love, incline Thou unto me,
That I with burning love may turn to Thee,
And with devoted breast recline on Thee.
Viva cordis voce clamo,
Dulce cor, te namque amo;
Ad cor meum inclinare,
Ut se possit applicare,
Devoto tibi pectore.
XI.
Thou Rose of wondrous fragrance, open wide,
And bring my heart into Thy wounded Side,
O sweet Heart, open! Draw Thy loving bride,
All panting with desires intensified,
And satisfy her love unsatisfied.
Rosa cordis aperire,
Cujus odor fragrat mire,
Te dignare dilitare,
Fac cor meum anhelare,
Flam ma desiderii.
[Note that the original Latin has absolutely no references to brides or any gender at all. This is the only verse quoted here that is also included in Buxtehude’s oratorio “Membra Jesu Nostri”.]
XIII.
O Jesus, draw my heart within Thy Breast,
That it may be by Thee alone possessed.
O Love, in that sweet pain it would find rest,
In that entrancing sorrow would be blest,
And lose itself in joy upon Thy Breast.
Google Translate version:
Put in your pocket
Heart, that you should take a neighbor,
Joyful in pain,
With ugly and beautiful
That hardly contain himself.
Infer tuum intra sinum
Cor, ut tibi sit vicinum,
In dolore gaudioso,
Cum deformi specioso,
Quod vix seipsum capiat.
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*Quotation at the top is Shapekote's translation of:
Cordis mei Cor dilectum,
In te meum fer aflectum,
Hoc est quod opto plurimum.
Direct translation:
Heart of my heart, beloved,
You bring in my feelings,
This is what I love most.
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To read this post in Spanish / en español, go to Santos Queer:
San Bernardo de Claraval y San Malaquías: "el doctor meloso" y el arzobispo a quien amaba
It includes an original Latin-to-Spanish translation of the poem exclusively for Santos Queer by an important professor in Argentina: Dr. Luis Angel Sanchez, Professor of Latin Language and Culture at the University of Cordoba.
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Related links:
Catholic Queer Families: SS Bernard of Clairvaux and Malachy (Queering the Church)
St. Bernard of Clairvaux’s Life of Saint Malachy of Armagh (full text)
“Rhythmical Prayer to the Sacred Members of Jesus Hanging Upon the Cross” by Bernard of Clairvaux. Full text in Latin and English. (scroll down to find is as an appendix of “St. Bonaventure's Life of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ”)
Life of St. Malachy by Bernard of Clairvaux
Malachy of Armagh: Same-sex soulmate to Bernard of Clairvaux (Jesus in Love)
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This post is part of the GLBT Saints series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. Saints, martyrs, mystics, prophets, witnesses, heroes, holy people, humanitarians, deities and religious figures of special interest to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) and queer people and our allies are covered on appropriate dates throughout the year.
Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.
http://www.jesusinlove.blogspot.com/
Jesus in Love Blog on LGBT spirituality and the arts
August 18, 2016
“Womansword” by Kittredge Cherry will be published by Stone Bridge Press
“Womansword: What Japanese Words Say About Women” by Jesus in Love founder Kittredge Cherry will be published in a 30th anniversary edition on Nov. 15 by Stone Bridge Press.
The book provides a portrait of Japanese womanhood with linguistic, sociological, and historical insight into issues central to the lives of women everywhere. The New York Times praised it as “extraordinarily revealing.”
Before she became a minister and launched the Jesus in Love Blog, Cherry studied in Japan on a Rotary International Journalism scholarship at Kobe College and International Christian University in Tokyo. She wrote about Japan for many publications, including Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal. Cherry holds degrees in journalism, art history, and religion. She continues to blog on Japan at her new website, JapanAdvise.com.
Cherry's unusual journey from Japan journalism to LGBTQ ministry is one of the subjects she discusses in the introduction to the 30th anniversary edition. The new introduction also highlights many revealing, useful, and fun new woman-related words that entered the Japanese language in the last three decades. It shows how things have—and haven't—changed.
Michael Bronski, professor in the department of women, gender and sexuality studies at Harvard, has endorsed “Womansword” as well as Cherry’s more recent books on LGBTQ Christian themes.
“Kitt Cherry has a long, storied career balancing and brokering the values of tradition with the excitement of the modern,” Bronski said. “‘Womansword’ charts, though evolving language, changes that have radically transformed Japanese women – and Japan -- for decades. From tom-boy fashion ("Prince Lolita") to national discussions of a possible female emperor, Cherry captures the vibrancy of the new Japan. This book is a vital read for feminists, linguists, and everyone interested in how culture changes.”
Bronski has written extensively on culture, gender, sexuality and politics, including “A Queer History of the United States,” winner of the Lambda Literary Award for non-fiction.
Thirty years after its first publication, "Womansword" remains a timely, provocative work on how words reflect female roles in modern Japan. Short, lively essays cover identity, girlhood, marriage, motherhood, work, sexuality, and aging.
Emerging trends in Japanese culture, for example, have brought high-achieving “science-women” and opened the way for the androgynous “x-gender.” The Japanese government began promoting “womenomics.” Three decades ago Japanese women hurried to find a husband by age 25 to avoid becoming stale “Christmas cakes.” Now they wait longer to marry, but still risk being called “New Year’s Eve noodles” if they don’t wed by age 31. “Maternity marks” help them navigate pregnancy, while “retirement divorces” are on the rise.
The book will be available in digital format as an e-book for the first time in its 30-year history.
The New York Times gave “Womansword” a glowing review on Feb 7, 1988:
“A very graceful, erudite job… Brief essays that are packed with interesting linguistic, sociological and historical details about Japanese women and the words that describe them … Insights that will enlighten those readers who know nothing about Japanese women and those who do know something, those who do not speak Japanese and those who do. Many of the expressions Ms. Cherry presents are extraordinarily revealing.”
The new edition is also recommended by Ayako Kano, associate professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania.
“After three decades, ‘Womansword’ still cuts to the core of gender dynamics in Japanese society. With a new Introduction giving us updates on various topics and a plethora of recent words, this book remains one of the most accessible and intriguing guides to the status of women in Japanese society,” says Kano. She is the author of “Japanese Feminist Debates: A Century of Contention on Sex, Love, and Labor.”
Cherry’s specialties include writing about women’s issues, language, culture, sexuality, religion and communication. Her books have been translated into Chinese, German, Japanese, and Polish. She holds degrees in journalism, art history, and religion.
Stone Bridge Press was established in Berkeley, California, in 1989. It has some 150 titles in print, covering such Japan- and Asia-related areas as language, business, literature, manga, design, and culture.
“Stone Bridge is the right press for the new edition of ‘Womansword’ both because of its excellence in publishing Japan books and because its founder Peter Goodman was present for the creation of the original version at Kodansha International 30 years ago,” Cherry said.
“Womansword: What Japanese Words Say About Women” (30th anniversary edition) is available now for pre-order.
“Womansword: What Japanese Words Say About Women”
Print ISBN: 978-1611720297
Ebook ISBN: 9781-611729191
$19.95 / $25.99 CAN|176 pages| Trim 5.50 x 8.50
Pre-Order now from Amazon.
August 15, 2016
Mary, Diana and Artemis: Feast of Assumption has lesbian goddess roots
Mary, left, took over the Aug. 15 holiday from the goddess Diana, rightA mid-August holiday was once the festival of the lesbian goddess Diana (Artemis), but it has been adapted into a feast day for the Virgin Mary.
Midsummer feasts have celebrated the divine feminine on Aug. 15 since before the time of Christ. Now devoted to Mary, the holiday known as the Feast of the Assumption (or Dormition) carries the torch of lesbian spiritual power to a new generation on the same date.
Saint Mary, mother of Jesus, is honored by churches on Aug. 15 in a major feast day marking her death and entrance into heaven. Catholic and Orthodox churches call it the Feast of the Assumption or Dormition because they believe that Mary was “assumed” into heaven, body and soul.
The connections between Diana and Mary raise many questions. The concept of virginity has been used to control women, but sometimes it is a code word for lesbian. What shade of meaning is implied by the “virginity” of these two heavenly queens? Did the church patriarchs substitute wild lesbian Artemis with mild straight Mary -- or is Mary more versatile and dynamic than many thought?
