She Shot The Sheriff

Remember last week? Think hard. Because I got sick, and this story is, whoa, ten days old. What a weary pace.

Okay, close. She shot, if you want to get technical, the Minister. Who, tellingly enough, also happened to be her husband.

“They were a good Christian family. They always seemed happy.”

Said the neighbor. Who didn't have a clue. They never do—wait. This being the internet, more reports are coming in. I update myself even as we speak, and it gets worse: the, um, recipient of the fatal bullet was

“... a popular and charismatic 31-year-old preacher at his fundamentalist Christian church.”

Don't they know, they are always the ones? Didn't they have a shred of perspective on their own life, or take note of the rise and fall (okay, not usually by a slug from a forty-four. But sometimes.) of their peers? Why, you get fifty, seventy-five miles from any major American city and it is a veritable hotbed (sorry, honest pun) of illegal fucking, all the worse because these people are ... what is the word ... uneducated rednecks? Who, perforce, believe all their thoughts?

That is what this veneer of sophistication people such as myself wear ever so gracefully is; there is such a thing as intellect and culture, as maturation of spirit and mind. Honey, I have lived out there, and take my word for it, Ain't gonna happen. You take the worst side of Jesus—no, that won't work, h/He didn't have a worst side. But if He did, it wouldn't hold a candle to what these people make out of it, out of the raw material of their own split-off projections. Fundamentalism having no more to do with Christ than a plate a Denny's french fries. (I ate some. Once. I was desperately, terribly in love, and he, in his wicked wit, wanted to bring me to the level of just plain folks. Like he was? A brilliant, whacked-out poet? They sat in my stomach like a molten lump. For hours.)

Oh my, it gets worse. Google News just heard from yet another Stunned Parishioner. Female. They're always female. We are, after all, the gender that so dutifully holds up the world-burden of denial. Ain't that what we're here for? To play stupid, for the sake of family? Not to mention the charismatic thirty-one year old hubby with the hot pulpit. Not to mention the others of our gender queuing up for next in line to screw. Or be screwed. To pretend to be seduced. Oh we are a sorry lot, we women.

Not that I can possibly pinpoint the first gender to hurry forth and sin. Usually it's the guy, but only because he has the edge on that power-fuel mix, dopamine and testosterone. Which of course is also what makes him terminally narcissistic—the less estrogen in his shrunken little cabbage of a brain, the less of a fig it occurs to him to give about other human beings.

Set him up on a purty new pulpit, give him a little hair gel—okay, a lot—and oh my, talk about fatal attraction. Was I? Well, yes, for that poor man, and if it wasn't infidelity, it was still powered by the awful brain fuel, in which the world's nicest guy is a master tormenter, at home. In which case, I guarantee you, the size of his domestic sadism is, was, in direct proportion to the penalty he paid. Women don't exaggerate. We are pathetically fair in all things.

“It just doesn’t go together. Something is amiss, and we don’t know what it is.”

Oh yes you do, lady. But isn't it pretty to pretend.

Another No-Brainer

MAN AND WOMAN IN THE TEACHINGS OF THE BUDDHA:

     “In particular, adultery is as unwholesome for men
                     as it is for women.”

link:Bhikshuni Nandabala, Zen Nun

Are We Not Men

Rebecca Traister reviews Linda Hirshman: ‘Conservatives contend that ... feminism ‘failed’ because it was too radical, because women didn't want what feminism had to offer,’ Hirshman writes. ‘In fact, if half or more of feminism's heirs ... are not working seriously, it's because feminism wasn't radical enough: It changed the workplace but it didn't change men, and, more importantly, it didn't fundamentally change how women related to men.’

Well of course not. We love them, if we are heterosexual, who else is there? But really, is it our responsibility if men remain incapable and unwilling sticks in the mud, when it comes to perceiving anything beyond pure self-interest?

Sorry, but as long as his brains remain below the belt, you aren't dealing with another person anyway. Our power to deceive ourselves, to hope, to believe, is astonishing. Damn oxytocin. But the power of the male to tune out the very humanity of another person, in my book, that trumps everything.

I'm still waiting, twenty, thirty years later, for some piddling little sign of movement, somewhere. For some guy to say, “You know, it's just not right. What we're doing sucks. Maybe we ought to take a look at ourselves.”

Ha. It eez to laugh. No, really. An adult is supposed to be able to review his own behavior. I mean, hold up any standard of what a responsible, caring human being is said to be, in this society. Hold up the values of any spiritual tradition.

I think men have a problem as a gender, I think it is a prime source of the grief in this world, and I'm still waiting for a sign that they feel impelled to do a single thing about it.


link: Salon Broadsheet

Bennie, No Jets

"... a priest asked why the Church could not let women have more ‘governing’ roles. In the conclusion part of his answer, the Pope said: ‘Nevertheless, it is right to ask oneself if more space, more positions of responsibility, can be given to women, even in the ministerial services .... ’”

Do you see a problem with this response?

I see a problem with this response.

I just wondered if you see a problem with this response.