Books read in June

 Pride month, we barely knew ye. I had a massive book hangover from rereading all of the Murderbot Diaries in May, so I didn't read as much this month. As always, DM me for trigger warnings. 

 

I was delighted to find that the second Dorothy Gentleman book available to check out on Libby, so I did so immediately. I adored the first book, Murder by Memory, so much that I bought it. I love what the author, Olivia Waite, has created with this series (queernorm retrofuturistic murder mystery). In this book, a baby in a basket has turned up on Dorothy's nephew Ruthie's and his husband's doorstep, which is especially mysterious because everyone on the ship is supposed to be sterile until they get to the planet they're heading to in a few hundred years. Dorothy investigates and starts to suspect foul play when the mother turns up in a new body with no memory of the baby. This story was very interesting and gave us even more details about the ship's culture; everything seems much more 1930s than I originally noticed. Dorothy's pocket watch is a smartwatch, but she has to write out paperwork by hand?? Come on. Also the cover confused me, as the people are all dressed like Victorians (1890s) for some reason? I didn't enjoy this book as much as the first one (it also suffers from Being Too Short), but I'm looking forward to reading the next book when it comes out.  ★★★★

During my last probably-unnecessary trip to the thrift store, I found and bought God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships by Matthew Vines (along with a huge stack of books). I was excited to get this as it'd been on my to-read list for ages. Vines is best known for his viral video where he gives a presentation that would become this book. He goes over the clobber verses (the ones Christians use to reject gay people) and their scriptural, historical, and cultural context, which I expected, but he also uses theological arguments as to why Christians should accept gay people, which I found interesting. While not a Biblical scholar (officially, as far as I can tell), Vines has thoroughly studied this issue, including people who take the opposite stance as him, and has tons of meticulous endnote citations (dozens per chapter). I did find it a bit naive for Vines to use the argument that even though the Bible reflects the deeply misogynistic cultures of its writers, surely no one today would actually think that women have no value (and therefore we mustn't think the same of gay people etc.). There are tons of Christians to whom the Bible's low view and treatment of women is a feature, not a bug. The book was written in 2014, though, and we had yet to see the virulent misogyny the rest of the 2010s would bring about. This book is very firmly for Christians; this would be a great book for LGBTQ+ people (themselves Christians or not) to give to their Christian parents to try to get them on board. I do recommend this, although I did find it slightly surprising Vines didn't use David and Jonathan as an example of a gay commitment ceremony in the Bible (he probably understandably didn't want to push it). ★★★★, lots of references to sex and sexual assault but that is not what chili ratings are for

 

The same day I finished G&tGC, I read Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong. I had bought this book during Bookshop.org's pride month sale, but I stupidly forgot to apply the coupon code; to add insult to injury, Bookshop.org had a free shipping weekend during The Evil Smile's sale event after I made my purchase. Ah well. I'd come across Ocean Vuong's poetry online and found it beautiful and impactful, but it was "Someday I'll Love Ocean Vuong" that pushed me over the edge to buy this book. This is an excellent poetry collection: beautiful and painful and nostalgic and raw and loving. I meant to savor it, but I just had to keep reading. May I one day write a fraction as wonderfully. ★★★★   🌶🌶

Trigger warnings for mentions of rape, sexual violence etc., attempted child death. I wrote this a few days ago.

So I’m sitting at the reference desk and this scholar dude who’s been using our reference books to write an article is on the phone/a video call with someone. He’s talking about all sort of Biblical topics with the person on the other end of the line, and he brings up how in a sermon he talked about this “really disturbing story” from Judges 19 where this concubine who (according to this dude) is abused by her master, is given over to a male gang who wanted to rape him, is raped all night and then dies at the door of the house the man is staying in. The man then proceeds to cut her body up into 12 pieces and sends each piece to each house of Israel, inciting a civil war. He used this story in a sermon about uplifting women!!!!! What kind of idiocy, of tone-deaf obliviousness, of lacking sense of what’s appropriate? What kind of idiot wouldn’t say to himself, a college-educated ministerial sort of man, “you know, maybe the story of a sex slave being gang-raped to death isn’t the best story to include  in my women-uplifting sermon.” He does not see anything wrong with this whatsoever! And what’s worse is that he’s LAUGHINGLY telling his friend how in the audience some teenage girl was making weird awkward faces, while some teenage boys were laughing--not that they were laughing at the rape and death, he assured his friend, but that they were laughing at the jokes he’d made about it. Or they were not jokes directly about the concubine’s rape and murder, but were still made adjacent to it. I repeat, he did not see anything wrong with this, and expressed no discomfort or regret about it.

