Last Post? Nah!

I notice that, after enrolling in LPW701B, there is no obligation to keep a journal in that course, so it would be appropriate for me to close my blog off here.

However, I've noticed that the requirement to write on the decisions and changes I am making to my manuscript, as I learn more and alter the perspective I'm using to approach it, is having a very positive effect on the story itself.

The discipline of having to justify my position or my changes in the writing has, I think, given me a lot more confidence in my writing process. It has contributed a great deal to making this story a deeper, and more layered one. I believe it hase has far more intellectual integrity now.

So I don't think I'll be closing off the blog. It's just too valuable a tool to walk away from.

Not having a tutor to address my posts to may be a little odd. I'll have to fabricate some "model reader" with a similar Ecoesque "encyclopedia". That's an interesting writing exercise in itself: creating a reader-character to read my writing on my writing. Hmmm!

Recursion rocks!

Characters: Made or Born that Way?

In one of the last emails of the semester, Carolyn responded to my draft writing project, asking me how my main character got the way she was (Beasley). Did something happen in her life to make her the way she is, or was she born that way?

The fact that she had to ask made me confront a real flaw with a lot of my writing: I don't write origin stories for my characters. Normally, I could get away with this, but in this case, my character is so internally extreme, Carolyn had a perfect right to ask.

I don't feel that it is necessarily useful to state this sort of information in the story itself, but I certainly should know it. For one thing, it allows me the option to fill in the past, or drop hints, or - if nothing else - it informs the way I write the character in the present.

It was a tremendous and well-deserved kick in the butt, even if Carolyn didn't mean it that way. She should have - and I'm grateful. So, how does a young woman manage to develop such a fixation on religious transcendence, especially now?

Accounts of the more ecstatic saints, like Teresa of Avila, Catherine of Sienna, or Rosa of Lima are very vague as to the origins of this desire to be so thoroughly involved with a direct dialogue with god. In all cases, accounts suggest this extreme religious fixation began very young. In the case of Rose of Lima, at the age of four (Hansen). Teresa of Avila is said to have pledged "the flower of her virtue" to Christ at the age of nine (Teresa of Avila). One has to wonder how many nine-year olds know what the "flower of the virtue" is, never mind giving it away.

It's hard to sort the hype from the reality. With the exception of Teresa, who wrote her own autobiography, most of the saints lives are written by someone else, and often many years after their deaths.

There seems to have been a desire to establish that the subject was spiritually superior from the very beginning, following along the lines of a Christ child who never cried, never got colic (Soeherman).

"...The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes,
but little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes..."
(Away in a Manger)


Many hagiographers sought to establish that these women are born this way.

In the modern world, with the insistence that so much of what we are is determined by our DNA, including personality traits like outgoingness, shyness, musical talents, etc. one might, from a science perspective, have reason to insist that my character was simply born with a predisposition to search out transcendental experience.

Certainly there is a lot of historical evidence to suggest that many people, born in different times, cultures and religions have pursued behaviour that led to ecstatic experiences. Considering the ubiquity, it would not be unfair to suggest that perhaps my character was born with a "god gene".

However, this is fictionally unsatisfying to me, and I'm sure to many readers, especially in the present day. In the time of the hagiographers, before psychology and psychiatry, there was little motivation to explain a drive like this, since it was considered such an admirable and laudable pursuit.

In the 21st Century, we view a lot of this behaviour, whether self-harming or not, to be aberrant. Therefore, we look for causal factors.

My character's father has died when she was very young. It occurred to me that, I could take a Freudian psychoanalytical approach to establishing the cause as the seeking out of an alternative father figure that could result in this sort of religious devotion to the ultimate father figure, God (Spencer). However, this is the first idea that occurred to me, and because of this, I felt it was too obvious an explanation - no matter how psychologically sound - verging on cliche.

There is also a considerable amount of writing that suggests that mystic lives were often adopted by Medieval sufferers of trauma and abuse (Atlas). This was, of course, the first explanation that many of my readers of an early draft of the story assumed. But, as I explained before, I really wanted to stay away from the spectre of sexual abuse. However realistic it might be, I considered it, like the death of the father, too pat an explanation, fictionally.