The Virgin Mary’s holiday was adapted -- some would say appropriated -- from an ancient Roman festival for Diana, the virgin goddess of the moon and the hunt. Diana, or Artemis in Greek, is sometimes called a lesbian goddess because of her love for woman and her vow never to marry a man. The ancient Roman Festival of Torches (Nemoralia) was held from Aug. 13-15 as Diana’s chief festival.
According to mythology, Diana preferred the company of women and surrounded herself with female companions. They took an oath of virginity and lived as a group in the woods, where they hunted and danced together. Homoerotic art and speculations often focus on Diana’s relationship with the princess Callisto. The god Jupiter (Zeus) lusted after Callisto, so he disguised himself as Diana and seduced Callisto in a woman-to-woman embrace. (For the full story, see glbtq.com.) The lesbian love scene is painted by artists such as Francois Boucher in “Jupiter and Callisto” (below).
“Jupiter (disguised as Diana) and Callisto” by Francois Boucher (Wikimedia Commons)
There are many more stories about Diana and the women, nymphs and goddesses whom she loved. The goddess Britomaris was another favorite of Diana. When the lustful king Minos pursued Britomaris, she escaped by leaping into the sea. Diana rescued her and, some say, fell in love with her. Diana also showed love for various princesses. She gave the princess Cyrene a pair of magical dogs and granted the princess Daphne the gift of shooting straight. The princess Atalanta almost died of exposure as a baby girl after her father abandoned her because he wanted a son. Diana saved her and, with the help of a she-bear, Atalanta grew up to become one of Diana’s beloved companions. And this is just the beginning.
Diana’s main holiday was the Festival of Torches or Nemoralia. Hundreds of women and girls carried torches and candles in a night-time procession through the woods. They wore wreaths of flowers -- and even put flowers on the hunting dogs who walked with them. The group hiked a few miles from Rome to a sacred site, the circle-shaped Lake Nemi. The dark waters reflected the moon and the torchlight of the pilgrims. There they left offerings of apples, garlic, statues and prayers handwritten on ribbons. Click here for a vivid description of the festival. Ovid, a Roman poet who lived before Christ, described the magic of the festival:
Often does a woman whose prayers Diana answered,
With a wreath of flowers crowning her head,
Walk from Rome carrying a burning torch...
Click here for a beautiful painting of “Diana Asleep in the Woods” by surrealist Giorgio de Chirico. Diana sleeps beside an offering of fruit, her bow and arrow, and her large black-and-white spotted dog.
Artemis of Ephesus
Aspects of Diana and Artemis were taken over by the church more than 1,300 years ago. The Festival of Torches became the Feast of the Assumption. The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus in Turkey was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, with an awe-inspiring statue of the “many-breasted” Artemis. The temple was destroyed and replaced by the Church of Mary. The Virgin Mary even assumed some titles once given to Artemis, including Queen of Heaven.
Books such as Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary
by cultural historian Marina Warner show how the figure of Mary was shaped by goddess legends and other historical circumstances, resulting in an inferior status for women. In the novel “Mary and the Goddess of Ephesus: The Continued Life of the Mother of Jesus,” former seminarian Melanie Bacon explores the little-known tradition that after Jesus died, his mother spent most of her adult life in a community dedicated to worshiping Artemis.Feminists praise Diana/Artemis as an archetype of female power, a triple goddess who represents all phases of womanhood. She is the maiden, wild and free, with no need for a man. She is the “many-breasted” mother who nurtures all life. She is the crone, the mature hunter who provides swift death with her arrows in harmony with the cycles of nature.
LGBT people and allies may be inspired by the queer origins of this midsummer holiday. May the Queen of Heaven, by whatever name, continue to bless those who remember her.
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Related links:
Are there any lesbian goddesseses?
Black Madonna becomes lesbian defender: Erzuli Dantor and Our Lady of Czestochowa (Jesus in Love)
Queer Lady of Guadalupe: Artists re-imagine an icon (Jesus in Love)
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Related books:
“Mother of God Similar to Fire” with icons by William Hart McNichols and reflections by Mirabai Starr presents a wide of variety of liberating icons of Mary, including a black Madonna. McNichols is a New Mexico artist and Catholic priest who has been rebuked by church leaders for making icons of LGBT-affirming martyrs and saints not approved by the church.
“Goddess and God in the World: Conversations in Embodied Theology” by Carol P. Christ and Judith Plaskow. Two pioneering leaders in the study of women and religion discuss the nature of God / Goddess.
“Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary”
by cultural historian Marina Warner shows how the figure of Mary was shaped by goddess legends and other historical circumstances, resulting in an inferior status for women. “Holiness and the Feminine Spirit: The Art of Janet McKenzie,” edited by Susan Perry, includes many black Madonnas in an art book to nourish devotion to Mary with reflections by diverse women.
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Image credits:
“Diana of Versailles,” Roman artwork, Imperial Era (1st-2nd centuries CE). Found in Italy. (Wikimedia Commons)
“Assumption of Mary” by Guido Remi, 1642 (Wikimedia Commons)
“Artemis of Ephesus,” 1st century CE Roman copy of the “many breasted” Artemis stattue of the Temple of Ephesus (Wikimedia Commons)
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Icons of the Assumption of Mary and many others are available on cards, plaques, T-shirts, mugs, candles, mugs, and more at TrinityStores.com
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This post is part of the GLBT Saints series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. Saints, martyrs, mystics, prophets, witnesses, heroes, holy people, deities and religious figures of special interest to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) and queer people and our allies are covered on appropriate dates throughout the year.
Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.
http://www.jesusinlove.blogspot.com/
Jesus in Love Blog on LGBT spirituality and the arts
August 12, 2016
Radclyffe Hall: Queer Christian themes mark banned book "Well of Loneliness"
A queer Christ figure is the main character in the world’s best known lesbian novel, “The Well of Loneliness” by Radclyffe Hall. She was born on this date (Aug. 12) in 1880.
The book was banned for obscenity in England in 1928, not just because it portrayed lesbian love, but also for using religious arguments to support “inverts” -- a 1920s term for LGBTQ people. Hall, a devoutly Catholic British lesbian, was herself pictured being nailed to the cross in a satirical cartoon from the era.
Radclyffe Hall
Hall (1880-1943) is widely recognized as a pioneering lesbian (or perhaps transgender) author. But her Christian side is often downplayed because of the conflict between Christianity and homosexuality -- what was then called “congenital sexual inversion.” Hall lived with those contradictions and tried to reconcile them in her books. Today the Jesus in Love Blog focuses on the role of Christianity in Hall’s life and work.
“The Well of Loneliness” ends with a desperate prayer that has been echoed by countless LGBTQ people and still rings true now. The prayer is uttered by the novel’s protagonist, Stephen Gordon. She was born on Christmas Eve and named after the first Christian martyr. As a girl she had a dream “that in some queer way she was Jesus.” Like Hall, Stephen grows up to become a masculine woman who wears men’s clothes, has romantic relationships with women, and identifies as an “invert.”
At the climax of the novel Stephen has a vision of being thronged by millions of inverts from throughout time: living, dead and unborn. They beg her to speak with God for them, and then they possess her. She speaks for queer people from the past, present and future as she gives passionate voice to their collective prayer:
“God,” she gasped, “We believe; we have told You we believe…We have not denied You, then rise up and defend us. Acknowledge us, oh God, before the whole world. Give us also the right to our existence!”
Such themes led to obscenity trials for “The Well of Loneliness,” even though the novel is not sexually explicit. It gets no more risqué than saying, “She kissed her full on the lips, as a lover.” In Britain it was condemned and all copies were ordered destroyed. It was only published in America after a court battle.
British judge Chartres Biron was especially outraged that Hall defended LGBTQI people by affirming that they are part of God’s creation. In his decision Biron wrote::
“I confess that the way in which the Deity is introduced into this book seems to me singularly inappropriate and disgusting. There is a plea for existence at the end. That of course means a plea for existence in which the invert is to be recognized and tolerated, and not treated with condemnation, as they are at present, by all decent people. This being the tenor of the book, I have no hesitation whatever in saying that it is an obscene libel, that it would tend to corrupt those into whose hands it should fall, and that the publication of this book is an offence against public decency, and obscene libel, and I shall order it to be destroyed.”
