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The Veil 5
Jun. 23rd, 2010 07:49 am"God does not give a rat's ass," the old hippie said, "about what you wear." She went on to say she was not certain that God gave a rat's ass about whether or not she had a body.
She has a point. But as a young woman, she pointed out, the hotpants she wore to work at Yale -- like the profoundly veiled middle-class coeds of 1979 in Tehran and Cairo -- were part of the revolution, and the outrage of the squares it predictably elicited was part of the martyrdom of youth, of the liberty to choose slavery.
I belabored her with the idea that the Quakers would not doff their hats as a matter of bringing down the priestly hierarchy which stands between God and the people. No, God does not give a rat's ass about the Quakers' hats. I belabored her with the idea that the Muslim coeds of 1979 putting on the veil is a matter of re-establishing the priestly hierarchy which stands between God and the people. No, God does not give a rat's ass about the Muslim coeds' veils.
So it's all men? I said.
She just gave me a look and tucked into her free-range eggs.
Well. As Ru-Paul says, we're born naked and after that it's all drag.
Part of the idea of transsexual gender reassignment, however, is a well-documented attribute of the spiritual experience people across time and space undergo. Scholars of experience including concentration camp survival call it variously veracity or radical nakedness, and you probably first became aware of the phenomenon when you fell into the existential abyss emplaced by Job, Mohammed, Rumi and King Lear.
Job (ca. 100 BC-100 AD) says, "Naked came I from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away...."
Mohammed (ca. 570-632 AD) says, in Yousuf Ali's translation, [Koran 7:26] "O children of Adam, we have provided you with garments to cover your bodies [literal: "shameful genital private parts"], as well as for luxury. But the best garment is the garment of righteousness [literal: "the fear and obedience (of God's) cover/dress, that (is) better"]. These are some of GOD's signs, that they may take heed."
Rumi (1207-1273) says
Love comes sailing through and I scream.
Love sits beside me like a private supply of itself.
Love puts away the instruments
and takes off the silk robes. Our nakedness
together changes me completely.
King Lear (1603-06) says, "Why, thou wert better in thy grave than to answer with thy uncovered body this extremity of the skies...Unaccomodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art."
I know of no one else aside from William James who has systematically surveyed the memoirs, biographies and testimony of people who underwent religious experiences, no matter of what creed. I hate to use him as the only source, but I don't know of any other written by a sympathetic atheist as James was. He describes the impulse toward veracity in his chapter on attributes of saintliness. He calls it "purity of life". It is an emotion spontaneously felt by people undergoing spiritual experiences all over the world. Whether or not it is of God, and whether or not God gives a rat's ass, is a mystery, the answer to which we may some day hope to know.
Purity of life, or the impulse for veracity James describes as follows:
The saintly person becomes exceedingly sensitive to inner inconsistency or discord, and mixture and confusion grow intolerable. All the mind's objects and occupations must be ordered with reference to the special spiritual excitement which is now its keynote....Mixed with this exaltation of the moral sensibilities there is also an ardor of sacrifice, for the beloved deity's sake, of everything unworthy of him....The ascetic forms which the impuslve for veracity and purity of life may take are often pathetic enough....These early Quakers were Puritans indeed. The slightest inconsistency between profession and deed jarred some of them to active protest.
The scholar of concentration camps, Terrence des Pres, describes "radical nakedness" as follows:
In the Nazi camps, a typical method of 'thinning out' sick and exhausted prisoners was to force thousands of them to stand undressed for hours in winter weather. Then the survivor's nakedness was radical indeed, nor could he escape the terrible conclusion that in extremity everything depends on the body. All about him stood that 'poor, bare, forked animal' which is, as old Lear said, 'the thing itself'.* None of us would wish to depend on something so puny, so frail and easily harmed as the human body. But for survivors, there is nothing else.
____________________
*Is man no more than this? Consider him well. Thou owest the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume. Ha! here's three on 's are sophisticated; thou art the thing itself; unaccomodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art.
-- Lear, King Lear, Act III, Scene iv
to be continued
She has a point. But as a young woman, she pointed out, the hotpants she wore to work at Yale -- like the profoundly veiled middle-class coeds of 1979 in Tehran and Cairo -- were part of the revolution, and the outrage of the squares it predictably elicited was part of the martyrdom of youth, of the liberty to choose slavery.
I belabored her with the idea that the Quakers would not doff their hats as a matter of bringing down the priestly hierarchy which stands between God and the people. No, God does not give a rat's ass about the Quakers' hats. I belabored her with the idea that the Muslim coeds of 1979 putting on the veil is a matter of re-establishing the priestly hierarchy which stands between God and the people. No, God does not give a rat's ass about the Muslim coeds' veils.
So it's all men? I said.
She just gave me a look and tucked into her free-range eggs.
Well. As Ru-Paul says, we're born naked and after that it's all drag.
Part of the idea of transsexual gender reassignment, however, is a well-documented attribute of the spiritual experience people across time and space undergo. Scholars of experience including concentration camp survival call it variously veracity or radical nakedness, and you probably first became aware of the phenomenon when you fell into the existential abyss emplaced by Job, Mohammed, Rumi and King Lear.
Job (ca. 100 BC-100 AD) says, "Naked came I from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away...."
Mohammed (ca. 570-632 AD) says, in Yousuf Ali's translation, [Koran 7:26] "O children of Adam, we have provided you with garments to cover your bodies [literal: "shameful genital private parts"], as well as for luxury. But the best garment is the garment of righteousness [literal: "the fear and obedience (of God's) cover/dress, that (is) better"]. These are some of GOD's signs, that they may take heed."
Rumi (1207-1273) says
Love sits beside me like a private supply of itself.
Love puts away the instruments
and takes off the silk robes. Our nakedness
together changes me completely.
King Lear (1603-06) says, "Why, thou wert better in thy grave than to answer with thy uncovered body this extremity of the skies...Unaccomodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art."
I know of no one else aside from William James who has systematically surveyed the memoirs, biographies and testimony of people who underwent religious experiences, no matter of what creed. I hate to use him as the only source, but I don't know of any other written by a sympathetic atheist as James was. He describes the impulse toward veracity in his chapter on attributes of saintliness. He calls it "purity of life". It is an emotion spontaneously felt by people undergoing spiritual experiences all over the world. Whether or not it is of God, and whether or not God gives a rat's ass, is a mystery, the answer to which we may some day hope to know.
Purity of life, or the impulse for veracity James describes as follows:
The scholar of concentration camps, Terrence des Pres, describes "radical nakedness" as follows:
____________________
*Is man no more than this? Consider him well. Thou owest the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume. Ha! here's three on 's are sophisticated; thou art the thing itself; unaccomodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art.
-- Lear, King Lear, Act III, Scene iv
to be continued