The other explanation that occurred to me, and the one I prefer, and propose to pursue, is the idea of a kind of virally inspired religious addiction.

There is some precedence for this in science fiction. Both Frank Herbert and Alistair Reynolds have written about populations being infected by that caused the sufferers to become intensely religious (Reynolds).

Of course, this idea is not appropriate for my story. But it did get me thinking that perhaps one of the places a person might experience altered states of consciousness, and become intensely attracted to them, would be during illness - childhood illness. If a child were growing up in a very religious setting, and were deathly ill, a mother might pray out loud at the beside of a feverish child, infusing their hallucinations and fevered dreams with religious imagery.

This offers an explanation of both nature, in the form of an early childhood illness, and nurture, in the form of the religious behaviour the people around her might indulge in at her bedside while she is in a semi-conscious and psychologically vulnerable state.

Looking at the early paintings of Frida Kahlo, and their intensely religious imagery combined with images of herself, and her own very damaged body, does suggest a sort of religious reading of suffering - a kind of physical experience she associated with martyrdom: a translation of physical pain into ecstatic experience (Goldsmith).

At a formative age, the experience of this type, combined with, perhaps pain and illness, might act as the seminal experience that would lead to a life-long obsession to regain that state.

This, for me, is a far more satisfactory explanation of the origin of my character's obsession with religious transcendence. It also offers an explanation of how, if pain accompanied her early experiences, she would have reason to believe that pain might play a significant part in triggering new ones.

Many thanks, Carolyn, for being such a great critical friend.

References:

Anonymous. "Away in a Manger" Hymn. Wikipedia. 14 May, 2008. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Away_in_a_Manger

Atlas, Jerrold. "Medieval Mystics' Lives As Self-Medication for Childhood Abuse".The Journal of Psychohistory. Fall 2003 31,2: 145-169. 13 May, 2008 http://primal-page.com/atlas.htm

Beasley, Carolyn. "First Couple of pages of the novel." E-mail to author.13 May 2008.

Goldsmith, Marlene. "Frida Kahlo: Abjection, Psychic Deadness, and the Creative Impulse" Psychoanalitic Review, 91.6 Dec. 2004. May 15, 2008 http://www.atypon-link.com/GPI/doi/pdf/10.1521/prev.91.6.723.55959.

Hansen, Leonardo. "Vida de Santa Rosa de Lima, Virgen del Tercer Orden de Santo Domingo, Patrona de la America". Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon, Mexico. 1847. 9 May, 2008 http://cdigital.dgb.uanl.mx/la/1080016593/1080016593.html

Reynolds, Alistair. "Absolution Gap". Gollancz 2003.

Soeherman, Miguel. "A Child Observes and Imitates - Sermon". EWTN Website. Nov. 2006.
13 May, 2008 http://www.ewtn.com/library/CHRIST/childobserv.HTM

Spencer, Boyd. "Sigmund Freud: Lecture notes for Theories of Personality". Easter Illinois University. nd. 13 May, 2008 http://psych.eiu.edu/spencer/Freud.html

Teresa of Avila, "The Life of Saint Teresa of Jesus." Gutenberg Project Website. 1904. 9 May 2008 http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8trsa10h.htm.

Scars in The Splinter

The story opens on the subject of a scar and an embedded splinter that has not worked itself out of the skin, although many years have passed.

Scars play a symbolic role in The Splinter. Each of the characters has them, although some are more hidden than others and they are all self-inflicted to a greater or lesser extent. Even Dolores' mother Eugenia is scared by, as the priest notes, hard labour, grief and dental problems. The priest, Father Steven also has an internal scar - a limp from an old sports injury. These scars are self-inflicted but not as intentionally made as the scars of the others.