Both sides of the controversy were satirized in “The Sink of Solitude,” a series of cartoons including “Saint Stephen” by Beresford Egan. One drawing shows Hall nailed to a cross wearing her trademark sombrero. A near-nude Sappho leaps in front of the martyred author and Cupid perches on the crossbeam. The crucifixion is witnessed by the evangelical Home Secretary William Joynson-Hicks, who helped enforce the censorship order.
Hall was upset to see herself portrayed in a way that she considered blasphemous. The drawing strengthened her resolve to write a modern version of Christ’s life as her next novel. Titled “The Master of the House,” it concerns Christophe, a compassionate carpenter born in Provence, France to a carpenter called Jouse and his wife Marie. He ends up being crucified during the First World War.
Writing the book was so spiritually intense that Hall developed stigmata on the palms of her hands during the two-year creative process. She believed it was her best book, but it got bad reviews and sales slumped. In America the book was seized not by police, but by creditors because her publisher went bankrupt.
Almost all references to “The Master of the House” describe it as a deeply religious book without further explanation. Actually it is an adaptation of Christ’s story for modern times. One of the only detailed summaries comes from the Delphi Classics edition of “The Complete Works of Radclyffe Hall.” It states:
“This 1932 novel concerns Christophe Benedict, a carpenter who lives in Provence. Almost saint-like, he is deeply spiritual, compassionate and experiences visions of a previous life as the Carpenter of Nazareth. He is attracted to girls, but refrains from having a relationship, held back by some unknown power -- his closest friend is his male cousin Jan, (but this is not a novel about homosexuality). When the 1914-1918 war begins, he enlists and is posted to Palestine. A close encounter with the enemy leads to a dramatic turn of events.”
Hall’s religious devotion dates back to 1912, when she was in her early 30s. She converted to the Roman Catholic Church under the influence of her first long-term lover, Mabel “Ladye” Batten. Her baptismal name was Antonia and she chose Anthony as her patron saint. Together they worshiped at London’s fashionable Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, known as the Brompton Oratory.
Hall and Batten made a pilgrimage to Rome, where a financial donation led Pope Pius X to bless them in a semi-private audience at the Vatican in 1913. “They went to confession and mass in St. Peter’s and bought triptychs, gilt angels and an alabaster Madonna,” biographer Diane Souhami reports in “The Trials of Radclyffe Hall.”
Batten, who died in 1916, was a Catholic convert too, as was Hall’s next lover, Una Troubridge (1887-1963). All three of them were part of a trend. A surprising number of upper-class English lesbians and intellectuals converted to Catholicism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in a trend related to the Oxford Movement. Conversion was a way of rebelling against English society while maintaining connection with tradition. Hall was also interested in Spiritualism.
An independently wealthy heiress, Hall gave generously to the church. In the 1930s she and Troubridge made their home in Rye, a village in East Sussex where many writers lived. The Catholic Church of Saint Anthony of Padua was constructing a new building when they moved to Rye, and biographer Souhami reports that Hall “poured money into this church” to bring it to completion and furnish it.
“She paid for its roof, pews, paintings of the Stations of the Cross and a rood screen of Christ the King. A tribute to Ladye was engraved on a brass plaque set into the floor:
Of your charity
Pray for the soul of Mabel Veronica Batten
In memory of whom this rood was given.
She paid off all the outstanding debts of the church… Masses, benedictions, processions and venerations stemmed from her beneficence.
One source says that she and Troubridge left their money to the church after their deaths. Hall died of colon cancer at age 63 on October 7, 1943. She is buried with Ladye in London’s Highgate Cemetery.
At the time of her death, “The Well of Loneliness” had been translated into 14 languages and was selling more than 100,000 copies per year. It has never gone out of print. For decades it was the only lesbian book generally available, and therefore it made an enormous impact on generations of queer people. It remains on many lists of the top LGBT books.
Hall is the subject of several book-length biographies, including not only “The Trials of Radclyffe Hall” by Diana Souhami, but also “Our Three Selves: The Life of Radclyffe Hall” by Michael Baker, “Radclyffe Hall: A Woman Called John” by Sally Cline, and “Radclyffe Hall: A Life in the Writing” by Richard Dellamora.
“The Well of Loneliness” has sparked controversy not only from conservatives, but also among the LGBTQ community. The novel is often criticized for expressing shame and self-hatred, defining all lesbians as masculine, and presenting a stereotyped butch-femme lifestyle. Hall has long been classified as a lesbian, but now there is debate over whether she was a transgender man. Secular LGBT readers tend to dismiss the religious aspects as embarrassing and irrelevant relics of a bygone era.
One scholar who affirms the role of religion in Hall’s work is Ed Madden, English professor at the University of South Carolina. His article “The Well of Loneliness, or the Gospel According to Radclyffe Hall” is included in the 2003 book "Reclaiming the Sacred: The Bible in Gay and Lesbian Culture,” edited by Raymond-Jean Frontain. It was originally published in the Journal of Homosexuality, where the abstract summarizes it this way::
“Radclyffe Hall's 1928 novel, 'The Well of Loneliness,' is repeatedly described as a "bible" of lesbian literature. The novel itself repeatedly alludes to biblical stories, especially the story of Christ. Yet there has been little sustained analysis of the biblical language of the novel. Most feminist and lesbian critics have dismissed the biblical allusions and language as unfortunate and politically regressive; religious critics have ignored the novel. This essay reexamines the biblical nature of the novel, especially its portrayal of the lesbian Stephen Gordon as a Christ figure. The study further claims a creative and interventionary power in Hall's use of biblical narratives and tropes, a power traceable in public reception to the novel and in courtroom reactions to the use of spiritual language in a text about lesbianism. By writing the life of a lesbian as a kind of gospel of inversion, Hall turns a language of condemnation into a language of validation, making her use of biblical language a kind of Foucauldian "reverse discourse." The novel's power lies in its portrayal of a lesbian messiah, and in its joining of sexological and religious discourses.”
Another scholar who writes in depth about the queer Christian aspect of Hall’s work is Isabella Cooper. She was a Ph.D. candidate in the English department at the University of Maryland in College Park when she wrote “The Passion of Stephen Gordon: The Messianic Lesbian Artist in Radclyffe Hall’s 'The Well of Loneliness.'” The article appeared in the Transverse Journal in 2011. In the article she states:
“The Well’s readers have frequently noticed the deliberate parallels Hall draws between Stephen and Christ; they have also noticed Hall’s identification with both. Some readers have mocked the novel for precisely this reason. Hall’s strategy of creating an alter-ego/ protagonist and identifying her with Christ reflects her understanding of her role as a Christian lesbian artist. She attempts in this novel to perform a powerful work of redemption for those whose desires society and the Church label sinful. In order to combat the stigma of sinfulness, Hall fashions (and speaks through) a protagonist whose Christ-like suffering and self-sacrifice challenge her readers, and whose ability (by the novel’s end) to reconcile her commitments to her faith, her art, and her sexual identity enable her to take on a messianic role.”
Hall would probably be the first to insist that she was no saint, but she is included in the LGBT Saints series here at the Jesus in Love Blog because was a pioneer in the effort to reconcile Christianity and homosexuality. Thank you, Radclyffe, for voicing a prayer from queer people of all times: “Acknowledge us, oh God, before the whole world. Give us also the right to our existence!”
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Related links:
“Radclyffe Hall, E. Lynn Harris, and Franz Kafka: Christianity, Queerness, and the Politics of Normalcy” by Margaret Soenser Breen (International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies)
“Joan of Arc and Radclyffe Hall: Inspiration and Influence” by Steven Macnamara
Full text of "The Well of Loneliness" free online (Gutenberg.net)
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Top image credit:
Lesbian author Radclyffe Hall is a crucified Christ figure in a 1928 cartoon by Beresford Egan
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This post is part of the GLBT Saints series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. Saints, martyrs, mystics, prophets, witnesses, heroes, holy people, humanitarians, deities and religious figures of special interest to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) and queer people and our allies are covered on appropriate dates throughout the year. It is also part of the Queer Christ series,which gathers together visions of the queer Christ as presented by artists, writers, theologians and others.
Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.
http://www.jesusinlove.blogspot.com/
Jesus in Love Blog on LGBT spirituality and the arts
August 11, 2016
Blessed John Henry Newman and Ambrose St. John: Gay saint and his "earthly light" share romantic friendship
John Henry Newman, a renowned scholar-priest and Britain’s most famous 19th-century convert to Catholicism, was beatified in 2010 amid rampant speculation that he was gay. Newman’s feast day is today (Aug. 11) in the Anglican church and Oct. 9 in the Catholic church.
Newman and another priest, Ambrose St. John, lived together for 32 years and share the same grave. Some say they shared a “romantic friendship” or “communitarian life.” It seems likely that both men had a homosexual orientation while abstaining from sex. Newman described St. John as “my earthly light.” The men were inseparable.
“Blessed Cardinal
John Henry Newman:
Lead Kindly Light”
by William Hart McNichols ©
Newman (Feb. 21, 1801 - Aug. 11, 1890) is considered by many to be the greatest Catholic thinker from the English-speaking world. He was born in London and ordained as an Anglican priest. He became a leader in the Oxford Movement, which aimed to return the Church of England to many Catholic traditions. On Oct. 9, 1845 he converted to Catholicism. He had to give up his post as an Oxford professor due to his conversion, but eventually he rose to the rank of cardinal.
Ambrose Saint John (1815 -1875) apparently met Newman in 1841. They lived together for 32 years, starting in 1843. St. John was about 14 years younger than Newman. He compared their meeting to a Biblical same-sex couple, Ruth and Naomi. In Newman’s own words, St. John “came to me as Ruth came to Naomi” during the difficult years right before he left the Anglican church.
After converting together to Catholicism, they studied together in Rome, where they were ordained priests at the same time. When St. John was confirmed in the Catholic faith, he asked if he could take a vow of obedience to Newman, but the request was refused. Newman recalled their early years in this way:
“From the first he loved me with an intensity of love, which was unaccountable. At Rome 28 years ago he was always so working for and relieving me of all trouble, that being young and Saxon-looking, the Romans called him my Angel Guardian.”
Portrait of John Henry Newman, right, and Ambrose Saint John by Maria Giberne, 1847
A portrait of Newman and St. John together in Rome was painted by Maria Giberne, an amateur artist and a lifelong friend of the Newman family who followed him into the Catholic church. She painted the couple sitting together with their books in one of their rooms at the Propaganda College in Rome on June 9, 1847. Standing between them is Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, who appears to be blessing and watching over the priests who loved each other.
St. John, a scholar and linguist in his own right, helped Newman with his scholarship and shared other aspects of daily life as if they were a couple in a same-sex marriage. John Cornwell, author of Newman's Unquiet Grave: The Reluctant Saint
, told National Public Radio that St. John’s support for Newman included “even doing things like packing his bags before he went away, making sure he was taking his medicine, making sure he kept dental appointments, that sort of thing. So it was almost like a wife, but without the marital bed.”They lived together until St. John died on May 24, 1875. He was only about 60 years old. According to a memorial letter written by Newman himself, St. John died of a stroke that “arose from his overwork in translating Fessler, which he did for me to back up my letter to the Duke of Norfolk.” Newman needed a translation of the German theologian Joseph Fessler's important book in the wake of the First Vatican Council.
In the memorial letter Newman goes on to describe their dramatic last moments together, including how St. John clung to him closely on the bed and clasped his hand tightly. Newman, unaware that his beloved companion was dying, asked others to unlock his fingers before saying the goodbye that turned out to be their last.
Newman was heartbroken by the loss of his beloved partner. “I have always thought no bereavement was equal to that of a husband’s or wife’s, but I feel it difficult to believe that anyone’s sorrow can be greater than mine,” Newman wrote.
He insisted three different times that he be buried in the same grave with St. John: “I wish, with all my heart, to be buried in Father Ambrose St. John’s grave -- and I give this as my last, my imperative will,” he wrote, later adding: “This I confirm and insist on.”
John Henry Newman, left, and Ambrose St. John
Newman died of pneumonia on Aug. 11, 1890 at age 89. According to his express wishes, he was buried with St. John. The shroud over his coffin bore his personal coat of arms with the Latin motto, “Cor ad cor loquitur” (Heart speaks to heart), which he adopted when he became cardinal. Their joint memorial stone is inscribed with a Latin motto chosen by Newman: “Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem.”(Out of the shadows and reflections into the truth.”) They share a small grave site in the central English town of Rednal.
John Henry Newman’s coat of arms with the motto “heart speaks to heart” (Wikimedia Commons)
During the beatification process, the Vatican tried to violate Newman’s desire to be buried with his beloved companion. Vatican officials hoped to excavate and move his remains to a specially built sarcophagus in Birmingham in preparation for his beatification. Controversy arose as some LGBT activists saw the decision to disturb the shared grave as an attempt to separate them and cover up the queer side of Newman’s life. However when the grave was opened in 2008, the remains had completely decomposed, leaving nothing that could be separated.
“John Henry Newman”
by Brother Robert Lentz, OFM. ©
www.trinitystores.com
Newman’s legacy is wide-ranging. Because Newman was an excellent scholar, Catholic centers on U.S. college campuses are named after him. Newman tells his own story in his acclaimed spiritual autobiography, Apologia pro Vita Sua
. He is known for writing the poem “The Dream of Gerontius” and the popular hymn “Lead, Kindly Light.”His theology of friendship and his emphasis on conscience are both significant for LGBT people and allies. Although the Catholic church tends to frown on special friendships among priests, nuns or monks, Newman taught, “The love of our private friends is the only preparatory exercise for the love of all men.” He preached, “The best preparation for loving the world at large, and loving it duly and wisely, is to cultivate our intimate friendship and affection towards those who are immediately about us.”
Terence Weldon at Queering the Church explains how Newman’s teaching on conscience laid the groundwork for LGBT Christians today. “As a theologian, Cardinal Newman played an important role in developing the modern formulation of the primacy of conscience, which is of fundamental importance to LGBT Catholics who reject in good conscience the standard teaching on sexuality – or the high proportion of heterosexual couples who reject ‘Humanae Vitae,’” Weldon writes.
This post is illustrated with icons of Newman by Robert Lentz and William McNichols. Both artists faced controversy for their alternative and LGBT-affirming images.
Newman is honored by Catholics on Oct. 9, the anniversary of his 1845 conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism. Naturally Anglicans chose a different date for Newman’s feast day -- the anniversary of his death on Aug. 11.
With beatification, Blessed Newman is now only one step away from official sainthood. He is already a saint in the hearts of many, including the LGBT people who are inspired by his life and love.
His name is invoked in an official Catholic prayer:
O God, who bestowed on the Priest Blessed John Henry Newman
the grace to follow your kindly light and find peace in your Church;
graciously grant that, through his intercession and example,
we may be led out of shadows and images
into the fulness of your truth.
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Author’s note: I decided to write this comprehensive piece about the love between Newman and St. John when I discovered that it had not been done yet on the Internet from a LGBT-positive viewpoint. I was one of many bloggers on both sides who wrote about whether Newman was gay at the time of his beatification, citing a few facts. I thought I would just do a quick update to focus on his achievements and his relationship with St. John.
But as I got into the research, I was surprised both by how compelling their love story is, and how hard it was to find an overview of their relationship on the Internet. Details of their deep love for each other are available on the Web, but mostly on websites that aim to prove they were not homosexual. It’s odd how they end up supporting the very point that they are trying to discredit. So I put it all together from a queer point of view.
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Related links:
Was Cardinal John Henry Newman Gay? (NPR)
Was a would-be saint gay? (Time.com)
Cardinal John Henry Newman and Father Ambrose St John (Idle Speculations Blog) (with extensive quotes from Newman’s writing about St. John)
Reflections on the Life and Legacy of John Henry Newman (Wild Reed)
Author interview: "Queer Martyrdom from John Henry Newman to Derek Jarman" by Dominic Janes (Jesus in Love)
To read this post in Spanish / en español, go to Santos Queer:
Beato John Henry Newman y Ambrose St. John: Un santo gay y su "luz terrenal" comparten una amistad romántica
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Top photo credit:
A rare photo of John Henry Newman and Ambrose Saint John together
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This post is part of the GLBT Saints series at the Jesus in Love Blog. Saints and holy people of special interest to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) people and our allies are covered on appropriate dates throughout the year.
