Beauty, Brokenness, & the Cross

In this season finale of Beauty, Brokenness, & the Cross, we talk about the bizarre, sad, longing-filled story of Jesus' Ascension back to heaven. 

[01:02] Acts 1:3-11, New International Version.

[02:29] Here are some images of the Ascension, for your enjoyment. The Salvador Dalí painting is probably the most ridiculous, yet most accurate perspective-wise?

[05:44] Once again, Kathleen Norris' "Ascension." 

[08:49] This is the opening song, "The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us!" performed at the Tony Awards in 2024.

[11:26] Here is the full Lewis quote (from The Weight of Glory): "I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter.  . . . These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited."

[15:22] And here, my friends, is your playlist. I was so moved by the additional comments you included in your submissions. These songs mean so much to you!

(Music from Epidemic Sound.)

In this episode, our guest lecturer, Dr. Victoria Houser, will invite us to think toward resurrection through writing the body. Be prepared to take moments to pause and write throughout this episode.

[01:17] You can find Dr. Houser’s slide deck here. The slides include the quotes she reads from Hélène Cixous, Melissa Febos, and others. 

[01:55] Writing Prompt #1: Do you see yourself as a writer? How do we embody this identity of writers?

[04:50] Reflect for yourself: How do we write about the pain we want to keep, the wounds that stay with our bodies, even in the process of healing? Is resurrection a healing event?

[06:00] Reflect for yourself: How do we write about the wounds that keep us tethered to our bodies, to our death and resurrection, to the joy that we experience when we are able to throw ourselves into the deep color of night that surround these wounds?

[19:34] Writing Prompt #2: First, close your eyes and take a few grounding breaths. Let yourself find calm for a few moments. Now, place your hand where you are most in your body (your shoulder, your knee, belly, head, heart, neck, and so on). Hold it here. What story or memory from your life are you holding here? Hold this image in mind. Imagine that something in this story or memory wants to be unburied now. It could be something heavy, it could be something light, too. Whatever it is, we are going to write it to the surface. 

[21:16] This music lasts for about 5 minutes, giving you as much time to write. Feel free to pause for more time or skip to [26:06] and come back when you are able to take time to write. 

(Music from Epidemic Sound)

This week’s episode of the podcast returns to Hannah Dyer’s ideas of “reading queerly” and “refusing empathy” alongside Rhiannon Graybill’s “unhappy reading” to discuss the ethics of witnessing. How might we bear witness to the suffering of others without letting ourselves in the way?

[01:35] Grünewald's Isenheim Altarpiece and Jean Bertholle's Triptyque de la Passion "Hommage à Grünewald." 

[02:46] The Rape of Tamar is told in II Samuel 13. 

[02:55] I am struck by this 17th century French painting of the Rape of Tamar. There was no knife in the biblical account. In fact, the first verse of II Samuel says that Amnon “fell in love with Tamar.” (Very icky.) 

[05:52] Phyllis Trible’s Texts of Terror: I realize Graybill assumes you have read this book or know of it. It’s sort of like when a psych tech mentions The Body Keeps the Score. Like, you’ve either read it or people have talked about it so much that you might as well have read it!

[08:23] Of course we can never read a story without our own biases, histories, and lenses as a reader. But we can pay attention to those, especially our impulses toward a story and its affects.

[09:16] Maybe this is an unfair assumption on my part, that we want to be affected by the pain of others. Part of the refusal of empathy is. That we, in fact, do not want to be affected by others’ pain.

[11:11] Quote from Dyer, pp. 74-75.

[12:38] Quote from Dyer, pp. 77, 83.

[13:34] I hope you’re hearing in this the language of “grievability,” introduced in episode 3 of the podcast. In some ways, this episode parallels that one. Not only do we ask whose bodies are grievable, but we ask how might we grieve? in more ethical ways?

[19:27] CNN covered this story on its YouTube Channel.

[19:52] I credit this insight to Dr. Kate Ott.

[21:25] Coda: Kant for Babies

[22:17] Weeeeelllll, there were limits in Kant’s Enlightenment-brain about who qualified as an autonomous, rational human being deserving dignity, but we will bracket that for a second. 