Jacob has needle mark scars from habitual heroin use. Simon has intentionally scarred both his face:

"The skin on his face was seamed with scars. A pair running parallel lines from just below his eyes to his chin, two on either side of his forehead, and a thatched pattern of smaller scars that ribbed his face on both sides from his cheekbones to his jawline. Worst of all was that his lower lip was cleft cleanly down the middle. When he smiled, the gap made by the cut widened to show a row of even, white teeth."

And on his chest:

"Whorls and lines, puncture marks, words and raised symbols. Instantly and without thinking, she reached out a hand and touched one of the ridged scars with her fingertip. It followed the strange terrain of his skin down and over to just where his heart sat, beating hard beneath the surface."

And of course Dolores has scars on her knees:

"the web of white scars that criss-crossed her knees, and then covered them with her hands, feeling awkward."

And on her back:

"Sitting up made her wince. The blood had dried on her back, and the robe had stuck, in places, to the wounds. She pulled the coverlet off the bed and wrapped it around her. The least painful way to deal with her problem was to stand in the shower and get everything really wet. She'd been in this predicament before."

For each of the characters, their scars have meaning to them, although Eugenia's aged face is the most natural of all.

To Father Steven, his injured hip reminds him of a time before his life had narrowed down to what it had become as a priest, "when his world had been a diorama of possibilities".

Jacob's scars are also a memory of his past, but are also a constant reminder of where he could so easily end up in the future if he cannot successfully fight his addiction.

Simon's scars are not only the story of his past, but the disfigurement he must bear into the future. They are the maps of his travels into the battleground between faith and nature. He has cut himself for every time he lost a battle against the calls of the flesh and the number of them leads the reader, I hope, to believe that there have been many of them. The more dramatic he felt the transgression was, the more flamboyant the cut and the more obvious the scar. The ritualized and patterned nature of the scarring suggests that he translated each of his sins into a unique pictograph, to be worn on the skin as a brand, like Cain.

Once Dolores sees the scars on his chest, she interprets them mystically. Aware of what it cost him to make them and the kind of internal changes that such religious self-harm would trigger, she believes them to be proof of his godliness, a diary of his religious experiences. Seeing them, and "reading" them the way she does, allows her to believe that she can trust him. What she does not really understand is that his are actually the product of penance, whereas hers are the by-products of her journeys into ecstatic states that have very little to do with penance, and more to do with a yearning for union.

Dolores' scars are, as with the others, souvenir of her past - in this case, her mortifications. The recent scars on her back are also mystical - almost like eyes in the back of her head. She believes she can sense things through them that are sub-rosa. Although they cause her pain - which she acknowledges - she has certain affection for them. They are the reminder of her pilgrim's progress.

The only scar which is not self-inflicted, and which happens accidentally, is the cross that breaks beneath her chest and embeds the splinter into her skin.

550 words (5,186 and counting)

A Change, and a lot of re-writing

You may have noticed that the name of my character has changed from Moira, to Dolores.

After receiving some very good feedback from Carolyn, which included the criticism that Moira's voice wasn't consistent as that of a teenager, I started to examine the character to really look at who she was. I realized that one of the problems was that I just didn't know that many Irish-American Catholic women that well. I knew a lot of Irish-American men, but not women - and definitely not the age of my main character.

It occurred to me to wonder why I had given her that ethnicity in the first place, considering I knew so much more about Hispanic Catholics, from Spain, South America and Hispanic- Americans. I don't really have an answer to why I did it, but it needed to change.

I know a lot more about religious mysticism with an Hispanic slant. I know how people of this background express themselves. I know how reticent they are, as more recent immigrants, to rely on state institutions. If I wanted to keep my main character enclosed, somewhat isolated, shy and very religious, I had to build the right world for her.

She's never going to talk like a normal 18-year old because she isn't one. But I can build an environment that will make her oddness a lot more believable.

So I've started on quite an extensive re-writing of the world the story is set in, and I've named her Dolores (after Maria de los Dolores - Our Lady of Sorrows). I thought it was apt.