Icons of John Henry Newman and many others are available on cards, plaques, T-shirts, mugs, candles, mugs, and more at TrinityStores.com
August 9, 2016
Blessed John of La Verna: Kissed by Jesus
Blessed John of La Verna is a medieval Italian friar known for his visions of kissing and being kissed by Jesus. His feast day is today (Aug. 9). John also had an intense relationship with fellow friar and poet Jacopone da Todi.
Traditional writers have done “gender gymnastics” to hide the homoerotic content of John’s experiences, but Franciscan scholar Kevin Elphick proposes Blessed John as a queer saint in the following article written for the Jesus in Love Blog.
Elphick’s research included a trip in summer 2014 to John’s chapel, hermitage and tomb at Mount La Verna in central Italy. He ends his article with a vivid personal Postscript describing what happened when he visited Mount La Verna and touched the ground where John and Jesus embraced.
A stone wall surrounds the place where Jesus and John embraced in front of a chapel on Mount La Verna (Photo by Kevin Elphick)
Blessed John of La Verna
By Kevin Elphick
Hidden in musty libraries and on the sagging shelves of convents and monasteries are countless lives of the saints and blessed, gathering dust, and in many cases forgotten. With thousands of lives of the saints in existence, it is inevitable that some of these are our stories, the stories of LGBTQ saints and blesseds throughout the ages. One of the purposes of the genre of saints’ lives, “hagiographies,” is to ensure that the contemporary faithful might find examples from the past with which to identify, and personally recognizable models of sanctity to emulate. As such, the time is overdue for the LGBTQ communities to name and claim our patron saints.
One such candidate is Blessed John of La Verna (also called Giovanni della Verna, Blessed John of Fermo and Giovanni da Fermo), a Franciscan friar who lived in Italy from 1259-1322 C.E. While “gay” and “lesbian” are contemporary categories and not appropriate to use as accurate labels of historical figures, still our collective gaydar is often attuned enough to detect our kinfolk and LGBTQ ancestors even across the centuries. John of La Verna is one such figure that should attract our attention.
Blessed John is unique in that the tradition describes him as “another Mary Magdalene…” and is heavily dependent upon multiple female metaphors to capture his spirituality and personality. Given that he joined all-male communities of religious, beginning as a child at 10 years of age, it is little wonder that his psychosexual development might be effected accordingly.
John of La Verna is introduced in the classic work of Italian literature, The Little Flowers of St. Francis (Fioretti di San Francesco), a book which continues to be well-known and commonly used even today in the schools of Italy. Its author unknown, this work has described as "the most exquisite expression of the religious life of the Middle Ages"and for much of history has been the most popular life of St. Francis, in spite of the lateness of its authorship and its lack of historicity as a genuine source for the historical St. Francis. The stories of Blessed John are the final chapters of “The Little Flowers” (the “Fioretti”) and paint the culminating picture of early Franciscan spirituality and personalities for its author. As such, John is a pivotal and defining figure in this book. He is named John of La Verna because he lived with the Franciscan friars on Mount La Verna, the sacred mountain where St. Francis of Assisi had received the wounds of Christ as stigmata in a mystical vision. (The same mountain is called Alverna in Latin and is geographically known as Monte Penna.)
While meditating under a beech tree at La Verna, John had a vision of kissing and being kissed by Christ. The biographer Ermenegildo Da Chitignano places the apparition sometime before the visit of the Roman Emperor, Henry VII, to Alverna and Bl. John in 1312, following his coronation in Rome. Much later, after the beech tree fell, a small chapel was built there. It is known as the Chapel of the Beech (Cappella del Faggio). The courtyard in front of the chapel is surrounded by a low stone wall with an inscription explaining that it encloses the place where John and Christ spent time together.
The inscription on the wall around the courtyard where Jesus and John embraced says, “This is the oratory of Blessed John of La Verna where he conversed (spend time) with Christ our Lord. There are 200 days indulgence.” In the old system of indulgences, a devout visit to the chapel was said to remove 200 days from the visitor's time in purgatory. (Photo by Kevin Elphick. Thanks to Marco Wooster for translation help!)
Blessed John is described in the Fioretti as one of the spiritual sons of St. Francis, who because of his great wisdom, is the “glory of such a great Father.” After a brief biographical introduction covering John’s childhood, a defining episode from John’s adult life as a friar is recounted. This incident is set in the context of a period of a "dark night of the soul" for Blessed John. Following upon a three-year period of honeymoon-like intimacy, God withdrew the former palpable presence. Prior to this withdrawal, John had enjoyed "the mystical kisses and intense embraces of Christ's love, not only in interior spiritual graces, but also in exterior signs, as with an intimate friend."
In keeping with the Franciscan tradition, the author uses the language of bridal mysticism to describe John’s relationship with Jesus, so that the language of romance and physical intimacy serves as a metaphor for human union with the Divine. Perhaps anticipating discomfort from an audience reading of even metaphorical intimacy between males, the author engages in a sort of gender-gymnastics, the back and forth volley of which serves to off-balance the reader as to the given genders of Jesus and John. At various moments, they are each, independently re-gendered as female. Explaining Christ’s withdrawal from John in a dark night of the soul, the author compares Jesus to a mother temporarily withholding food:
"But He was acting like a mother with her baby when she withdraws her breast from him to make him drink the milk more eagerly, and he cries and seeks it, and after he has cried, she hugs and kisses him and lets him enjoy it all the more. So Brother John followed Christ ... with greater fervor and desire, weeping like a baby following its mother..."
Alternately Blessed John is likened to Mary Magdalene, weeping at the feet of Jesus.
“Blessed John poured out so many tears, that he seemed to be another Magdalene… lying at the feet of Jesus most sweet, he received so much grace that he was totally renewed, and like Magdalene, consoled and at peace.”
In addition to Mary Magdalene, the author of the Fioretti recasts John as the maiden of the biblical book, the Song of Songs. This book of the Bible celebrates an erotic intimacy between a woman and her male beloved, and is typically interpreted as an extended metaphor of the human and divine romance. Where the Fioretti describes Christ’s withdrawal from John, it uses the language of the Song of Songs and the person of the Song’s maiden to describe John’s resultant pursuit of him:
"... when his soul did not feel the presence of his Beloved, in his anguish and torment he went through the woods, running here and there, seeking and calling aloud with tears and sighs for his dear Friend who had recently abandoned him and hidden..."
Compare this with the maiden of the Song of Songs:
"I sought him whom my soul loves;
I sought him but found him not;
I called him, but he gave no answer.
I will rise now and go about the city,
in the streets and in the squares;
I will seek him whom my soul loves.
I sought him, but found him not."
(Song 3: 1-2, RSV)
For the author of the Fioretti, Christ is "the beloved Spouse of his [John's] soul." In turn, John's female transformation is so complete, that without Christ the Bridegroom, the Fioretti has him declare: "Without you I am sterile... "
Jesus embraces Blessed John at the beech tree in a 1521 painting by Aretino Intorno, located in the Chapel of Adoration at Mount La Verna
When Christ finally does appear to Blessed John, the Fioretti uses St. Bernard of Clairvaux’s commentary on the Song of Songs to explain the stages of intimacy which John will enjoy. First a kiss to Christ's feet in a movement of penitence. Secondly there is a kiss to Christ's hands, signifying the "grace to live a good life." "The second is given to those who are making progress." (Sermon 4, 1.1) Finally, there is the third kiss, a kiss of his mouth. The kiss of the mouth is contemplative union with God toward which all should strive. "O happy kiss...which is... the union of God with [hu]man." (Sermon 2, II., 3) As an aside, it is worth noting that for Bernard, this unitive “Kiss” is ultimately a participation in the loving “Kiss” of the First and Second Persons of the Trinity, who we know as the Holy Spirit.
The Fioretti’s dependence on St. Bernard’s commentary is explicit, as the earliest manuscript reads: “if anyone wishes to know this, read Bernard on the Song of Songs, who puts these stages there according to their order: namely, the beginners at the feet, those making progress at the hands, and the perfect at the kiss and embrace.”
“For he immediately threw himself down at Christ's feet, and the Savior showed him his blessed feet, over which Brother John wept … Now while Brother John was praying fervently, lying at Christ's feet, he received so much grace that he felt completely renewed and pacified and consoled, like Magdalene... he began to give thanks to God and humbly kiss the Savior's feet.”