Later on in his conversation, he tells his friend how in some church service he’d been part of, the girl in charge of telling the children’s story decided it would be a good idea to tell the story of when God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac his first-born son on the altar instead of the ram. And he expressed to his friend how the girl cheerfully and systematically described the story and how exactly Isaac [a child] would be killed on the altar to a bunch of five-year-olds, ending it with, “and that’s why we should always obey God.” I think this dude was quite right in feeling uncomfortable with the telling of this violent, child-death-adjacent story to a bunch of impressionable children, but I find it staggering that he could care about children being traumatized from a children’s story but not how women and girls could be traumatized by a story of rape and misogynistic murder in a sermon explicitly for them. I can guarantee you that there were women and girls in his audience that had already experienced sexual violence and assault, and they may have very well found this part of the sermon triggering. This lack of common sense and empathy  is just staggering to me and it could be the caffeine but I’m honestly shaking in rage. Shit like this is why I don’t trust men, even 'good' religious men.

Unsung Hero[in]es: In the Bible, What Did Women Do?

The Seventh-day Adventist Church, among many other Christian denominations, has been going through the issue of whether or not women should be ordained as pastors. There are already women pastors, my aunt among them, but millennia of patriarchal misogyny and male gender bias are hard to shake off. The senior pastor at my church, LLUC, has done a sermon series about some of the women leaders of the Bible in order to see what they and their roles may have to teach us about the topic of women's ordination. I wanted to write down the messages in order to remember them.

1. Deborah: Here Comes the Judge! (sermon video) – Don't limit the way God chooses to work. Don't think that God can or should only work in one specific way.
2. Huldah: Prophet to the King (video) – I think this one is something like, Listen to what God is saying regardless of who He's saying it through. God chooses to speak through whomever He wants. God's message is vital regardless of whoever is saying it, even if it's someone you wouldn't expect.
3. Miriam: In the Leadership Circle (video) – "Unsung heroes can have feet of clay." God can speak or work through flawed people. Just because a person is flawed, doesn't mean that God can't work through them or choose them to be leaders. Moses also made mistakes and was flawed, but people don't point to him and say that men shouldn't be leaders because of him. (I almost fistpumped in church when he said this. I definitely made that "sips tea" face)
4. Esther: Living with the If (video) – This sermon was given by a woman. The story of Esther should be sung and remembered because it shows us how to trust in God despite uncertainty and place our lives in His hands. We need to stand up for what's right despite our fear.
5. Priscilla and Junia: The Apostles' Colleagues – Today's church should look like the early church, with both women and men in its leadership and playing important roles.
6. Next week is Mary: A Woman's Place. Not sure yet which Mary it is.

I have loved this sermon series, not only because of the crumbs of representation for women that there is in the Bible and the way this shines a light on women leaders (even fewer crumbs for them), but because this is one of the ways my quiet, prefers-not-to-ruffle-feathers pastor shows support for women's ordination: by preaching from the Bible, the same place opponents of women's ordination turn to. This is simultaneously an ordinary sermon series on Bible characters and a Scriptures-supported feminist endorsement of women's ordination. I see you and I thank you.

The Secret of Kells

For St. Patrick's Day, Hulu has The Secret of Kells available to watch. I had been wanting to see it since it's about an illuminated manuscript/book that is real, the Book of Kells (largely considered Ireland's greatest national treasure, according to Wikipedia), and I heard the animation was amazing. I am so glad I finally got to watch it. It has pretty much everything I love: illuminated manuscripts, books, medieval stuff, mythology, early Christianity, gorgeous art, nature and forests, the triumph of light over darkness... I could go on and on. It's now one of my favorite movies ever. I haven't see anything this lovely and wondrous since the Morris Lessmore film. I love it so much.

Chi Ro monogram from the actual Book of Kells. [source] Chi and Ro are the first two letters of "Christ" in Greek, so it's basically a symbol for Jesus.

On Habakkuk 2: 18-19

by Doug Groothius

This glamorous gusto for godlets;
this voracious volition for vacuity;
this incessant insistence for idols.

Grasping a fistful of falsehood.
Consuming a stomach-ful of stupidity.
Filling a mind full of maddening mush.

Perform! Oh, you purveyors of nothingness.
Entertain our eyes, fill our years.
Enthrall our ears.
Give life to our living, and
deal the death blow to death.

We made you,
Now re-make us.