"She pushed the yearbook across the kitchen table to wear the priest sat, causing his teacup to rattle in its saucer. The kitchen was cramped and full of shabby knickknacks. Memorial plates, plastic flowers and a parade of little miniature saints and devotional candles sat on almost every available surface. The walls were decorated with images of the Virgin Mary in her habitual blue cloak. One was clutching a baby Jesus to her chest; the other held her hands wide, exposing a lurid pink heart. Over the melamine kitchen table, a plastic shaded lamp gave everything a sickening green glow."

266 words (4,636 and counting)

Pain and Transcendence

One of the topics I am very interested in investigating in The Splinter is the use of pain as a tool for religious transcendence and as a vehicle to achieving "ecstatic union with God" (Flynn).

The Christian use of self-flagellation seems to be seen as achieving a number of different goals :

1. An act of penance to punish oneself for sins committed and purify the soul.
2. As a blocker of sensual urges.
3. As a ritual sacrifice.
4. Vicarious pain as a vehicle towards sameness - the imitation of Christ.
5. To precipitate ecstatic visions and an experience of union with the divine.

Today, we see pain as being wholly negative. Self-inflicted pain is seen as not only negative, but as an incontrovertible sign of psychological disorder (Walsh). In his review of Glucklich's book, "Sacred Pain", Steven post remarks that "the ability to control pain medically has created a culture in which the experience of pain is judged to be unacceptable and, when completely unavoidable, unambiguously tragic" (Post).

Yet still there are some cultures and societies in which these rituals are practiced, notably in the Philippines (Barker), and in the Opus Dei, whose founder wrote " I don't believe in your interior self-denial if I see that you despise, that you do not practise, mortification of the senses" (Escriva).

Moira, the female protagonist in The Splinter, would seem through modern eyes to be a very psychologically troubled teen. There is a desire, on the part of the reader, to ascribe her acts of self-flagellation, as part of a pathology left from some dreadful trauma. The reader naturally expects that it will turn out that she has been abused in some way. In fact, I purposefully killed off her father, before the story begins, in order to remove the obvious assumption that she has been molested.

I don't want to offer readers an easy answer to Moira's self-inflicted violence. However, in this draft version, after getting some quite specific feedback, I realize that I have not given the reader enough alternative reasons; I have not investigated her immense sense of loneliness early enough in the story.

I'm a little trapped here, because at one point or another in the story, Moira gives many reasons for her mortifications, all the ones I've listed. I wanted to show her own lack of understanding about what drives her. I wanted the reader to take that same journey, but I have given no alternate clues, hanging at the corners of the text. And I need to do this. I'm not quite sure how.

The more I investigate the writing of this work, the more I realize that it is essentially a story about existential loneliness. I'm an atheist - I don't believe that what Moira sees or feels is God. But I do believe passionately in her anguish. And I do believe that she sees this union as the only way to assuage it. And pain as a way to effect this union.

So, how does self-inflicted pain do this? Reading a number of primary documents: letters and autobiographies as well as instructional and devotional texts by notable mortifiers gives some clues.

In his "Ascent of Mount Carmel", St. John of the Cross writes:

"For until the desires are lulled to sleep through the mortification of the sensual nature, and until at last the sensual nature itself is at rest from them, so that they make not war upon the spirit, the soul goes not forth to true liberty and to the fruition of union with its Beloved." (St. John of the Cross).

For him, self-flagellation is a way of dulling the calls of the flesh, quieting the distraction of them so that the soul can concentrate itself on the union. Ligouri agrees: "External mortification helps internal mortification and it is in a certain sense necessary in order to control one's senses" (Jones).

Catherine of Siena tended to see her pain part of a purification process. She speaks in God's voice when she writes: "When my servants remain united to me I prune them with great suffering so that they will bear more and better fruit" (Catherine of Sienna) and St. Francis Borgia felt similarly: "Thus did he apply himself to the mortification of his senses and the crucifying of his flesh. And it was hereby, he arrived at so high a pitch of sanctity and perfection" (Rodriguez).

