Tennessee Williams Festival: Late Night Events

Before the Tennessee Williams Festival, I told myself that I would not attend any late night events - and then I ended up attending every single one of the them! They were too much fun to miss! So I went to four late night events in a row.

Wednesday, March 24

Cocktail contest and rooftop screening of A Streetcar Named Desire

Chateau Bourbon Hotel (800 block of Iberville Street)

Described in my previous post

Thursday, March 25

Literary Late Night - an improvisation troupe & a poetry slam

One Eyed Jack's (600 block of Toulouse Street)

Described below

Friday, March 26

Literary Death Match - four writers read their work & three judges gave humorous commentary

One Eyed Jack's (600 block of Toulouse Street)

Described below

Saturday, March 27

Bedtime Stories - readings of erotica through the ages

Dragon's Den (400 block of Esplanade Avenue)

Described below

THURSDAY - LITERARY LATE NIGHT - ONE EYED JACK'S

Improvisations. The evening began with a warm-up of improvisations by the National Comedy Company. The actors took suggestions from the audience and unspooled improvised scenes based on those suggestions. I don't have much to say about this because I found it only mildly funny.

Poetry Slam. This was the main event. Anyone could sign up to perform in the poetry slam for a $100 prize. We wound up with fourteen performance poets in the preliminary round, of whom five were chosen for a final round. Five judges were selected from the audience and given slates on which to write scores for each poet on a 10-point scale. After each performance, the judges wrote a score and held up their slates to be calculated.

The poetry slam was MC-ed by Chuck Perkins, a New Orleans poet and musician. Chuck Perkins' MC-ing was a performance in itself. He was funny and kept a high energy level. I think the audience was in a high energy mood as well.

Poetry slams can be intimidating events for the performers, but this poetry slam was very friendly. The one poet who appeared nervous was encouraged by the audience. When this poet started snapping his fingers, the audience began clapping in time to help establish a beat - and this helped launch the nervous performer into his poem.

The participating poets did not read or recite their poems - they performed their poems. The poet I thought was the best (and who made it to the finals) was a young intensely expressive African-American woman. Her preliminary-round poem was about living with the knowledge that your parents hadn't really wanted to have you because they were too young and unready for a child. Her final-round poem was about the challenges of living with a name like Chaniqua or Nakeisha or Lashandra.

The actual winner was a young male English teacher from Warren Easton High School. Amazingly, three of the five final-round poets managed to disqualify themselves by going over-time!

FRIDAY - LITERARY DEATH MATCH - ONE EYED JACK'S

This was a nutty and enjoyable event. Four authors read from their work.

• Amanda Boyden, novelist, Writer-in-Residence at the University of New Orleans, and former trapeze artist
• Chuck Perkins, the previous evening's MC
• Arthur Phillips, novelist from New York
• Michael Patrick Welch, humorous journalist from New Orleans

Three judges provided off-beat commentary.

• Jeremy Lawrence, actor
• Carol Sutton, actor
• Kit Wohl, cook book author

The MC was Todd Zuniga from New York, who founded both Opium Magazine and this very Literary Death Match event, which he conducts in cities around the United States.

To me, the two best contestants were Chuck Perkins and Michael Patrick Welch. Chuck Perkins performed several of his poems, one of which was a very clever poem about street names in New Orleans. Michael Patrick Welch's performance was quite unusual, as I will describe in the following paragraph.

While waiting for the Literary Death Match to begin, I saw a goat being led through the lounge of One Eyed Jack's. Then, when Welch got up to perform, he began with a question: "Did anyone see a goat here earlier?" Several of us raised out hands. Welch then said something like this: "That's my goat, Chauncey Gardener. I had planned to have Chauncey with me on-stage, but he smokes, so the management wouldn't allow it. However, I'm going to read an FAQ that I've written about Chauncey, composed of questions that people frequently ask about my goat and the answers I've come up with." This turned out to be probably the funniest performance of the whole festival. Chauncey, by the way, lives with Welch at Welch's home in the Bywater (the neighborhood behind the Marigny, which is behind the French Quarter).

