Work with what you’ve got
by Andrea Elizabeth
I have heard transgendered people say that they are being true to themselves by surgically and hormonally changing their bodies. My first opinion about this is that we are not our sexual orientation. Transgendered people will probably say that they didn’t so much do it because of who they are attracted to, because they probably don’t have any qualms about appearing hetero or homo sexual, but it seems that sexual relationships are usually involved in their sense of identity. Indeed in even homosexual relationships, each person seems to assume a masculine or feminine identity. There doesn’t seem to be a gender neutral (SNL’s Pat appears more masculine to me). If we are not our orientation, which does seem to be tied to our sense of our own gender, then does it follow that we are not our gender either? I don’t mean to prioritize gender so much, but a story about a transgendered person did make me start thinking about identity.
When the Bible says that there is no longer male or female, Jew nor Greek, I am lead to believe that gender is not the source of identity. Growing up with a Protestant, Christ only, view of Christianity, Christ has been the sole example of humanity, so one sort of has to ignore they are female when focusing on that. There are of course many gender distinctions in the Bible such as who can teach whom and so forth, but that can be somewhat separated from one’s spiritual aspirations. It is hard to come to terms with the Orthodox perspective of increased veneration of female Saints, but I’ll say even they are Christlike.
This is all to say that from the Christian (an identity that applies both to male and female) perspective, our gender is not who we are. With that I’ll not dispose of St. Maximus’ distinctions, but the distinctions are not as obvious as we may think. Male Saints can be praised for having certain female characteristics, perhaps gentleness, and vice versa. There are many hymns that praise female Saints for “manfully bearing …” too. Therefore I think that what men and women can properly do is pretty fluid.
Then we come to traditions. There are many cultural and Christian traditions that relegate what a man and woman can properly do as men and women. In the ’60′s these traditions where criticized and the social penalties for not conforming to them where thrown out the window. More recently, I think there has been a more tolerant view of traditional “options”. They have become a matter of aesthetic choice. A person is to be true to themselves, and some people may have a more fundamentalist makeup. I’ve even wondered if this is true. At bottom, I think everyone should choose to be traditionally Christian, but maybe that’s because I score very high in judging in that personality test. Good grief. I actually don’t feel all that traditional. I don’t like feeling boxed in. I love and respect the Orthodox traditions, but I’m a bit lenient sometimes.
Some people’s identity seems very linked to their occupation. I was watching a female classical xylophone player the other day, and was amazed at her precision, quickness, and attention to musical dynamics. To focus so much energy into becoming that proficient means that you have to totally believe in music. Your whole life has to become about music. While it was most impressive, I wonder if music is worth that much belief in it and its importance. Of all the disciplines, I probably would say that music is at the top of that list. I think it’s God’s language, but it’s not His only one. Jesus is called the Word, but did he sing the world into existence? I wonder. I think atoms are probably harmonically held together.
Men and women can harmonize together. Last night we heard the male Stretensky Monastery Choir perform in Dallas. It was beautiful and wonderful and transporting, but towards the end in the folk music section the conductor turned around and lead the Russians, who were many, in the audience in singing the chorus to a particular song, which they all knew. I think it was my favorite part of the whole concert. I was hungry for the higher, lighter registers, as much as I loved the lower ones up to that point. It’s nice to hear them in their individual settings, but I like variety.
In an old blog, in my profile I wrote, “I am what I like”. While what I like is important to my sense of self, asceticism is doing without things we like. Perhaps the ascetic likes asceticism more! But we don’t empty ourselves to be empty. We want to like Christ more.
“Some people’s identity seems very linked to their occupation. I was watching a female classical xylophone player…”
Later in this paragraph you refer to this lady’s whole life evidently being devoted to music. So I wonder whether her *identity* was really tied to her occupation, or if her identity is music, which drove her to that occupation. Chicken or egg question, which could be applied to many occupations. Am I an engineer as a matter of identity as an engineer, and more particularly the type of engineer I am, or is my identity tied to a more abstract systems aesthetic, and that drove me to my occupation? Maybe too subtle a distinction. But it would be an interesting study to catalog, for those people who are devoted to their occupation, the primitive or essential driving force behind it, then reduce those forces to their most efficient expression as a non-redundant set, then see what that says about the number of core identities there are and what that implies about human nature.