In "The Interior Castle", Teresa of Avila infers an intimate association between the experience of pain and ecstatic vision: "just as the soul is about to become enkindled, the spark dies, and leaves the soul yearning once again to suffer that loving pain of which it is the cause" (St. Teresa of Avila).

Louis de Montfort believed that in order to have union with God, a level of spiritual 'wisdom' had to be attained and that the experience of pain was the gateway to this wisdom. "Wisdom is not satisfied with half-hearted mortification or mortification of a few days, but requires one that is total, continuous" (Montfort).

In his book on St. Rose of Lima, Frank Graziano attempts to attribute the totality of her self-harming to a sublimation of sexual urges (Graziano). Although I don't agree with him, I think he gets very close. He is very much swayed by the language that is used to describe her as being a "bride of Christ" and it is true that she was married to him in a "mystical" wedding ceremony. He associates this with many earlier European writings that contain obvious erotic language and imagery in their descriptions of sacrifices, mortifications, and the general devotions of many of the saints who pursued ecstatic experience. I think this is a fair reading.

Similarly, Hilary Fraser's reading of St. Teresa's divine visitation with an angel who pierces her heart is that of sexual sublimation:

"The element of sexual repression in her account is unmistakable...never has religious ecstacy been expressed in such erotic terms. St. Theresa is ravished by the beautiful seraph with his phallic fiery spear, and her intense pleasure/pain is the bittersweet pain of sexual climax" (Fraser)

There is no doubting that the passage she refers to is erotic. However, where is the repression? Angels are specifically described as having no genitals - so how might congress take place, other than metaphorically? It seems to me that in all these readings, there is a desire to see as repressed or sublimated what is quite clearly expressed. The problem, for the interpreters is that they cannot conceive of a sexual/conjugal relationship with anything other than another human being. But all these women could and did.

However, referring back to my previous post on desire, I believe this differentiation between eros and agape is erroneous. And therefore, this eroticism of pain and the physical yearning for divine presence is not a sublimation wherein the lover uses God as a proxy, but rather that the object of erotic desire is God, that pain is believed to allow for mortals to have intimacy with God, and that the ultimate consummation of that love takes place after death.

References:

Flynn, Maureen. "The Spiritual Uses of Pain in Spanish Mysticism." Journal of the American Academy of Religion 64.2 Summer, 1996 257-278. 22 Apr, 2008 http://www.jstor.org/stable/1466102.

Walsh, Barent. "Review: The Scarred Soul." Psychiatric Services 51.6 June 2000 821 - 822. 22 Apr, 2008 http://psychservices.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/reprint/51/6/821.

Glucklich, Ariel. "Self and Sacrifice: A Phenomenological Psychology of Sacred Pain." Harvard Theological Review 92.4 October 1999 479-506. 22 Apr, 2008 http://www.jstor.org/stable/1509869.

Escriva, Josemaria. "The Way: Mortification." Escrivaworks. unknown. Opus Dei. 22 Apr 2008 http://www.escrivaworks.org/book/the_way-point-181.htm.

Post, Steven. "Sacred Pain: Hurting the Body for the Sake of the Soul." First Things: The Journal of Religion, Culture and Public Life March 2002, 22 Apr, 2008 http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=1982.

Barker, Nicholas. "The Revivial of Religious Flagellation in Lowland Christian Philipines ." 1997. University of Hawaii at Manoa. 22 Apr 2008 http://www2.hawaii.edu/~millado/flagellationfolder/flagellation.html.

St. John of the Cross, "Ascent of Mount Carmel." Catholic First. unknown. 22 Apr 2008 http://www.catholicfirst.com/thefaith/catholicclassics/johnofthecross/ascent/ascent03.cfm.

Rodriguez, Alonso. "Mortification: The Practice of Christian and religious perfection, Vol 2. ." Google Books. 22 Apr 2008 http://books.google.com/books?id=WjbnjEusunkC&pg=PA70&lpg=PA69&vq=Francis+Borgia&output=
html&sig=2PWt0CoyV-J7950ObYUrDZTiOsc.