(Music from Epidemic Sound.)

This episode is about Holocaust, broadly defined, as a representation of Holy Saturday. The episode is heavy, as the past two episodes have been, but please trust that I’ve emphasized education over discomfort for this episode. The show notes are organized a bit differently this time.

Table of Contents.

00 Introduction

01 Morts Sans Sépulture (Death without Burial) [03:06]

02 Word of the Day [03:23]

03 Etiquette [04:01]

04 Nakba [05:06]

05 144,000 [05:36]

06 Witness, Part I [09:30]

07 Stolpersteine [13:34]

08 Witness, Part II [15:56]

09 Altar [17:39]

10 Picasso [19:28]

11 Barbaric [19:45]

12 “Who Speaks After All?” [20:18]

13 October 7, 2023 [21:47]

14 “[…]” [23:11]

15 The Balfour Declaration [23:58]

16 Paradox [25:11]

17 Descent into Hell [26:25]

18 Practice Liberation [30:00]

Here are photos and citations.

(Music and AI voiceover work from Epidemic Sound.)

In this episode of the podcast, our guest lecturer Rachael Clinton Chen, M.Div., will introduce the historical arc of atonement theories in the Christian church and speak to some of the abuses of those atonement theories before offering more liberative understandings of atonement that do not glorify suffering.

Like last week, this episode deals with some pretty heavy themes. Please make use of your self-care curation as needed.

[03:07] Find Rachael’s slide deck here. The show notes will signal major shifts in her presentation. 

[06:30] From theorist bell books: “imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy.”

[07:58] Think the Nicene Creed which states who Jesus is in relationship to the First Person of the Trinity (begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father…).

[08:25] Part I: Penal Substitutionary Atonement & Disordered Imagination 

[22:23] Part II: Crossroads, Thresholds & Integrative Projects

[24:18] You will be invited to reflect on these questions prior to class (see our Lesson on Populi).

[26:06] Note: They are called Integrative Profiles now! And they’re also much more contained now. ;)

[27:31] The theologians Rachael names are not just her showing off: these are great resources for you in this class and beyond. See her last two slides for names and titles.

[32:15] Here Douglas is drawing on Audre Lorde’s famous statement that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”

[33:34] Part III: Embracing Tension & Encountering the God Who Groans

(Music from Epidemic Sound.)

In this episode, the question is posed, How have we become comfortable with the suffering of certain bodies? This question is explored through a 3rd century story of martyrdom and white American women’s true crime obsession.

Please take care: this is a heavy episode. I recommend you give yourself more than 25 minutes to listen. Take breaks. Move around. But do try to engage.

[02:59] 🔔 Image 1: An early text of Sts. Perpetua and Felicitas 

[03:54] 🔔 Image 2: A mosaic of St. Perpetua

[04:30] Septimius Severus was the Roman Empire’s first African Emperor. There’s an important historical rabbit hole we could go down by tracing North Africa’s influence on the Roman Empire and the young Christian church.

[06:21] 🔔 Image 3: A painting of St. Perpetua and her father and child 

[08:08] 🔔 Image 4: The wild beasts in the coliseum

[12:38] 🔔 Image 5: Sts. Perpetua and Felicitas’s shrine

[12:39] See more portrayals of female martyrs in this pretty cool virtual tour of the Chapel of Saints Perpetua and Felicity.

[14:53] My true crime portion was influenced by the Elisabeth T. Vasko and Lyndsie Ferrara’s True Crime and the Justice of God: Ethics, Media, and Forensic Science . It was also considered in light of Rebecca McKanna’s brilliant debut novel, Don’t Forget the Girl. 

[15:58] This quote is from Vasko and Ferrara, pp. xiv, xv.

[19:16] 🔔 Image 6: An Icon of Sts. Perpetua and Felicitas

[19:32] If you are intrigued by this topic, I recommend Judith Butler’s Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? It would be an excellent additional reading for this course. A shorter blog version of the book is accessible here. 

