SUUSI report, days 6 and 7.
Jul. 27th, 2006 12:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivka(Finishing up my SUUSI report without my poor, deceased home computer.)
Friday morning, Michael and I reversed Thursday's deal: he woke up with Alex and took her out of the room so that I could sleep in (until 8!! holy cow!!), and then I stayed with her while he went to the Theme Talk. She didn't seem to mind going to breakfast twice (once with him, once with me). Michael had given her scrambled eggs and potatoes, so I just planned to cut up a banana for her while I ate - but she was much more interested in stealing pieces of omelet off my plate.
Once again, Alex and I spent the morning playing outside while Michael took his photography class. It was a stiflingly hot day, and even with sunscreen on I felt as though I had to insist that we go inside to the nursery for an hour or so, to cool off. Alex had a great time playing with a ball that was taller than she was, and building with Duplo blocks. She was very much into calling out the colors of things, and I was amazed to see how well she knows them: blue, green, red, yellow, purple, black.
Naptime came early - she was asleep by 11:30 - and I stretched out in the extra-air-conditioned lounge to update my LJ. Michael came back practically bouncing with energy after a great Theme Talk (he can fill you in if he wants) and a great morning workshop, and we took turns going to lunch while she slept. I had a lovely long conversation with the woman from Durham I'd met a couple times before, and we talked about our tentative explorations into Eastern spiritual practice as a method of counteracting the blues. (Mindfulness exercises in my case, yoga and meditation in hers.) All too soon, I had to run off to my afternoon workshop, "utilizing Christian myths," which I was taking with my dad.
What a workshop. About a dozen attendees, ranging from people who had no religious background and knew nothing about the Bible to a couple of people who had studied the Bible intensively and had a lot of historical and textual knowledge. The majority of us were looking for a way to rehabilitate our Christian pasts by finding a way to use the Gospels in a less constricting (for us) context. The leader was incredible: a wiry, hairy disreputable-looking guy, deeply funny, with a healthy mix of respect and irreverence in his approach to the Bible.
He retold a couple of Biblical miracles in a way that took the supernatural out of them, and presented them as stories about Jesus' deep understanding of human nature and his moral teachings. That seems to be his primary angle on Christian myths, but he didn't stop there and neither did the rest of us in the freewheeling general discussion that followed. We talked about three different ways that Bible stories can be reinterpreted: they can be retold, in modern terms, with a different emphasis, or (as he did) with somewhat different content; they can be reinterpreted, so that the story remains the same but its meaning is seen as substantially different from traditional interpretations; and they can be recontextualized, in which the story is seen in a new light based on the historical and cultural context in which it originated.
For example, we talked at length about the story of Adam and Eve's expulsion from the Garden of Eden. The workshop leader recontextualized it: he described the original lush, fertile richness of the Euphrates valley, which became a leaner, eroded, harsher place to live as the population increased and all the trees were cut down, and suggested that the Garden of Eden story expressed a racial memory of the loss of that easy-living paradise. Then several of us added reinterpretations of the story, centering on the concept of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. I pointed out that conscience, or the knowledge of good and evil, is one of the things that separates humans from animals, and that our individual and species-level development of conscience, guilt, and shame could be seen as the loss of a blissful, Edenic state of moral innocence. My father added the contribution that knowledge itself imposes a moral burden: with increasing technological sophistication you become increasingly aware that you can make either swords or plowshares, antibiotics or chemical weapons. We digressed further into the two different creation stories in Genesis and why they might be different, and who Lilith is and why she isn't in the Bible, and so forth. We had fun.
The leader recommended a book, The Five Gospels, which he said transformed him from someone bored with Christianity to someone excited by the possibilities of Jesus. It's a completely new translation (designated SV, "Scholar's Version") of the four canonical gospels and the Gospel of Thomas. The scholars who created it were particularly interested in separating the historical Jesus from the religious figure Christ-the-lord. They've color-coded (red, pink, grey, black) the supposed statements of Jesus in the Bible according to how strong the group consensus was that Jesus actually said the words in question, and the text is frequently interrupted by commentary on the probable historic and religious roots of each passage. I'm about thirty pages in so far, and I'm fascinated. I'd definitely recommend it to the Christians, and maybe some of the non-Christians, on my friends list.
Things went pretty quickly after the workshop was over. I went to the SUUSI bookstore to help my dad buy some CDs, because he doesn't see well enough to browse in a shop. We met up with Michael and Alex for dinner. I was already starting to feel a tremendous sense of loss - the week was almost over! - and had a hard time bringing myself to go back to the room and start packing. I didn't get very many things packed before it was time for church.