Following Bernard's stages, Brother John next kisses the hands of Jesus:
"Christ held out His most holy hands and opened them for him to kiss. And while He opened them, Brother John arose and kissed His hands."
However, the author of the Fioretti deviates from Bernard’s stages, seemingly modifying them slightly for an encounter between the male Jesus and the male friar. Instead of Bernard’s stage-specific “kiss of the mouth,” it is toned down to a kiss of Christ’s chest:
"And when he had kissed them [Christ's hands], he came closer and leaned against the breast of Christ, and he embraced Jesus and kissed His holy bosom. And Christ likewise embraced and kissed him."
While there is explicit textual dependence on the Song of Songs and Bernard’s commentary on it, our author appears reluctant to paint the verbal image of Christ and John kissing mouth to mouth, content instead to modify the stages with a modest and reverential kiss to the breast of Christ. Franciscan tradition may have influenced this use of the image of kissing the breast as perhaps a greater intimacy—Clare had dreamed of nursing at Francis’ breast and St. Angela of Foligno in ecstasy kissed Christ’s breast—but it is more likely that our author was reticent to portray John and Jesus mouth to mouth in a kiss. With the backdrop of John as Mary Magdalene and Christ as a nursing mother, the reader might be understandably confused and distracted, but not so much so that two men kissing would escape their Medieval scrutiny.
Still, we are left with clear physical intimacy between John and Jesus. What is described here is not intended as metaphor or solely figurative stages, but an actual apparition of the bodily Christ to Blessed John. Where the apparition took place, Mount La Verna in Italy, a chapel and fenced courtyard mark the physical site where Christ appeared and embraced John. The author intends that the reader understands as fact that John and Jesus kissed, embraced, and became progressively more intimate in this holy place.
Unique to the Franciscan tradition is a practice of redirecting “fleshly” interests from earthly objects and instead to the incarnate flesh of Jesus. If the human inclination is to be enticed by human flesh, the Franciscan tradition responds by exploiting this inclination and instead pointing it toward the God made flesh. The Franciscan meditative book, Stimulus Amoris , written in Italy during John’s lifetime, expresses this best. Writing from the perspective of God the Father it explains:
“It was necessary therefore, because the soul had become too enamoured of the flesh, for my Son to become enfleshed so as to entice it to his and my love.”
Divinity was hidden under flesh so that our propensity toward flesh might be exploited. Again the Stimulus Amoris:
“If, therefore, O soul, you love flesh, then love no flesh but the flesh of Christ.”
Kissing the flesh of Christ, John of La Verna is a perfect exemplar of this tradition. His kisses effectively move him upward from the feet of Christ in order to experience increasing intimacy with God, from his feet, then to his hands, further up yet to the very breast of the Savior.
While our author of the Fioretti appears to fail to reproduce Bernard’s prescribed “kiss of the mouth,” he clearly is comfortable with the image of John kissing the body of Jesus, feet, hands, and breast, and the two embracing. Equally, John’s community of friars at Mount La Verna, is not only comfortable with this image, they enshrined it in a chapel and fenced yard preserving the memory, as well as depicting it in paintings of the sacred event. And perhaps in the end the author of the Fioretti was faithful to St. Bernard’s required “kiss of the mouth,” for the apparition concludes with Christ responding to John’s physicality as Christ himself “embraced and kissed” John in return. It is left to the reader’s imagination to envision how Jesus kissed John in return. But it would be fully in keeping with Bernard’s theology that this beatific “kiss of the mouth” is the initiative of God, not the human. Our author would then be seen as pointing the reader’s imagination in this intended direction, but blushfully failing to paint it fully in words, only hinting in veiled reference to this erotic theophany.
Jacopone da Todi
in a fresco
by Paolo Uccello
A final snapshot rounds out the picture of Blessed John of La Verna: his friendship with his fellow Franciscan friar and poet, Jacopone da Todi (1230 –1306). Jacopone’s writings, his Lauds , are considered “the most powerful religious poetry in Italy before Dante’s time.” He too experienced a spiritual marriage to Christ, and has much affinity with John’s mystical experiences. His 63rd Laud is written specifically to Brother John and intended to console him during his dark night of the soul. Within Jacopone’s highly emotive writings, this poem of consolation to Blessed John is considered “one of the most moving pages of the Lauds.” In it, Jacopone sympathizes with John’s spiritual aridity and reminds him that “it is a great thing to be filled with God… wedded to reverence.”
Jacopone’s Lauds are filled with images of Christ as the one true Spouse for humanity, which in turn is his Bride. The shared spiritual vision of Jacopone and John is evident. As fellow friars, they knew each other as brothers. The depth of their relationship is revealed on Jacopone’s deathbed, when he summoned John of La Verna to travel from a distance to his side. Jacopone refused to die until consoled by John’s presence one last time. It was Christmas Eve, and he clung to life until Blessed John arrived, finally expiring only after Blessed John gave Eucharist to him, communicating to him the flesh of their shared Bridegroom, as Jacopone passed over to the eternal wedding feast. Jacopone trusted only Blessed John to deliver him safely into the embrace of their Beloved.
After many years devoted to contemplation at La Verna, John spent his later years preaching in Florence, Pisa, Siena and other Italian towns. He died at Mount La Verna at age 63 on Aug. 9, 1322.
By his example, John of La Verna urges us also to enter into the same embrace of Jesus our true Spouse. He teaches us that the flesh of Christ is sure refuge, and physical intimacy with Christ certain salvation. He recalls for us the maxim that “The flesh is the hinge of salvation.” Blessed John of La Verna clung to the flesh of Jesus and kissed his holy body, knowing it to be his salvation. He enjoyed the touch of Jesus upon his own flesh and the warm embrace of the Savior. Like Mary Magdalene with whom he is compared, John kissed the sacred feet of his Savior. But in contrast to the Magdalene, Jesus did not say to him “Touch me not.” (John 20:17 KJV) Instead, John finds in Jesus a responsive Lover who “likewise embraced and kissed him” in return. In John of La Verna we find an erotic spirituality healthily directed by a male devotee toward a fully human male Jesus. And this literary and Franciscan tradition not only tolerates John of La Verna’s homoerotic mysticism, it presents it as paradigmatic and exemplary. Let us also celebrate John’s erotic spirituality and imitate his passionate kisses and embraces. For our LGBTQ communities, John of La Verna is already a patron saint and model for own spiritual journeys. In him we have heard our own stories and now travel similarly wooded paths toward our own encounter with the Divine Beloved.
Postscript: My trip to
Blessed John’s mountain in Italy
By Kevin Elphick
In June of 2014, I had the privilege to visit Mount La Verna with a pilgrim group. While St. Francis and his stigmata were the central focus of La Verna, I was keenly conscious that this holy mountain had also been Blessed John’s home, along with his community of brother friars. I wanted to visit John’s sepulchre, his chapel, and his hermitage, and to know something of the wildness of Mount La Verna that had contributed to John’s earthy spirituality.
Tomb of Blessed John of La Verna (Wikipedia.org)
At the Sanctuary of La Verna, the sepulchre of Blessed John is found just to the left, inside the Basilica. There, with the interior darkened, I approached and knelt to pray, placing my hand upon his sepulchre. I had brought along with me small religious medals to touch to the sepulchre, so that I could later share these with friends as relics, touched to his blessed resting place. A Franciscan friar, Fr. Mario, sat nearby in a confessional, agreeing to bless these medals only after I hesitantly entered the penitent’s side. He invoked a lengthy prayer in Italian, made the sign of the cross (which I imitated, touching my forehead, shoulders and chest), followed by my profuse thanks to him in English.
From the Basilica, I climbed further up the mountain, eventually reaching the Chapel of Blessed John, with its low, fenced courtyard protecting the sacred space where Jesus and John had embraced. On a nearby path, a group of exuberant schoolchildren were led past on an outing, flags carried at the beginning and end of their line. I found the chapel door closed and secured with a rusty lock, so I was content to pay reverence by solely kissing the lintel of the door. Turning to the courtyard, I knelt and touched the ground. I removed the cross from about my neck and placed it on the soil, hoping that it would touch the same spot where Jesus and John had stood, venerating the ground on which they walked. After some time spent reflecting on their profound love, I rose and continued further up Mount La Verna.