[20:24] 🔔 Image 7: Edwina Sandys’s The Christa

[21:06] 🔔 Images 8-12: Variations on the Pietà (You may want to pause the podcast.)

[21:17] 🔔Images 13-14: Michelangelo’s Pietà

[23:29] 🔔Image 15: Jesus crucified . . . .

My hodgepodge telling of The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity was from Margaret Miles’s Carnal Knowing: Female Nakedness and Religious Meaning in the Christian West (pp. 49-63); this succinct but a little melodramatic blog post by Brian O’Neel; and the primary source itself).

Fun fact: Did you know Perpetua and Felicity are the patron saints of same-sex couples?

In this episode of Beauty, Brokenness, and the Cross, Dr. Sawyer is joined by Billie Hoard to discuss Beauty, the beautiful, and suffering in light of Hoard & Hoard’s concept of eucontamination. There is a lot of food talk, so listen with a snack? Music is from Epidemic Sound.

[06:14] The three Transcendentals are Beauty, Goodness, and Truth. Within Christianity, these go back to medieval scholasticism (think Thomas Aquinas) but were drawn from Platonic and Aristotelian thought. Aquinas was heavily influenced by Greek philosophers whose works were rediscovered and translated into Latin and the vernacular  during the Renaissance.

[11:24] To be clear: I like that book, The Wisdom of the Body by Hillary McBride, a lot.

[12:10] Gnosticism is typically used as shorthand for a denial of the body and elevation of the mind and spirit. Historically it was a dualistic strain of philosophy (a Christianity) that not only valued the mind over the body/material but taught a kind of elitism of those who could separate themselves from the body/material world.

[19:33] I’m talking about Dr. Traci C. West. Scholars of critical race theory like Eduardo Bonilla-Silva argues as well that there is a kind of “racism without racists” that ignores the ways that individual people also contribute to racism. Understanding systemic racism is important (see Ibram X. Kendi), but so is paying attention to individual behaviors.

[20:19] My doctoral training is in ethics!

[21:47] “Second naïveté” comes from French philosopher Paul Ricœur’s work in hermeneutics. 

[22:01] The Anthony Bourdain video, worth the whole 5-minute watch. 

[28:23] Mystic Julian of Norwich: “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well…” 

[29:07] Because food is neither moral nor immoral. Our relationship with food may be, how we source our food may be, but food itself does not have moral weightiness (in my humble opinion).

[29:42] My friend Rebecca Wolfe wrote her dissertation on the intersection of purity culture and diet culture. 

[32:12] For me, it’s artichokes. 

[38:06] William Butler Yeats, “Easter 1916"

[38:36] “Beautiful Scandalous Night” 

In this first episode of Beauty, Brokenness, and the Cross, we explore some of the themes of this course, especially around meaning-making in the face of trauma or heartache. You will hear a creative non-fiction story Dr. Sawyer wrote many moons ago. Music is from Epidemic Sound.

[04:35] This is a real law and affects people like my friend who had an undesired abortion at 6 weeks.

[06:07] The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy, and Women's Work by Kathleen Norris.

[06:35] From Norris's poem, "Ascension": "Now the new mother, that leaky vessel, / begins to nurse her child, / beginning the long good-bye."  

[06:44] Quote on page 86 of The Quotidian Mysteries.

[09:15] If you would prefer to read the story yourself, find the PDF here. Then jump ahead to [23:45]. This is an unpublished essay Dr. Sawyer wrote to commemorate the retirement of one of her beloved writing professors. 

[10:15] You know this "socially-aware seminary" well.

[11:10] I had heard Damien Jurado play "Silver Ball" at the Fremont Abbey. The track was released many years later. I remembered the lyrics a little wrong: "Time does not heal." 

[18:17] "Affirm the shittiness": when I prayed this prayer, I had been reading Paul Tillich's Courage to Be, where there was a lot of language of affirming. Does it make sense now? Who knows. But it made a lot of sense to my 24-year-old self.

[19:53] This was a character from John Updike's Roger's Version, who spent a lot of time thinking about Tertullian and his obsession with Jesus' body.