The last worship service was just amazing. My favorite of the three featured folk musicians opened with a simple, spare rendition of one of my very favorite hymns. The minister was fabulous enough that I've actually thought seriously about trying to make it down to her church in Manassas to hear her preach again. Her text was from Henry David Thoreau: "Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders." The reading was the children's book The Everything Seed, a lovely poetic account of the Big Bang. Her sermon was about human hearts as seeds, with the possibility of growing either great goodness or great evil, depending on how we nurture them. She also talked about the abundant spiritual and emotional harvest of SUUSI, and how one could make it last over the cold, lean winter months. By the end of the service, when we were all holding hands and singing together, I was crying.
I went back to the room and put Alex to bed. Then we sat around resting for a while before it was time to head out to Teen Way Off Broadway, a SUUSI institution in which the teenagers transform a musical so that it includes substantial SUUSI/UU content (especially in-jokes). We didn't get a lot of the SUUSI references - it would've helped to have once been there as teenagers - but the general story (an adaptation/update of the musical Wicked) was easy enough to follow, and the singing and dancing were impressive. It was hard to believe they'd thrown the whole thing together in a week.
Sadly, only one other person showed up for the poker night, which, admittedly, we'd planned and advertised at the very last minute. Also, I think we would've gotten more people if it hadn't been the last night of SUUSI, when people had a lot they wanted to do. The guy who did come was very gung ho about more poker at SUUSI, and roped Michael into agreeing to work with him on teaching a poker-playing workshop and running some tournaments next year. Michael and I talked to him for a while, and then hung out in the lounge cuddling and drinking wine. By midnight, I was ready for sleep.
In the morning, SUUSI ended all too quickly. Closing circle was at 9am, and very simple. We formed two concentric circles, as we'd done at Ingathering, and rotated them in opposite directions so that we were all face-to-face with each other one last time. There was lots of hugging and see-you-next-years. (By this point, any thought that we might not come next year had pretty much vanished.) We made one last trip to the bookstore to buy a Mugbook - a photo directory of SUUSI attendees (also sorted by hometown and by first name, for ease of identifying people you only kind of remember). And then, the long arduous process of packing up our things, hauling them across the quad, fetching the car from the distant parking lot, and loading up to go home.
It was hard to leave. I'm already thinking of next time. We'd use the childcare for sure, and maybe I'd see if anyone wanted to take a blogging workshop, and Michael would work with this other guy on a poker workshop, and we'd pack rather differently, and... and... and...
Is it really going to be a whole 'nother year?
Friday morning, Michael and I reversed Thursday's deal: he woke up with Alex and took her out of the room so that I could sleep in (until 8!! holy cow!!), and then I stayed with her while he went to the Theme Talk. She didn't seem to mind going to breakfast twice (once with him, once with me). Michael had given her scrambled eggs and potatoes, so I just planned to cut up a banana for her while I ate - but she was much more interested in stealing pieces of omelet off my plate.
Once again, Alex and I spent the morning playing outside while Michael took his photography class. It was a stiflingly hot day, and even with sunscreen on I felt as though I had to insist that we go inside to the nursery for an hour or so, to cool off. Alex had a great time playing with a ball that was taller than she was, and building with Duplo blocks. She was very much into calling out the colors of things, and I was amazed to see how well she knows them: blue, green, red, yellow, purple, black.
Naptime came early - she was asleep by 11:30 - and I stretched out in the extra-air-conditioned lounge to update my LJ. Michael came back practically bouncing with energy after a great Theme Talk (he can fill you in if he wants) and a great morning workshop, and we took turns going to lunch while she slept. I had a lovely long conversation with the woman from Durham I'd met a couple times before, and we talked about our tentative explorations into Eastern spiritual practice as a method of counteracting the blues. (Mindfulness exercises in my case, yoga and meditation in hers.) All too soon, I had to run off to my afternoon workshop, "utilizing Christian myths," which I was taking with my dad.
What a workshop. About a dozen attendees, ranging from people who had no religious background and knew nothing about the Bible to a couple of people who had studied the Bible intensively and had a lot of historical and textual knowledge. The majority of us were looking for a way to rehabilitate our Christian pasts by finding a way to use the Gospels in a less constricting (for us) context. The leader was incredible: a wiry, hairy disreputable-looking guy, deeply funny, with a healthy mix of respect and irreverence in his approach to the Bible.