St. Catherine of Siena, "The Dialogue of Saint Catherine." Intratext Library. Unknown. 22 Apr 2008 http://www.intratext.com/IXT/ENG0139/_P1X.HTM.

St Teresa of Avila, "The Interior Castle - Six Mansions." Catholic First. Unknown. 22 Apr 2008 http://www.catholicfirst.com/thefaith/catholicclassics/stteresa/castle/interiorcastle4.cfm.

Jones, Frederick. "Selected Writings By Alfonso Maria de' Liguori." Google Books. 1999. Paulist Press. 22 Apr 2008 http://books.google.com/books?id=aTg754j-t0C&printsec=frontcover&output=html&sig=
5-nDeW_DLnnBRBjpH4J3h0GS9hQ.

Montfort, Louis de. "The Third Means: Universal Mortification." The Love of Eternal Wisdom. 1989. Eternal Word . 22 Apr 2008 http://www.ewtn.com/library/Montfort/LEW.HTM#Sixteen.

Graziano, Frank. "Wounds of Love: The Mystical Marriage of Saint Rose of Lima." Questia Online Library. 2004. 22 Apr 2008 http://www.questia.com/read/104900403.

Fraser, Hilary. "St. Theresa, St. Dorothea and Miss Brooks in Middlemarch." Nineteenth Century Fiction 40.4. March, 1986 pp 400 - 411. 22 Apr 2008 http://www.jstor.org/stable/3044729

800 words (4,370 and counting)

Investigating Desire in The Splinter

In my story, 'The Splinter', my main character states her reason for her practice of 'mortification of the flesh'. Initially, at a young age, she tells her priest:

"I'm atoning for my sins, Father. I'm paying for them with pain. Just like Jesus."

Later, when confronted on what the priest considers her aberrant behaviour, she tells him:

"Oh, it's not just my sins I'm atoning for, Father. I'm atoning for other people's sins too. Since they won't confess or do penance, it's my obligation, my privilege even, to do it for them."

As the story goes on, the reasons she gives for inflicting pain upon herself change, but the desire that drives it remains constant and abstract. Is this eros or agape?

As you might notice, if you jump to my other reflective journal, for LPW 700, I've been reading Plato's Symposium (Plato, 360 B.C.E) The Symposium is, in a way, an inquiry into erotic love. However, it would be foolish to interpret the term "erotic" as meaning only sexual. It's clear from the rhetorical speeches in the Symposium, that what the men around the couches are speaking of is something much closer to the idea of desire (Levy, 1979).

Diotima, Socrates' teacher, tells him that inherent in the concept of love (in the sense they are discussing it) is lack. Love wants something. Furthermore, she tells him that there is only one 'desire' - that it shows itself differently at different stages in its upwards journey towards perfect desire: the contemplation of beauty - perfect, formless and incapable of loving in return (Diotima's Speech, 360 B.C.E.).

How does this, even by the Greek definitions, differ from agape? In my opinion, this sort of desire not only mirrors but is an alternate definition of Christian concepts of a desire to be one with God. I realize that in order to back up this statement, I'd have to do a lot more research into early Christian doctrine, and I'm glad that this is a piece of fiction and not an academic paper, or I could spend years looking at this!

Another take on desire is that of Georges Bataille, author of "The Accursed Share", describes a theory of economics based on fulfilling need and excess. The use of excess, he tells us, is that of sacrifice. He goes on to explain that excess must be used as sacrifice in order that a) it not be simply abused in a quotidian way and that b) it be consumed so that the cycle of need can reoccur, and life continue with normality, pursuing its needs. The excess of human energy is what Bataille defines as erotic desire. And, it must be 'sacrificed' in order to maintain balance (Bataille, 1988).