After all four performances and the judges' commentaries, two finalists were selected. The finalists had to run across the stage, shout STELLA, grab a long-stemmed rose in their teeth, and blow out a candle. The two finalists were Amanda Boyden and Arthur Phillips, and the winner was Amanda Boyden.

SATURDAY - BEDTIME STORIES - DRAGON'S DEN

This is the event I liked the least. It consisted largely of readings of erotic literature through the ages. Erotic literature isn't that interesting, I found. It's a bit tiresome to keep hearing descriptions of sex. It just wasn't funny enough for a late night event.

However, I did enjoy the three burlesque dances, largely because I had never seen this before. Each dancer performed a strip act, the climax of which was the revealing of the dancer's breasts with only a tasseled nipple covering, followed by a brief period of bouncy dancing that made the breasts jiggle and the tassels swirl.

Unfortunately, this event ended on a note that I didn't care for at all - an excerpt from the so-called novel The Story of O. I found this upsetting, and I will devote my next post to why.

OVERALL

I am delighted that I went to these late night events. Bedtime Stories aside, they were fun, funny, and high in energy.

Tennessee Williams Festival: Pre-Festival Night

I hadn't intended to go to the pre-festival night festivities of the Tennessee Williams Festival on Wednesday (March 24), but something got into me at the last moment and I decided, Hey, why not go? The festivities began at 7 p.m. at the Chateau Bourbon Hotel in the 800 block of Iberville Street, but I drove down to the French Quarter early, arriving at about 5 p.m. I decided to park in the hotel's parking garage and to pay extra for valet parking. (Self parking in the garage at 5 p.m. would be okay, but self unparking alone in the garage at 10:30 p.m. I felt would not.)

Since I was early, I trotted over to the Gumbo Shop for supper and had a great meal in the courtyard - tossed green salad and gumbo z'herbes. Gumbo z'herbes is a green gumbo (vegetarian) that I hardly ever eat. I grew up with my grandmother's seafood gumbo and later got into chicken and sausage gumbo but never gumbo z'herbes. Anyway, the gumbo z'herbes at the Gumbo Shop was a light relaxing gumbo that I just loved. I will certainly order it again!

After this supper, I strolled along the Mississippi River until time for the festivities.

The first part of the festivities was a cocktail contest at 7 p.m. in the Clock Bar of the Chateau Bourbon. Now why would you name your bar the Clock Bar? Because the Chateau Bourbon is in the location of the former D. H. Holmes Department Store, which was famous for its large clock on Canal Street. I remember the days when we would say, "Meet you under the clock at Holmes." Now we can say, "Meet you in the Clock Bar."

Anyway, we all met in the Clock Bar, and three bartenders - also called mixologists - competed to create the best Tennessee Williams inspired drink. Official celebrity judges actually sat at the bar and commented on each drink, but everyone got to vote - samples of each drink were passed among the crowd on trays, and we each had a ballot to cast our vote. These were the three drinks.

• Big Daddy's Stella - a fruity drink with a slice of mango in it
• Pink Honey - some sort of almond liqueur with milk and honey
• 19th Hole - I don't know what it was, but it was strong

I very rarely drink, but I really wanted to try these drinks, so I took the samples and had two sips of each. (For my own larger drink, I had non-alcoholic fruit punch.) I voted for Pink Honey, but it didn't win. I missed the announcement of the winner, but someone told me it was Big Daddy's Stella. This now becomes the Stella Drink (or did they say the Stellar Drink?) of 2010.

The second part of the festivities was a screening of the movie version of Tennessee Williams' play A Streetcar Named Desire, starring Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh. This took place outdoors by the light of the moon on the hotel's rooftop courtyard - a really nice setting. A Streetcar Named Desire is nothing if not intense - and the acting is masterful. Marlon Brando is Stanley Kowalski, and Vivien Leigh is Blanche Dubois. It was a great way to get into the spirit of the Tennessee Williams Festival!

Philosophy Cafe: Detachment

On Friday evening, March 19, I participated in a Philosophy Cafe, or Philo Cafe for short, on the topic of detachment at the Hey Coffeehouse in New Orleans. Our discussion of detachment yielded some important insights for me.