Hermitage where Blessed John lived (photo by Kevin Elphick)
I found myself especially drawn to his hermitage, perched higher on the mountainside, but surrounded by steep, craggy rocks, and plunging precipices. I was reminded of the verse from the Song of Songs:
“O my dove, hiding in the clefts of the rock,
in the hiding places on the mountainside,
show me your face, let me hear your voice;
for your voice is sweet, and your face lovely.” (2:14)
John had been that beautiful dove, hidden away in this mountaintop hermitage, accessible only to his Beloved. With steep terrain surrounding his hermitage, I could only touch one side of the building, able to peer in just one window. I was increasingly convinced that the hermitage’s inaccessibility was intentional, so that John might be alone with his Beloved:
“I charge you O daughters of Jerusalem…
do not disturb or awaken my Love
until he pleases.” (2:7)
I could draw only this close, only this near. I knew that just beyond, together they rested, scarcely visible, not to be disturbed from their shared connubial rest. Quietly I pressed my hand to the hermitage’s stone wall ‘til my breathing slowed to their same pace, and together we sighed as these Lovers nestled, pulling their bodies closer in satiated contentment. Sanctity was palpable here, like a mist which begets dewfall.
As I walked away, a slight glimmer caught my eye, something small nestled in a rock outcropping, delicate and fashioned. Looking closer, I discovered the smallest of crèches-- just the Babe in a manger, accompanied solely by a calf-- nothing more. An act of devotion by another pilgrim, left to honor the memory of Jesus and John. And nothing could have been more fitting. For when that Babe was born, heaven and earth were wedded. The human and the Divine were betrothed. Jesus was already on his way to meet Blessed John. And I had found what I sought at La Verna.
[1] "Fioretti di San Francesco d'Assisi". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913.
[2] Quotations from the Fioretti are taken from The Little Flowers of St. Francis, trans. Raphael Brown (NY: Image Books, 1958) and Francis of Assisi: Early Documents: the Prophet (NY: New City Press, 2001). The latter is the more definitive resource for accuracy of translation and manuscript tradition.
[3] Early Documents, p. 533.
[4] Love's Prompting and Canticle of One who is Poor for the Beloved (Phoenix, AZ: Tau Publishing, 2013), p. 38.
[5] Stimulus Divini Amoris: That is The Goad of Divine Love (NY: Benziger Brothers, 1907), p. 3. Love’s Prompting and The Goad of Divine Love, although differently named, are both English renderings of the Stimulus Amoris.
[6] Jacopone da Todi: The Lauds, NY: Paulist Press, 1982. p. xix.
[7] Ibid. p. 59.
[8] Ibid. p. 193.
[9] “Caro cardo salutis.” Tertullian, De resurrectione carnis, VIII.
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Kevin Elphick
Kevin Elphick is both a Franciscan scholar and a supervisor on a suicide prevention hotline in New York. He wrote a thesis on “Gender Liminality in the Franciscan Sources” for a master’s degree in Franciscan studies from St. Bonaventure University in New York. Elphick also has a master's degree in Religious Studies from Mundelein College in Chicago and a Doctorate in Ministry from Graduate Theological Foundation with a focus in ecumenism. He writes regularly for the Jesus in Love Blog about queer Franciscan subjects, including Francis of Assisi and Madre Juana de la Cruz. Elphick joined the Sisters of St. Francis in New York as a lay associate on Aug. 17, 2014.
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Related links:
John of La Verna (Wikipedia.org)
Blessed John of Fermo (NewAdvent.org)
Photo album of Kevin Elphick’s trip to La Verna
To read this post in Spanish / en español, go to Santos Queer:
Beato Juan de La Verna: Un fraile besado por Jesús
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Top image credit:Jesus embraces Blessed John of La Verna at the beech tree (from an 1883 biography by Ermenegildo Da Chitignano)
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This post is part of the LGBTQ Saints series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. Saints, martyrs, mystics, prophets, witnesses, heroes, holy people, humanitarians, deities and religious figures of special interest to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) and queer people and our allies are covered on appropriate dates throughout the year. It is also part of the Queer Christ series, which gathers together visions of the queer Christ as presented by artists, writers, theologians and others.
August 8, 2016
Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Eberhard Bethge: Anti-Nazi theologians and soulmates
Influential German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Nazi dissident whom many scholars believe experienced same-sex attraction.
Speculation about his likely gay orientation focuses on his love for Eberhard Bethge, who was his best friend, confidant and biographer.
The possibility of a gay Bonhoeffer is especially significant because conservatives use him as a role model for government resistance in their opposition to marriage equality.
Brave and brilliant, Bonhoeffer is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential theologians of the 20th century. Revered by both the secular Left and the religious Right, he was executed by the Nazis for opposing Hitler.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, left, and Eberhard Bethge
“Bonhoeffer’s relationship with Bethge had always strained toward the achievement of a romantic love” while remaining “ever chaste,” writes religion professor Charles Marsh in “Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”
The 2014 biography provides a detailed examination of the love between the two men, who were both theologians in the Nazi resistance. The book cites much evidence of their close friendship: They shared a joint bank account, gave gifts together and sent Christmas cards signed, “Dietrich and Eberhard.” The pair played piano together at all hours, read books aloud to each other, planned elaborate vacations together, attended church together and slept together near the fire. In his will, Bonhoeffer bequeathed Bethge his money, car, music, clothing and books, while granting his female fiance only a memento of her choice from his belongings.
Bonhoeffer never acknowledged his sexual desire for Bethge, so his life may at first appear to be an unlikely source of inspiration for LBGTQ people, but as he himself said, “There is meaning in every journey that is unknown to the traveler.”
His actual theology is complex, inspiring all sides without falling neatly into any of today’s political categories. His work helped motivate liberation movements, including the U.S. Civil Rights movement, the South African anti-Apartheid movement and the anti-communist democratic movement of Eastern Europe.
Bonhoeffer is also popular with evangelical conservatives, who identify with his theology of resisting immoral government. When the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in 2015, many conservatives called it a “Bonhoeffer moment” that required civil disobedience.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Feb. 4, 1906 - April 9, 1945) was born in the Prussian city of Breslau and grew up in a prominent upper middle-class German family of scientists and doctors. They had a humanistic outlook and discouraged him from studying theology, but he did it anyway. His theological education included studying under Reinhold Niebuhr at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, where Bonhoeffer also got involved in the African American church community.
Serving as a Lutheran pastor in Germany between World War I and World War II, he denounced Nazi antisemitism as heresy and called on the church to defend victims of state violence. (Some still accuse him of expressing the anti-Jewish bias of Christian tradition.)
Eberhard Bethge (Aug. 28, 1909 - March 18, 2000), the slim, gentle son of a minister, was three years younger than Bonhoeffer. He described himself as “a country boy” from the province of Saxony. The two men met and quickly became friends in 1935 when Bethge was a student in Bonhoeffer’s first class at an underground anti-Nazi seminary in a place called Finkenwalde.
“Bonhoeffer also was in love with Eberhard, and wanted in some fashion to secure a spiritual marriage of sorts, and Eberhard could not and did not want to finally accept that,” Marsh explained in an interview with Religion and Politics about his biography “Strange Glory.”
Their friendship is also detailed, with less speculation about its homoerotic character, in the biography “Daring, Trusting Spirit: Bonhoeffer's Friend Eberhard Bethge” by John W. de Gruchy. The cover features a rare photo of the two soulmates together.
Bonhoeffer and Bethge stand together on the cover of "Daring, Trusting Spirit"
Bonhoeffer did get engaged to a mysterious woman named Maria von Wedemeyer, but scholars such as Marsh dismiss it as an effort to remain close to Bethge, who had just gotten engaged to Bonhoeffer’s niece. His oddly distant relationship with his fiancé is examined in the 2016 book “The Doubled Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Women, Sexuality, and Nazi Germany” by Diane Reynolds.
The Gestapo closed Bonhoeffer's illegal seminary in 1937, the same year that he published his best-known book, “The Cost of Discipleship.” It spells out what it means to follow Christ in the modern world with dangerously immoral government.
The classic book opens with the words, “Cheap grace is the mortal enemy of our church. Our struggle today is for costly grace.” Bonhoeffer’s thoughts on “cheap grace” are eloquent and often quoted. Recent scholarship shows that he borrowed the term “cheap grace” from Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., then-pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem where Bonhoeffer worshipped and taught Sunday school during his studies at Union seminary.