Another angle – people love stories, and part of that love involves an identification with a protagonist, and they say there are only so many story patterns – would that mean there are only so many “identities”.
In any case, none of these approaches to “identity” involves gender.
Forgot to add….
I think System Aesthetics is probably God’s language.
No; Poetry is God’s language, word become music and music become word!
What an engineerish response! But did you like the music?! And why?
I like to find common denominators. Perhaps there are analytical people and non. The latter would be the smell the roses type people. I think people can do both. But maybe taking time to smell the roses makes someone less good/detailed (like yourself) at analysis? And is that bad? Good musicians and artists seem to be remarkable good at both.
Don’t rag on engineers! They design useful things, while I sit there waiting for things to happen.
On the other hand I got the abbot’s book, so if you two want to borrow it, let me know. So far they are stories about his finding Orthodoxy and the godly men and women that influenced his life. He writes like Chekhov…I can’t seem to put it down and I don’t know why.
My premise is that people shouldn’t identify themselves by certain choices or feelings, as they are somewhat fluid, but maybe engineering goes down to the bone.
I wanted that book, but after the concert the table was too crowded. So thanks!
There’s probably a good deal of the blind men feeling their way around the elephant about it; probably, the ways we think of God are very much conditioned by the ways in which meaning communicates itself to us.
I think we are drawn to the things we do by the things we love, but it is our fate on earth to tend to have our loves swallowed up in busyness, all the minute observances dictated initially by our devotion to that which we love draws us by slow degrees away from the love of the thing itself, as in the painter in C.S. Lewis who is led to paint because of his love of light, and then, as a step in his descent to hell, becomes interested only in paint, or someone who becomes a librarian because of love for books who finds that they no longer have time to read, or even that their intense association with literature during the work-week kills the desire to read during their leisure time. I know a photographer who went to work as a professional and found that he had stopped doing the kind of photography he liked, so he got a different job, and did photography on the side. Now, of course, he is so busy with his other job that he doesn’t do much photography, but I think what disturbed him was that his professional absorption was destroying his interest in the subject. Now he’s interested, he just doesn’t have time. Over-specialization can be an evil; the tool dictates its use, and we shape ourselves to it in order to become proficient users of the tool. Eventually you get to the point at which musicians and poets end up essentially just having conversations with other musicians and poets, because the language they have developed both in doing what they do and speaking of what they’re doing become so specialized that it is closed to the uninitiate. Also, over time these specializations can be systematized to such an extent that the system replaces the thing itself, as in Tolkien’s address where he complains that language studies are being invaded by “haters of the word”, those who are professionally devoted to certain mechanistic theories of language studies, but who have no love for words, and hence no real sensitivity to the ways words are used. This is why I think the inclusion of the arts as an academic discipline is an ongoing tragedy, because pedantry and art are mutually exclusive; when you have painting or literature that it takes three years of schooling to really understand, then art has lost it’s soul in its own narcissistic self-absorption. True art must be open to light from the outside, because it cannot make its own light, it is merely a reflector.
What I heard last night was a great combination of both, and of course I had such thoughts in mind part of the evening – how they had produced an excellent product that an engineer would have been proud to have designed.
There was both time and frequency domain precision, even during the most rapid sections where the least slip could have muddied the sound.
And the end result of such great design was a pleasing experience in the same category as smelling the rose.
To your question regarding whether the rose-smellers have less value than the analyticals – my assumption is that rose-smellers are creators, and what they create (art) requires precision to imagine and to commit to form in a way that causes others to assign value to it. So in a sense the two categories are not that different.
I think there’s a bigger distinction between those who create and those who only consume.
When I said rose smellers, I was thinking of appreciators, not creators. But I suppose everyone can be said to create something. Finding the balance between breathing in (appreciating) and breathing out (creating) is probably the key. The unbalanced either become overweight or weak.