First, a word about Philo Cafes. A Philo Cafe is a group of people who meet to discuss a philosophical topic. Members commit to sharing their ideas in an atmosphere of deep, welcoming, respectful listening. Philo Cafes in New Orleans are held at public locations, such as a coffeehouse or a library, and anyone is welcome to drop by and join in. They are usually facilitated by David O'Donaghue, founder of the Lyceum Project, which promotes experiential adult education, usually free or low-cost. (Philo Cafes are free.) You can find more about the Lyceum, David O'Donaghue, Philo Cafes, and other Lyceum events at this website:

http://lyceumproject.ning.com

Now, for our Philo Cafe of this past Friday on detachment. Here are some of my thoughts as a result of our discussion.

WHAT IS DETACHMENT? Detachment is not withdrawal, it is not indifference, it is not a lack of caring. It is maintaining a healthy separation. To de-tach is to separate. To at-tach is to join, to make one, to enmesh. One can care deeply and yet practice detachment.

To be a good parent, for instance, one must care deeply and yet remain detached. A mother is not her child. A mother must maintain a healthy separation from her child in order to parent the child effectively. An attached mother will not be at peace when her child is fussing; her child's moods become her moods. She cannot effectively calm the child, since she herself becomes one with the child's agitation. A detached mother, on the other hand, will notice that her child is fussing, will care deeply about calming her child, and will maintain her own inner peace as she searches for a way to help the child calm down. The detached mother loves her child deeply and is able to parent well because she remains separate from her child's moods.

The bullet points below show the difference among enmeshment, indifference, and detachment with a loved one - perhaps an adult child, a sister or brother, or a good friend.

• Enmeshment: I cannot allow a loved one to make her own decisions because I see so clearly what is best for her. I just have to persuade her to take the path that I know is in her best interests. My inner peace is completely destroyed if my loved one does not do what I know is best for her.
• Indifference: I give up on my loved one. I cease to care what she chooses.
• Detachment: I offer to explain to my loved one my concerns and observations about her choices, and I honor her freedom to choose her own behavior. If she chooses a path that I see as harmful, I continue to love her. I may feel saddened by her choice, but I don't let it destroy my own inner peace.

I see a fairly simple example of the above in a good friend's experience with her adult son. My friend's son rides his bicycle around New Orleans at night. My friend is concerned that this puts her son in danger. Her son, however, is not going to give up his night-time bicycle riding. My friend has decided to practice detachment. Rather than nag her son or worry incessantly about him (enmeshment), she honors his freedom to ride his bicycle at night, continues to care deeply about him, and retains her own inner peace (detachment).

DETACHMENT FROM FEELINGS, especially "negative" ones. I am enmeshed in my feelings when my feelings become my world. My entire world is then swathed in anger or fear or hopelessness. I can see nothing else. On the other hand, I am detached when I acknowledge my feelings and yet do not let them become my whole world. Or if they have already become my whole world, then I can try to step back enough to acknowledge that fact. Perhaps I can say to myself, Okay, all I can see right now is anger, so I had better withdraw temporarily from this situation until I can be more detached. I am detached when I can experience and acknowledge my feelings and yet choose not to BE my feelings. If I can feel and acknowledge anger, for instance, and yet choose not to embody anger in my behavior but to embody compassion, then I am detached.

THE IDEAL AND THE REAL. In our Philo Cafe discussion, I saw a tension between striving to attain an ideal state of detachment, on the one hand, and on the other, espousing a practice of detachment that forgoes attainment of an ideal. The former seems to focus on "I'm not there yet," while the latter seems to focus on "This is where I am." I find the latter more appealing and accessible.

DETACHMENT FROM DETACHMENT. I think that this is very important. Just as it is said, "Moderation with all things, even with moderation itself," I think we can say, "Detachment with all things, even with detachment itself." Below are some reasons why.