Serge Carfantan, writing on Nietzche's interpretation of desire, reminds us that very often:

"The true object of desire is not necessarily what it appears at first glance to be pursuing. This is why we do not always know what we want. Were we able to view our desires in the full light of consciousness, we would begin to perceive that the process of desiring is never without the projection of the representation of a want: want of another person, want of recognition, want of affection, want of self" (Carfantan, 2003)

But Bataille disagrees: "The object of sensual desire is by nature another desire. The desire of the senses is the desire, if not to destroy oneself, at least to be consumed and to lose oneself without reservation" (Bataille, "The Object of Desire and the Totality of the Real")

This, for me, and for my story, is where Moira's desire - the excess of her needs - turn to the pursuit of divine ecstasy:

"If only she could keep her mind on how every stroke of the flail on her back was slicing a little more of that awful filth away from her soul... She yearned for the relief that came when her heart shone like pure polished gold, free from all stain, from any taint of evil. She would get up on her knees and arch her back, pushing out her chest to show God how clean she had made herself. In those moments her whole body vibrated with an invisible, divine energy. It streaked from her toes all the way to her head and back down again. Every muscle quivered with the joy of knowing that she was just that much closer to an Imitation of Christ" (The Splinter).

Eric Gans, in "The Erotic", says that:

"As Bernini's famous statue of Saint Theresa reminds us, religious ecstasy and erotic ecstasy can take much the same form. How then shall we distinguish between eroticism and religion, eros and agape? Erotic desire, as we have seen, is based on the reduction of the triangle of mediated desire to a relationship between desiring Self and desired Other in which the latter serves as both object and mediator. God as the originary mediator of all desire is surely the mediator of my desire for his Being" (Gans, 1998).

I don't find that Gans' distinction is ultimately convincing. It's based on the concept that the "desired Other" and "God" are different things. I would argue that, as most people can't conceive of God without personifying him/her/it, then God is as much a "desired Other" as anyone else.

Certainly, in Moira's case, inherent in her desire to be one with God, is the promise to be rid of her existential loneliness:

"Please. I can't do it by myself. I've tried, but I get tired and dizzy. You have to help me, Simon, please. I want to see the Virgin. I want to feel her grace pouring down on me, cleansing me of sin, and taking me into the divine light

She reached her arm over him, pulling herself up, until her face was next to his. "Please, Simon. I feel so alone. I need to be with Her" (The Splinter)

In The Splinter, all three main characters struggle with a sense of existential angst. All three have tried to purge it: Jacob, the ex-junkie, has sought the numbing stillness of heroine; Brother Simon, through sex, pain and then through the self-sacrifice of work; and Moira, through pain and ecstatic prayer. And society approves of none of them.

Moira has read and is devoted to the writings of Saint Teresa of Avila, who describes her relationship with God and pain thus:

"In the beginning I was afraid--it happens to me to be almost always so when our Lord leads me by a new way, until His Majesty reassures me as I proceed--and so our Lord bade me not to fear, but to esteem this grace more than all the others He had given me; for the soul was purified by this pain--burnished, or refined as gold in the crucible, so that it might be the better enamelled with His gifts, and the dross burnt away in this life, which would have to be burnt away in purgatory" (The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus).

John Blevins discusses the schism in the church between eros and agape. In his opinion, the Christian traditional interpretation of Jesus taking on human form is an act of erotic, not agapic love. He is made 'flesh' in order to 'know' humanity better. Inherent in this, says Blevins, is the acceptance of erotic love as a vehicle to achieve divine transcendence (Blevins, 2007)

So why does my Moira look to the ancient past for her models of how to achieve this?

In "A Preface to Transgression", Foucault puts it very nicely: "The proof is its whole tradition of mysticism and spirituality which was incapable of dividing the continuous forms of desire, of rapture, of penetration, of ecstasy, of that outpouring which leaves us spent: all of these experiences seemed to lead, without interruption or limit, right to the heart of a divine love" (Foucault, 1977)

Or, if you are feeling a little lazier, you can listen to Foucault on this issue at YouTube.

Reference:
Bataille, Georges. The Accursed Share. New York: Zone Books, 1988.

Bataille, Georges. "The Object of Desire and the Totality of the Real." Generation Online. Unknown. 19 April 2008 http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpbataille2.htm.

