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A review by kamifrancis
Something That May Shock and Discredit You by Daniel M. Lavery
4.0
Delightful, funny, informative, and thought-provoking. Sometimes too high-brow for me (or I just didn't get all the references?). Christian in a way I deeply understand and appreciate.
• • •
"Riddle-posing night demons, the happy days of Noah, the hour of the Son of Man—one of the many advantages of a religious childhood is the variety of metaphors made available to describe untranslatable inner experiences."
"This part of Jacob's story begins abruptly. The angel does not appear or announce himself—in one moment he is not there, and in the next moment he is there and wrestling with Jacob. He refuses to name or explain himself, the two are alone as they struggle, on the far side of the river from the rest of Jacob's family. Jacob is not overcome, but his body is marked by the encounter, and he moves differently throughout the world forever after. Jacob is given a blessing and a new name but never an explanation; the angel is gone as abruptly as it came; Jacob never walks the same. Trying not to transition was the hardest work in the world. The nicest thing about transition was letting go."
"'Something irreversible' it to polite people what 'self-mutilation' is to impolite people: a quick way to reorient the conversation around their own discomfort with bodies. In both cases it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to have a productive discussion with someone struggling with a reflexive, implicit horror of flesh. Any mention of someone else's transitioning body sends them into direct and panicked conflict with the prospect of their own transitioning body; since this is a prospect they find unbearable, it becomes immediately necessary for them to unload their own desire and disgust onto the nearest suitable target."
"The answer, then, for Paul, is the body-that-is exists always in anticipation of and conversation with the body-that-will-be, that all flesh is not the same flesh but that bodies please God, that death is always followed by growth, that there are many different types of glory, that dishonor may be followed by redemption, that all things spiritual originate in the goodness of the flesh, that our bodies might came to reflect both where we have been and where we are going. As my friend Julian put it, only half winkingly: 'God blessed me by making me transsexual for the same reason God made wheat but not bread and fruit but not wine, so that humanity might share in the act of creation.'"
"Jesus in the Gospels tells a number of stories about the kingdom of heaven, sometimes also the kingdom of God; whether the two are interchangeable or merely closely linked is a matter of some debate. He does not spend a great deal of time explaining what the kingdom of heaven is, but in alerting others to its presence. It is like a seed, it is like a net, it is like a pearl of great price hidden in a field, it is like yeast, it is like a merchant who comes across a pearl of great price hidden in a field, it is like a king preparing a wedding-banquet and his uncooperative guests; it is near at hand, it is more than just near at hand but currently present, it is an internal condition, it is an external system of justice, it is expansive, it is restrictive, it is the enemy of wealth and tightfistedness, it is a gift that God takes great pleasure in giving, it is the engine that metes out not just justice but retribution and more than retribution, terror, it is mysterious and far-off, it is like children and for children, it is for the childlike, it is seen and unseen, capable of sudden and rapid growth, bursting through and out and up, continually emerging and becoming more of itself, more real by the second and already real, all-welcoming and difficult to enter."
"There are exactly two Modes of Gay Feeling, no more and no less. Mode of Gay Feeling the first is Total Domination, How Dare You, I Will Never Die, It Is Impossible for Me to Die, I Thrive On Being Misunderstood. It's all carefully balanced hats and perfectly styled teddy boy hair and pastel lapels and either having no sex at all or the kind of sex you can't tell your friends about because they're going to get worried for you, and it's wonderful and it's exhausting, and you're funnier than anybody else both because you have to be and because it makes sense and more than a little because you are firmly convinced that a movie crew is always just out of sight recording your entire life and you are playing to the cheap seats, every minute."
"She said: 'An umbrella keeps you dry by diverting all the water to roll away from you and onto other people. It's an enemy of the collective good and I'd rather just wear a raincoat.'"
• • •
"Riddle-posing night demons, the happy days of Noah, the hour of the Son of Man—one of the many advantages of a religious childhood is the variety of metaphors made available to describe untranslatable inner experiences."
"This part of Jacob's story begins abruptly. The angel does not appear or announce himself—in one moment he is not there, and in the next moment he is there and wrestling with Jacob. He refuses to name or explain himself, the two are alone as they struggle, on the far side of the river from the rest of Jacob's family. Jacob is not overcome, but his body is marked by the encounter, and he moves differently throughout the world forever after. Jacob is given a blessing and a new name but never an explanation; the angel is gone as abruptly as it came; Jacob never walks the same. Trying not to transition was the hardest work in the world. The nicest thing about transition was letting go."
"'Something irreversible' it to polite people what 'self-mutilation' is to impolite people: a quick way to reorient the conversation around their own discomfort with bodies. In both cases it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to have a productive discussion with someone struggling with a reflexive, implicit horror of flesh. Any mention of someone else's transitioning body sends them into direct and panicked conflict with the prospect of their own transitioning body; since this is a prospect they find unbearable, it becomes immediately necessary for them to unload their own desire and disgust onto the nearest suitable target."
"The answer, then, for Paul, is the body-that-is exists always in anticipation of and conversation with the body-that-will-be, that all flesh is not the same flesh but that bodies please God, that death is always followed by growth, that there are many different types of glory, that dishonor may be followed by redemption, that all things spiritual originate in the goodness of the flesh, that our bodies might came to reflect both where we have been and where we are going. As my friend Julian put it, only half winkingly: 'God blessed me by making me transsexual for the same reason God made wheat but not bread and fruit but not wine, so that humanity might share in the act of creation.'"
"Jesus in the Gospels tells a number of stories about the kingdom of heaven, sometimes also the kingdom of God; whether the two are interchangeable or merely closely linked is a matter of some debate. He does not spend a great deal of time explaining what the kingdom of heaven is, but in alerting others to its presence. It is like a seed, it is like a net, it is like a pearl of great price hidden in a field, it is like yeast, it is like a merchant who comes across a pearl of great price hidden in a field, it is like a king preparing a wedding-banquet and his uncooperative guests; it is near at hand, it is more than just near at hand but currently present, it is an internal condition, it is an external system of justice, it is expansive, it is restrictive, it is the enemy of wealth and tightfistedness, it is a gift that God takes great pleasure in giving, it is the engine that metes out not just justice but retribution and more than retribution, terror, it is mysterious and far-off, it is like children and for children, it is for the childlike, it is seen and unseen, capable of sudden and rapid growth, bursting through and out and up, continually emerging and becoming more of itself, more real by the second and already real, all-welcoming and difficult to enter."
"There are exactly two Modes of Gay Feeling, no more and no less. Mode of Gay Feeling the first is Total Domination, How Dare You, I Will Never Die, It Is Impossible for Me to Die, I Thrive On Being Misunderstood. It's all carefully balanced hats and perfectly styled teddy boy hair and pastel lapels and either having no sex at all or the kind of sex you can't tell your friends about because they're going to get worried for you, and it's wonderful and it's exhausting, and you're funnier than anybody else both because you have to be and because it makes sense and more than a little because you are firmly convinced that a movie crew is always just out of sight recording your entire life and you are playing to the cheap seats, every minute."
"She said: 'An umbrella keeps you dry by diverting all the water to roll away from you and onto other people. It's an enemy of the collective good and I'd rather just wear a raincoat.'"