• Enjoying life. Attachment to being or becoming detached diminishes our enjoyment of life now. Focusing on reaching a full state of detachment emphasizes the ideal, the unattained, the future at the expense of the real, the actual experience, the present moment.
• Emptying oneself of self. In previous posts on Karen Armstrong, I've discussed what Karen says about the ecstasy of self-emptying. Karen emphasizes that self-emptying NEVER occurs when one is pre-occupied with the self, for instance, when one is constantly examining the self to see how detached one has become. Ecstasy occurs when one steps out of the self and into the joy of the other.
• Hearing others. When one is overly focused on detachment - and on one's ideas about detachment - it is difficult to hear others. If I "know" the "truth" about detachment, there is no room inside me to welcome your ideas. This defeats the whole purpose of a Philo Cafe, or of any free conversation.
• Telling oneself the truth. If I am attached to embodying an ideal of detachment, I may be tempted to conceal the truth from myself. It may become important for me to appear detached when I am not. I may try to appear detached from a particular outcome when I am actually resentful about what happened. If I can't admit my resentment even to myself, my resentment will probably emerge in some unexpected way, whereas if I can admit to myself, Okay, I really really cared about this outcome. I am not detached in this instance. I am angry that things didn't go the way I wanted, then I can more readily choose how to behave.
• Experiencing carnival. Carnival provides a creative container for excess. Every so often, we need carnival. An over-emphasis on detachment precludes carnival.

MY FATHER. Our Philo Cafe discussion helped me to understand my father more deeply. My father was very enmeshed with his feelings of rage. There was no separation between his rage and himself. When events triggered his rage, my father BECAME rage. He EMBODIED rage. He WAS rage. Rage was his world - he could see nothing else. He simply could not separate himself from his feeling of rage. Inevitably, therefore, he acted out his rage because he and his rage were one.

My father's rage was, of course, devastating for my mother, my sisters and brothers, and myself. None of us seemed able to detach from my father's rage, either. My enmeshment with my father's rage took this form: My father's rage is my badness. This is how bad I am - so bad as to cause this terrifying fury of uncontrollable rage. This rage is a picture of my badness - and it's off the charts. I'm completely abnormal - no one else is this shamefully bad. These were my conscious thoughts: My father is enraged at me, and this means I am bad. What I could not consciously admit was that I was enraged at my father for hurting me in this way. I could not admit the torrents of rage stored inside me.

It is helpful to understand my father as enmeshed in - really a slave to - his rage. He had no idea how to separate himself from his rageful feelings. Understanding this helps me to detach from my father's rage. An understanding of attachment and detachment clarifies more concretely that the problem was never me or my imagined badness but my father's enmeshment with his own rage.

In a blog post on August 24, 2009, about the family soul, I speculated that a family may have soul wounds that family members can help to heal. I know that my father's father was also enmeshed with his own rage and that my father often experienced rage from his father. I don't know how far back this rage goes or what caused this family soul wound. Perhaps one reason I am here is to help heal the family soul wound of enmeshment in rage by learning to detach from my own feelings. This means to acknowledge when I feel anger or fear or hopelessness, yet not to be those feelings, but to be and act from a place of compassion - something that my father simply could not do when his rage was triggered.

More Thoughts on Manic-Depressive Illness

My last post, written after reading Kay Redfield Jamison's An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Madness and Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide, ended with three questions:

• How can I conceive of a God who would design our brains to be capable of the horrifying pain of an unraveling mind as happens in severe mental illness?
• What does God expect of a person with severe mental illness?
• What does God expect of the spouse and family of a person with severe mental illness?

Another way of asking the first question is to ask how severe mental illness fits with a view of the world as gracious, as opposed to hostile or indifferent. As I think about this, I realize that Kay Jamison herself provides an answer. She says that, as excruciatingly painful as psychosis and depression can be, this is out-weighed, for her, by the joy she has experienced in life. Kay actually values her mania, at least in its milder manifestations, and she sees her depression as the price she has to pay for the mania.

When Kay first experienced symptoms of manic-depressive illness in her teens, the mania was not extreme. It allowed her to think fast, to feel euphoric, and to be exceptionally productive and creative. In subsequent years, the mania become more extreme, but Kay remembers even some of her psychotic visions with joy. Here is what Kay says on pages 90-91 of An Unquiet Mind:

People go mad in idiosyncratic ways. Perhaps it was not surprising that, as a meteorologist's daughter, I found myself, in that glorious illusion of high summer days, gliding, flying, now and again lurching through cloud banks and ethers, past stars, and across fields of ice crystals. Even now, I can see in my mind's rather peculiar eye an extraordinary shattering and shifting of light; inconstant but ravishing colors laid out across miles of circling rings; and the almost imperceptible, somehow surprisingly pallid, moons of this Catherine wheel of a planet. I remember singing "Fly me to the Moons" as I swept past those of Saturn, and thinking myself terribly funny. I saw and experienced that which had been only dreams, or fitful fragments of aspiration.