Blevins, John. "Uncovering the Eros of God." Theology and Sexuality 13. 3. (2007) 289-299. 19 April, 2008 http://tse.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/13/3/289.

Cartanfan, Serge. "Lesson 4. The obscure Object of Desire." Philosophy and Spirituality Website. Unknown. 19 April 2008 http://pagesperso-orange.fr/philospir/Lesson4.htm.

Gans, Eric. "The Erotic." Chronicles of Love and Resentment. 1998. UCLA. 19 April 2008 http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/views/vw128.htm.

Foucault, Michel. "A Preface to Transgression." Language, Counter-memory, Practice. 1977. Google Books. 19 April 2008 http://books.google.com/books?id=OMRWM0-gSnMC&pg=PA29&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=
0_0&sig=jPz40kU0lI1eVNtarg-kbiLaXdY.

Levy, Donald. "The Definition of Love in Plato's Symposium." Journal of the History of Ideas 40.2. (Jun. 1979) 285-291. 19 April, 2008 http://www.jstor.org/stable/2709153.

Plato, "The Symposium." Internet Classics Archive. 360 B.C.E.. MIT. 19 April, 2008 http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/symposium.html.

Teresa of Avila, "The Life of Saint Teresa of Jesus." Gutenberg Project Website. 1904. 9 May 2008 http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8trsa10h.htm.

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Inspiration for The Splinter

I decided to write The Splinter for a whole bunch of reasons. The trigger was that the writing list, ERWA, where I was acting as theme story editor, has a regular theme story competition and I was having to write the guidelines for the monthly themes. One of them was on religion and myth. In writing the parameters for the story call, I thought about what kind of stories intrigued me, so I began to do some research on the topic. In my wanderings, I ran across Butler's Lives of the Saints, and then St. Teresa of Avila.

After reading her autobiography: The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus, it occurred to me to take a step back from the revulsion I felt about this woman who, by all accounts, tortured herself into an ecstatic state throughout most of her life. It was easy to write her off as a delusional woman suffering from some mental illness. It would have been easy to blame it on the sexist, repressive sub-culture of the Church, within a sexist, repressive culture of 16th Century Spain.

I'd studied 16th Century Spain during my Spanish A' Levels and I'd read "Lazarillo de Tormes" in the original Spanish. I knew quite a lot about what society was like during the period. Catholic Spain still had the memory of Moorish occupation fresh in their minds. The city of Granada had only been reconquered in 1492. The Spanish Inquisition, which had started only 20 years earlier, and lasted until almost the 18th Century, was in full swing. It was a time of religious intolerance, and hyper-Catholicism. Nonetheless, most Spanish women weren't flagellating themselves to bloody pulps. What was so attractive about it to St. Teresa?

What, I wondered, did she get out of all that pain? What was she searching for? What was the payoff? No one, no matter how mentally ill, keeps on hurting themselves over years unless they are achieving something by doing it. I started investigating other saints who had gained notoriety for their excessive acts of mortification.

The idea grew in my mind: what if there were a modern-day St. Teresa? How would her family, her friends, the Church treat her? How could modern words be put to that great yearning for unity with God sought after by the self-mortifying Saints?

The idea for the story of The Splinter grew out of this.

References:

Butler, Alban. "Lives of the Saints." Sacred Texts. 1894. 15 Apr 2008
http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/lots/index.htm

St. Catherine of Siena, "The Dialogue of Saint Catherine." Intratext Library. Unknown. 15 Apr 2008 http://www.intratext.com/IXT/ENG0139/_P1X.HTM.

St Teresa of Avila, "The Interior Castle - Six Mansions." Catholic First. Unknown. 15 Apr 2008 http://www.catholicfirst.com/thefaith/catholicclassics/stteresa/castle/interiorcastle4.cfm.

St. John of the Cross, "Ascent of Mount Carmel." Catholic First. unknown. 15 Apr 2008 http://www.catholicfirst.com/thefaith/catholicclassics/johnofthecross/ascent/ascent03.cfm.

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