He retold a couple of Biblical miracles in a way that took the supernatural out of them, and presented them as stories about Jesus' deep understanding of human nature and his moral teachings. That seems to be his primary angle on Christian myths, but he didn't stop there and neither did the rest of us in the freewheeling general discussion that followed. We talked about three different ways that Bible stories can be reinterpreted: they can be retold, in modern terms, with a different emphasis, or (as he did) with somewhat different content; they can be reinterpreted, so that the story remains the same but its meaning is seen as substantially different from traditional interpretations; and they can be recontextualized, in which the story is seen in a new light based on the historical and cultural context in which it originated.
For example, we talked at length about the story of Adam and Eve's expulsion from the Garden of Eden. The workshop leader recontextualized it: he described the original lush, fertile richness of the Euphrates valley, which became a leaner, eroded, harsher place to live as the population increased and all the trees were cut down, and suggested that the Garden of Eden story expressed a racial memory of the loss of that easy-living paradise. Then several of us added reinterpretations of the story, centering on the concept of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. I pointed out that conscience, or the knowledge of good and evil, is one of the things that separates humans from animals, and that our individual and species-level development of conscience, guilt, and shame could be seen as the loss of a blissful, Edenic state of moral innocence. My father added the contribution that knowledge itself imposes a moral burden: with increasing technological sophistication you become increasingly aware that you can make either swords or plowshares, antibiotics or chemical weapons. We digressed further into the two different creation stories in Genesis and why they might be different, and who Lilith is and why she isn't in the Bible, and so forth. We had fun.
The leader recommended a book, The Five Gospels, which he said transformed him from someone bored with Christianity to someone excited by the possibilities of Jesus. It's a completely new translation (designated SV, "Scholar's Version") of the four canonical gospels and the Gospel of Thomas. The scholars who created it were particularly interested in separating the historical Jesus from the religious figure Christ-the-lord. They've color-coded (red, pink, grey, black) the supposed statements of Jesus in the Bible according to how strong the group consensus was that Jesus actually said the words in question, and the text is frequently interrupted by commentary on the probable historic and religious roots of each passage. I'm about thirty pages in so far, and I'm fascinated. I'd definitely recommend it to the Christians, and maybe some of the non-Christians, on my friends list.
Things went pretty quickly after the workshop was over. I went to the SUUSI bookstore to help my dad buy some CDs, because he doesn't see well enough to browse in a shop. We met up with Michael and Alex for dinner. I was already starting to feel a tremendous sense of loss - the week was almost over! - and had a hard time bringing myself to go back to the room and start packing. I didn't get very many things packed before it was time for church.
The last worship service was just amazing. My favorite of the three featured folk musicians opened with a simple, spare rendition of one of my very favorite hymns. The minister was fabulous enough that I've actually thought seriously about trying to make it down to her church in Manassas to hear her preach again. Her text was from Henry David Thoreau: "Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders." The reading was the children's book The Everything Seed, a lovely poetic account of the Big Bang. Her sermon was about human hearts as seeds, with the possibility of growing either great goodness or great evil, depending on how we nurture them. She also talked about the abundant spiritual and emotional harvest of SUUSI, and how one could make it last over the cold, lean winter months. By the end of the service, when we were all holding hands and singing together, I was crying.
I went back to the room and put Alex to bed. Then we sat around resting for a while before it was time to head out to Teen Way Off Broadway, a SUUSI institution in which the teenagers transform a musical so that it includes substantial SUUSI/UU content (especially in-jokes). We didn't get a lot of the SUUSI references - it would've helped to have once been there as teenagers - but the general story (an adaptation/update of the musical Wicked) was easy enough to follow, and the singing and dancing were impressive. It was hard to believe they'd thrown the whole thing together in a week.
Sadly, only one other person showed up for the poker night, which, admittedly, we'd planned and advertised at the very last minute. Also, I think we would've gotten more people if it hadn't been the last night of SUUSI, when people had a lot they wanted to do. The guy who did come was very gung ho about more poker at SUUSI, and roped Michael into agreeing to work with him on teaching a poker-playing workshop and running some tournaments next year. Michael and I talked to him for a while, and then hung out in the lounge cuddling and drinking wine. By midnight, I was ready for sleep.