Was it real? Well, of course not, not in any meaningful sense of the word "real." But did it stay with me? Absolutely. Long after my psychosis cleared, and the medications took hold, it became part of what one remembers forever, surrounded by an almost Proustian melancholy. Long since that extended voyage of my mind and soul, Saturn and its icy rings took on an elegiac beauty, and I don't see Saturn's image now without feeling an acute sadness at its being so far away from me, so unobtainable in so many ways. The intensity, glory, and absolute assuredness of my mind's flight made it very difficult for me to believe, once I was better, that the illness was one I should willingly give up.

When Kay first began to take lithium to control her psychosis and stabilize her moods, she was appalled at the flatness of her emotional life. She now takes a lesser dose of lithium that controls the extreme fluctuations in mood but does allow for some mood amplification followed by some mood dampening, in other words, slight mania and slight depression. The dampening is worth it to Kay because of the benefits from the amplification. Apparently, you can't have the amplification without the following dampening--you get the full cycle or none.

So, back to God. Here are some things I notice.

• ABUNDANCE. God deals in abundance--there is an abundance of beauty and variety in minerals, plants, and animals. Within that abundance, there are things that I as an individual may not like--poison ivy, mosquitoes, manic-depressive illness. These are, nonetheless, part of the abundant whole.
• EXTREMES. God deals in wide ranges with vast extremes--from sub-atomic particles to super-nova, from the monotone gray of an overcast sky to a flaming sunset, from the silent rabbit to the roaring lion. Manic-depressive illness is an extreme of human experience.
• NATURAL PROCESSES. God deals with natural processes that unfold dispassionately. The universe does not reconfigure itself to avoid harming a person in the path of an avalanche, a tornado, or an out-of-control automobile. Manic-depressive illness is part of the gene pool and manifests itself in individuals with those genes.

It may be that, if God had to edit out everything that humans find unpleasant or harmful on the physical plane, the world would not be as beautiful, stunning, and fascinating.

It also strikes me that God's intentions are not necessarily our intentions. I, for example, consider a good life to be a life of financial security, physical comfort, and mental interest. God, I expect, considers a good life to be one of compassion and character growth.

I probably don't need to concern myself with the question about what God expects of a person with manic-depressive illness because I am not that person.

As for the spouse and family of a person with manic-depressive illness, it strikes me that our U.S. American society is at the far extreme of individualism, expecting individuals to manage their own problems and expecting families to manage their family members on their own. But, just as it takes a whole village to raise a child, it probably takes a whole village to contain a person with manic-depressive illness. Instead of making this the responsibility of an overwhelmed spouse or family, if this were considered the responsibility of the whole community, then the weight would be far less, and compassionate and workable solutions would far more likely emerge.

Thoughts & Questions about Manic-Depressive Illness

I have recently read two books by Kay Redfield Jamison: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness and Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide. Kay is a Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She also has manic-depressive illness, which she is able to control by taking lithium.

Kay describes what it is like for someone with severe mental illness to watch their mind unravel. It is absolutely horrifying to be trapped inside an unraveling mind. One cannot control one's thoughts, which race so fast that nothing makes sense. One sees and hears things that aren't there, often very frightening things. One watches the distress on the faces of one's family and friends, who simply cannot comprehend one's behavior. One behaves in ways that cause one intense shame.

One often ends the pain by committing suicide.

Some of the things Kay describes, particularly concerning mania, seem incredible to me. Someone in the early stages of mania feels on top of the world. She feels invulnerable. She is full of over-the-top energy, putting her on a high. In this state, things make sense that would never make sense in a normal mood. A person in mania will often dress provocatively, initiate unwise sexual encounters, and spend thousands of dollars on unneeded merchandise. When the mania ends and a normal mood returns, this person is faced with the shame of what she has done and with the bills she has accumulated for appalling purchases that made perfect sense in the manic state but which now make no sense at all.