Bonhoeffer practiced what he preached, and his anti-Nazi activities eventually led to his imprisonment. Social justice iconographer Lewis Williams portrays him during the year and a half that he spent in prison. During that time he wrote many letters to Bethge, including one in which he writes the famous line, "God is the Beyond in our midst."
“Dietrich Bonhoeffer” by Lewis Williams
Bonhoeffer was linked with a plot to assassinate Hitler and the Nazis executed him by hanging in the Flossenburg concentration camp on April 9, 1945. He died soon after his 39th birthday, less than a month before the Allies liberated the camp.
Bethge was also imprisoned for his role in the Hitler assassination attempt, but he was rescued by the Soviet army shortly before his trial.
He lived on to spend the next 50 years preserving and promoting Bonhoeffer’s legacy. Bethge collected and edited Bonhoeffer’s “Letters and Papers from Prison” (which were mostly addressed to him) and wrote the definitive biography “Dietrich Bonhoeffer.” His long life included service as a pastor and teacher, and marriage and children with Bonhoeffer’s niece Renate.
Bonhoeffer is honored as a saint, martyr and theologian on the anniversary of his death (April 9) by the Lutheran, Episcopal and Methodist churches. He is one of ten 20th-century martyrs commemorated in statues above the Great West Door at Westminster Abbey in London.
A recent icon of him with a halo was sketched by Tobias Haller, an iconographer, author, composer, and vicar of Saint James Episcopal Church in the Bronx. He uses conte crayon on cardboard with an aluminum foil halo to evoke the unpretentious vigor of the theologian.
Haller is expanding the diversity of icons available by creating icons of LGBTQ people and other progressive holy figures as well as traditional saints. He is the author of “Reasonable and Holy: Engaging Same-Sexuality.” Haller enjoys expanding the diversity of icons available by creating icons of LGBTQ people and other progressive holy figures as well as traditional saints. He and his spouse were united in a church wedding more than 30 years ago and a civil ceremony after same-sex marriage became legal in New York.
The German theologian's story is also told in many books and in films such as “Bonhoeffer: Agent of Grace” and “Bonhoeffer: Memories and Perspectives.”
On Bonhoeffer’s feast day, the Episcopal church offers this prayer:
Gracious God, the Beyond in the midst of our life, you gave grace to your servant Dietrich Bonhoeffer to know and to teach the truth as it is in Jesus Christ, and to bear the cost of following him: Grant that we, strengthened by his teaching and example, may receive your word and embrace its call with an undivided heart.
Bonhoeffer’s own words live on, including these popular quotes whose relevance remains:
“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
“We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God.”
“We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.”
“To endure the cross is not tragedy; it is the suffering which is the fruit of an exclusive allegiance to Jesus Christ.”
“God does not love some ideal person, but rather human beings just as we are, not some ideal world, but rather the real world.”
“There is no way to peace along the way to safety. For peace must be dared. It is the great venture.”
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Top image: “Dietrich Bonhoeffer” by Tobias Haller
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This post is part of the LGBTQ Saints series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. Saints, martyrs, mystics, prophets, witnesses, heroes, holy people, humanitarians, deities and religious figures of special interest to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) and queer people and our allies are covered on appropriate dates throughout the year.
Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.
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August 6, 2016
New in August: LGBTQ Christian books "Same-Sex Marriage in Renaissance Rome," "Transgender Children of God," "The Prince's Psalm," “Christianity and Controversies Over Homosexuality in Contemporary Africa"
LGBTQ Christian themes in Renaissance Rome, contemporary Africa, and Biblical times are examined in new books this month -- plus a new children's book affirms God's love for transgender people.
The books are "Same-Sex Marriage in Renaissance Rome" by Gary Ferguson, "Transgender Children of God" by Megan Rohrer, the scholarly collection “Christianity and Controversies Over Homosexuality in Contemporary Africa" and "The Prince's Psalm," a novel about the love between Jonathan and David by Eric Shaw Quinn.
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“ Same-Sex Marriage in Renaissance Rome: Sexuality, Identity, and Community in Early Modern Europe ” by Gary Ferguson.
Same-sex weddings were performed in the 1500s at one of Rome’s major churches -- and surprisingly detailed historical records remain. This new book exposes the history, using original sources such as the trial transcript of a group of men executed in Rome in 1578 for conducting the same-sex weddings, their wills, and the travel journal of the French essayist Michel de Montaigne. The author reveals not only the men’s names, but also their jobs, friends and even details about their sex lives. He goes on to argue that same-sex unions are part of the complex history of marriage. The author is professor of French at the University of Virginia. Published by Cornell University Press.
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“The Prince's Psalm” by Eric Shaw Quinn.
Epic same-sex love between Biblical figures David and Jonathan is fleshed out in a historical novel by a New York Times-bestselling author. Beginning with young David slaying Goliath, the book shows how he won the heart of Prince Jonathan, heir to the throne of Israel. The star-crossed warrior-lovers face conflicts with King Saul and others as the Biblical story unfolds and David grows to become a king himself. The author uses artistry and restraint to present sex scenes between David and Jonathan (and each man with his own wife). With meticulous research and dynamic storytelling skills, he brings alive the dramatic same-sex love story at the core of religious tradition. The author is a celebrity ghostwriter who wrote novelizations of the TV series “Queer as Folk.” Published by DSP Publications.
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“ Christianity and Controversies Over Homosexuality in Contemporary Africa ” by Adriaan Van Klinken and Ezra Chitando (editors).
This scholarly collection investigates the complex role of Christianity in political debate about homosexuality in Africa. Contributors present case studies from countries such as Nigeria, Uganda, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Cameroon and Zambia, focusing on Pentecostal, Catholic and mainline Protestant churches. They examine theologies that perpetuate homophobia and discrimination, but they also discuss emerging alternative Christian theologies that embrace sexual diversity, social justice and human rights. This is the most expensive book that I’ve ever promoted ($120 on Kindle), but it's an important topic and you can get a lot out of using the free "Look Inside" feature to read the table of contents. The editors are professors of religion at the University of Zimbabwe (Chitando) and the University of Leeds (van Kinken). Published by Routledge.
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“ Transgender Children of God ” by Megan Rohrer.
Transgender identity becomes so simple that even a child can understand in this heartwarming book aimed at kids ages 2 to 8. “Transgender children of God play with both dolls and trucks. No matter what you play with, God will love you,” it begins. The books goes on to affirm God’s love regardless of what you wear, how you look or how you mix male and female. It also affirms transgender parents, although it can be read by any progressive family of faith. The author is pastor at Grace Lutheran Church in San Francisco and the first openly transgender pastor ordained in the Lutheran Church. Published by Wilgefortis/Lulu Press. Available in both paperback and e-book versions.
For more info, see First-ever LGBT religious children's books published.
Sample page from “Transgender Children of God”
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Related links:
New in July 2016: LGBTQ Christian books “Transgender, Intersex and Biblical Interpretation,” “Religious Freedom and Gay Rights,” “Holy Women Icons” and “Is It a Boy, a Girl, or Both?”
New in June 2016: LGBTQ Christian books "This is My Body," "Queer Virtue," "Mr. Grumpy Christian," Uganda's bishop Senyonjo, Mother Juana de la Cruz
New in May 2016: LGBTQ Christian books "Stand By Me," "Speak Its Name" and "Joan of Arc"
New in April 2016: LGBTQ Christian books "Justice Calls" and "Signs and Wonders"
New in March 2016: LGBTQ Christian books "The Firebrand and the First Lady" and "Space at the Table"
New in Feb 2016: LGBTQ Christian books “Brother-Making in Late Antiquity" and “Two Pews from Crazy”
Top 25 LGBTQ Christian books of 2015 named (Jesus in Love)
Top 25 LGBTQ Christian books of 2014 named (Jesus in Love)
Top 20 Gay Jesus books (from Jesus in Love)
Queer Theology book list (from Patrick Cheng)
Jesus in Love Bookstore (includes LGBT Christian classics)
15 LGBTQ Christian Valentine’s Day books, movies and gifts (Jesus in Love)
Q Spirit
Q Spirit promotes LGBTQ spirituality, with an emphasis on books, history, saints and the arts.
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