In the morning, SUUSI ended all too quickly. Closing circle was at 9am, and very simple. We formed two concentric circles, as we'd done at Ingathering, and rotated them in opposite directions so that we were all face-to-face with each other one last time. There was lots of hugging and see-you-next-years. (By this point, any thought that we might not come next year had pretty much vanished.) We made one last trip to the bookstore to buy a Mugbook - a photo directory of SUUSI attendees (also sorted by hometown and by first name, for ease of identifying people you only kind of remember). And then, the long arduous process of packing up our things, hauling them across the quad, fetching the car from the distant parking lot, and loading up to go home.
It was hard to leave. I'm already thinking of next time. We'd use the childcare for sure, and maybe I'd see if anyone wanted to take a blogging workshop, and Michael would work with this other guy on a poker workshop, and we'd pack rather differently, and... and... and...
Is it really going to be a whole 'nother year?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-07-27 05:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-27 05:49 pm (UTC)And I'm glad you had such a terrific time. You seemed a little apprehensive about the socializing aspect before you went, and it definitely doesn't sound like you had a problem once you were there!
no subject
Date: 2006-07-27 08:48 pm (UTC)Yeah, I absolutely agree. One of the points that was made repeatedly in our workshop is that by retelling, reinterpreting and recontextualizing these stories to fit our own UU religious needs and context, we're not doing anything that hasn't been done by many other people for millennia... and also, that religious truths can exist independently of historical truths.
You seemed a little apprehensive about the socializing aspect before you went, and it definitely doesn't sound like you had a problem once you were there!
No, and that surprised me. I really have had problems with this in the past - it's part of why I don't want to go to SF cons where I don't know many people who will be there. But this was different. People are very disposed to start conversations with strangers - the cafeteria is set up with long tables, and the culture is that you sit down with people you don't know and start talking to them. Plus, we had red-bordered badges that identified us as newcomers, and a lot of people sought us out to be friendly because of that.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-27 08:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-27 08:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-27 09:04 pm (UTC)They wanted to sell the building, but didn't find a buyer and so rented it to a small obscure historically-black Baptist group. The Baptists didn't pay the rent on time, and eventually didn't pay it at all. Grace tried working out payment plans several times, but when they got the buy offer from the Bull Run UU, they told the Baptist group that it was time to go. The Baptist group sued, but had their suit thrown out of court; Grace had clearly done everything they could to help, and even gone beyond. In the end, the sheriff's deputies had to evict the Baptist group. Some blacks in the community who don't know all that happened hold a bias against the UU church, which is clearly wrong.
The UU has been there about seven years, I think, and in the beginning they rented some space in the top story. One of their tenants was a yoga school that advertised special classes for disabled people. I called and asked how they thought disabled people would get up three flights of stairs and they said well, they didn't really mean people with mobility problems. Weird. They're now only one flight up above another business in Old Town.
So there's been some controversy about the building. The UU church is diagonally across the intersection from a church that has been used for restaurants, a private club, a political office, and is currently for sale/rent. Nobody complains about that.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-27 11:42 pm (UTC)We formed two concentric circles, as we'd done at Ingathering, and rotated them in opposite directions so that we were all face-to-face with each other one last time.
Wouldn't you never go face-to-face with anyone in your own circle using this method?
no subject
Date: 2006-07-28 01:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-28 05:57 am (UTC)Maybe you mean something like:
----> * * * * * * * * * * * * * * <---- * * * * ^ * * | ^ * * | | * * | | * * | | * * | | * * | | * * v | * * v * * * * --> --> * * * * *| ^* * * * *v |* * <--- <---Which is supposed to be two concentric circles spinning in opposite directions, with a cut at the bottom where the inner ring connects to the outer ring.
Well, at least that looks feasible, and my geek curiosity feels mostly satisfied. :)
no subject
Date: 2006-07-28 11:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-28 12:23 am (UTC)I think CS Lewis did an interesting thing with the Eden story in Perelandra, pointing out that the order, while seeming senseless, only made sense once it was obeyed, and the reason for it was seen. (Which I've sometimes simplified as "maybe the fruit wasn't ripe yet, and once it had ripened, God would tell them to munch all they wanted".) Both of these have a kind-of defensive sound to them, I suppose, because the point is to suggest that God's command, though seeming irrational on the face of it, might well have been rational.
I had a lovely long conversation with the woman from Durham I'd met a couple times before, and we talked about our tentative explorations into Eastern spiritual practice as a method of counteracting the blues. (Mindfulness exercises in my case, yoga and meditation in hers.)
And that's another fascinating topic. I was just recently discussing how I think that many a self-critic exists in the talkative mind, and that by slipping out of the state of the talking mind, and into the thinking/feeling mind, a person might be able to silence the self-critic.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-28 03:41 am (UTC)MKK