If the illness is not treated, it escalates. The mania becomes so intense that the person cannot stay still, cannot sleep, and cannot control her cascading thoughts. The person may become paranoid and even violent.

Eventually depression follows the mania with its all-encompassing heavy blackness that sucks all joy from life. Life becomes unbearable, and suicide is often the result. The pain of an unraveling mind and the inability to do anything to stop it is excruciating.

Yes, there are now treatments for manic-depressive illness, but for centuries there were no treatments, and even today, not everyone responds to the treatments. For some people, the current treatments don't work.

Descriptions of losing one's mind--as happens in manic-depressive illness, in depression, in schizophrenia, and in Alzheimer's disease--are truly horrifying. For me, this raises an important question: How does God fit into this? How can I conceive of a God who would design a brain capable of such horrible suffering?

I can at least begin to understand other types of physical suffering that keep the mind intact. People are able to endure these, sometimes with great grace and courage. I can also begin to understand suffering inflicted by humans. Again, people do endure this, sometimes with remarkable love and forgiveness. But how does one endure an illness that causes one's very mind to unravel. Without a functioning mind, with what does one do the enduring?

So it's hard for me to envision a way of seeing God that includes severe mental illness. It makes me wonder why on earth God couldn't design a brain incapable of such unraveling.

And what does God expect of someone with severe manic-depressive illness? It's clear that a person in mania often violates normal standards of morality in the areas of sex, finances, and kindness to others.

And what does God expect of the spouse of someone with manic-depressive illness? I don't see how it's possible to live with a manic-depressive spouse who has sex with others, runs up impossible bills, and is violently paranoid. Manic-depressive illness is devastating to the spouse, family, and friends of the person with the illness. A good friend of my mother's had a daughter with severe mental illness who simply refused to take medication to control her illness and absolutely drove her family nuts with her uncontrollably wild behavior. She also had a number of unwise pregnancies and brought babies into the world with no means of providing for them. Yes, I understand that a person with manic-depressive illness is truly ill, but what is the person's family supposed to do with a person who causes utter havoc in the lives of everyone around her? Is the family supposed to just exist in utter havoc? What does God expect of the spouse and the family in this situation?

So these are my questions:

• How can I conceive of a God who would design our brains to be capable of the horrifying pain of an unraveling mind as happens in severe mental illness?
• What does God expect of a person with severe mental illness?
• What does God expect of the spouse and family of a person with severe mental illness?

Compassion at the Heart of Faith - Karen Armstrong

Karen Armstrong's study of world religions has shown her that compassion lies at the heart of each one. Thus, we can say that at the heart of Being is compassion. Karen says that compassion is feeling with another. It is putting ourselves in another's shoes, standing where another stands, seeing through another's eyes--and acting accordingly.

Karen connects compassion with ecstasy. Ecstasy occurs when we empty ourselves of the self, when we step outside of ourselves, when we leave behind our local individualized self--and step into something larger. By being compassionate, by feeling with another, we step out of our own self-focused experience and into the experience of another.

How do we enter into the mind and feelings of another? Karen Armstrong says that one way to do this is to use our own pain. In other words, when we are treated in a way that causes us pain or discomfort, we can take careful note and resolve never to do that to someone else.

I am not a naturally compassionate person, but I can think of at least one very small way that I practice compassion. (Recognizing this very small way helps me to grasp what compassion is and how it feels to practice it, and then hopefully to expand upon it.) Here is my very small baby step in compassion. First, I have noticed a particular type of situation that causes me discomfort. Sometimes when I am telling a story or sharing a thought with one or more other people, an interruption will arise. For instance, if we are at a cafe, the server may come to take our order or another person may arrive and join our group. After the interruption, the conversation may veer elsewhere, and I don't get a chance to finish what I was saying. When this happens, I feel disappointed.

Knowing how I feel when this happens to me, I try not to let this happen to others. When someone is telling a story or sharing a thought and an interruption occurs, I try not to let the conversation veer away before the person has the chance to finish. I do this by saying, for example, "Jane, I want to hear the rest of what you were saying about Edgar Allan Poe." This allows Jane to finish what she was saying without seeming to put herself forward, in case she feels uncomfortable being the one to reintroduce her story. (I've even started extending this compassion to myself. Since I've been doing this for others, I find that, after an interruption, I can more easily say on my own behalf, "I'd like to continue what I was saying about Alice Walker.")

I find that I experience a nice warm feeling when I can do this for others and when I can do this for myself. I also think that this is what it means, in a very small way, to love one's neighbor as one loves oneself. In this conversational type of situation, I show the same consideration both for my neighbor and for myself.

I would say, too, that to be compassionate in one's work, one needs to feel what it is like to be on the other side. A doctor or a nurse who has been hospitalized with illness or injury can more readily feel with his or her patients. Psycho-therapists are required to undergo psycho-therapy themselves in order to feel what the process is like for their clients. A teacher of English to speakers of other languages would do well to take a course in Vietnamese or Arabic or Hungarian to understand what it feels like to be confronted with learning a very different language and culture.

Self-emptying, compassion, and ecstasy also occur when we lose ourselves in contemplation of something greater--as a scientist does in her lab, an architect in his building, a lawyer in her client's case, a painter in his studio, a musician in her composition, a dancer in his movement, a reader in her story, a writer in his characters, a chef in her cuisine, a teacher in his subject. This loss of self in something greater can occur both as a creator and as an admirer: it can occur for the artist who sculpts a statue and for the art lover who admires it, for the chef who prepares a beautiful meal and for the gourmet who savors it, for the poet who composes a poem and for the reader who enters into it, for the gardener who creates a garden and for the flower lover who basks in it.

Karen Armstrong has found that she experiences self-emptying, compassion, and ecstasy through her study of and writing about world religions. She has learned to have compassion, to feel with, people of other faiths. On page 290 of The Spiral Staircase, Karen says, "It was not enough to understand other people's beliefs, rituals, and ethical practices intellectually. You had to feel them too and make an imaginative, though disciplined, identification." Karen explains how she did this when writing about the Prophet Muhammad. On page 278 of The Spiral Staircase, Karen says, "I had to make a daily, hourly effort to enter into the ghastly conditions of seventh-century Arabia, and that meant that I had to leave my twentieth-century assumptions and predilections behind. I had to penetrate another culture and develop a wholly different way of looking at the world. It required a constant concentration of mind and heart that was in fact a type of meditation. . . . I was learning the disciplines of ecstasy." In fact, on page 287 of The Spiral Staircase, Karen says, "I was finding in study the ecstasy [and, I would add, the compassion] that I had hoped to find in those long hours of prayer as a young nun."

On page 63 of The Case For God, Karen Armstrong speaks of Socratic dialogue as a means to self-emptying, compassion, and ecstasy. Karen says, "In a Socratic dialogue, therefore, the 'winner' did not try to force an unwilling opponent to accept his point of view. It was a joint effort. You expressed yourself clearly as a gift to your partner, whose beautifully expressed argument would, in turn, touch you at a profound level." On the same page, Karen says, "Like any good initiation, a successful dialogue should lead to ekstasis: by learning to inhabit each other's point of view, the conversationalists were taken beyond themselves." I love that: "learning to inhabit each other's point of view."

Compassion, then, is the heart of religious faith. A very legitimate question to ask about any religion is this: Does this religion lead to a compassionate life? That is the gold test.

Thoughts on "The Queen of Sheba & Her Hairy Legs" - C. G. Jung Society Presentation by Ronnie Landau

Last night David came over for supper. (I baked homemade cornbread, which was delicious, and we also had tossed green salad, cheddar cheese, fresh fruit, Fruits Rouges hot tea, and dark chocolate.) Then we took off for a presentation at the C. G. Jung Society titled "The Queen of Sheba and Her Hairy Legs" by Jungian analyst Ronnie Landau. (Ronnie is a woman.)

Apparently the Queen of Sheba was extremely beautiful. She also had hairy legs--very, very hairy. The story goes that, when the Queen of Sheba came to visit King Solomon of Israel, Solomon (who had heard of the hairy legs) arranged a path for her to approach his throne that would involve lifting her skirts to step over some watery areas. This allowed Solomon to verify that, yes, the Queen of Sheba did indeed have extremely hairy legs. The Queen of Sheba agreed to an application of creams to remove the hair before further involvement with Solomon. The Queen of Sheba then stayed a while in Israel, consorted with Solomon, and finally returned to her country.

So, in the Queen of Sheba, we have a very beautiful woman with very hairy legs. Do we see the hairy legs as a deformity or as part of her beauty? If we see the hairy legs as undesirable--why?

We do seem to be averse to body hair, at least for women. Yet women naturally have body hair--arm hair, underarm hair, leg hair, and pubic hair. Many women shave their underarm hair and their leg hair, and some even shave their pubic hair--at least they try to have just a small confined area of pubic hair, and they certainly don't want any pubic hair to show around the edges of their bikinis. Women who pose nude for Playboy have usually removed all but a very small amount of their pubic hair. Even men, I think, don't want to have too much body hair. A man with lots and lots of body hair probably feels like an oddity.

Why is this? Drawing on points raised in the presentation "The Queen of Sheba and Her Hairy Legs" and on my own additional reading and experience, I would say that this is because body hair is adult-like and animal-like.

First, body hair is a sign of adulthood. Children have smooth bodies, while adults have body hair. Feminists in the 1970s pointed out that women were traditionally supposed to remain childlike, while men took on adult roles. The husband earned the money and made the decisions for the family, while the wife raised the children, did the housework, obeyed her husband, and was financially supported by him. Men dominated all professional fields and ran the country, while working women confined themselves to teaching, nursing, and secretarial work, and women weren't even allowed to vote. The visual sign of body hair complemented the adult role of men, while the visual sign of a smooth and hairless body complemented the childlike role of women.

In the 1960s and 1970s, many women stopped shaving their legs and underarms. They allowed themselves to be naturally hairy. I believe that this was a way of saying, "I am an adult. My body hair is a visual sign of my adulthood. Adults have body hair. I will relate to you as a fellow adult."

Second, body hair is something that we humans share with animals. Animals, particularly many mammals, have body hair, or fur. Certainly, the primates do. Body hair connects us visually to our animal nature. It seems more traditionally acceptable for men to have this animal connection than for women to do so. Even men, though, don't want to be too animal-like--excessive body hair for a man is not considered attractive. We seem to feel it important to separate ourselves from the animals, from our instinctual nature, from our sense of smell. (It was pointed out at the Jungian presentation that head hair is very acceptable, probably because we are happy to adorn the site of our brains and intellectual functions with hair. Our head and intellect are seen as exclusively human, while our bodies are seen as connected with animals.)

As David pointed out, the 1960s and 1970s celebrated hair. Not only did many women stop shaving their underarms and legs, but many men grew their head hair quite long and acquired beards. I do think that this was at least partly to celebrate our animal nature. Sex, in all its sensual appeal, was celebrated--its smells and sounds and tastes. I believe that hair was part of the primal enjoyment of sex that came to the fore in the 1960s and 1970s.

So, to reiterate, the traditional practice is that men don't want too much body hair so as not to be too animal-like, but that they do want enough body hair to show that they are adults. Women, on the other hand, don't want any (or want very little) body hair so as not to be animal-like and so as to remain childlike. Traditionally, there has been something shadowy about our animal nature for men and women and about adulthood for women. This shadow is represented by a hairy body, or by the Queen of Sheba's hairy legs.

What would it look like for us to embrace our shadow--for men and women to embrace our animal nature and for women to embrace our adulthood?

Well, I think we would be openly hairy. We would openly enjoy the sensual side of life--not only sight but also sound, touch, taste, and smell. We would enjoy all these sensual aspects of sex. In addition, women and men would openly be peers, fellow adults. Women and men would stand together as fellow adults, embracing our animal nature, in all our hairy glory!

Our hairy glory. We consider head hair beautiful. Can body hair not be beautiful, too? When we embrace the animal/adult shadow, we will have "The Queen of Sheba and Her Beautiful Hairy Legs."