Tag Archives: The Handmaid’s Tale

Art and Life in Step: The Handmaid and the Refugee Parent

20 Wednesday Jun 2018

Posted by in Current Events, Pop, Pop Culture, Social Justice, Television

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This post contains spoilers for The Handmaid’s Tale, season 2, episode 10.

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I can’t imagine a more apropos episode of The Handmaid’s Tale for today.

Earlier today, I saw the following Instagram from Elizabeth Moss:

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I had a feeling I knew where this episode was going…

After some very brutal scenes earlier in the episode that needs a trigger warning, the last 1/3 of the show presents us with a familiar storyline. June/Offred is granted the opportunity to visit her daughter Hannah and spend a few rare moments with her child. As we see earlier in the series, the child was kidnapped from her parents and June was forced into sexual and surrogate slavery.

The conversation is heartbreaking. As their visit continues, the child asks her (former) mother why she didn’t try hard enough to look for her. She hides behind the Martha as she is so unfamiliar with the woman that gave birth to her and raised her for the early years of her life. Hannah screams out for her mother as people pry the child out of the mother’s arms at the end of their short visit. The two do not know whether or not they will see each other again.

So this is just another dystopian series, right?

Or is this too real?

What we see in this episode and hear on the news are eerily similar: children being ripped from the arms and lives of their parents.

(As they filmed the episode, I highly doubt they knew this episode would be airing this week of all weeks.)

Like what is going on today, the party who very much wants to push a pro-family platform destroys families that cross their path.  Children are ripped from the lives of their parents, undoubtedly crying themselves to sleep as they abide in a world of uncertainty.

Some people believe it’s part of God’s plan or divine intervention that such horrific moves are made. They want us to follow they demands of the government instead of God’s ethics. And yet, as they continue to believe they are the good guys, our world becomes like Canada in The Handmaid’s Tale: seeing a humanitarian crisis unfold.

Like some posts I’ve seen online this week, leaders in the Bible who separated children from their parents were not the “good guys.” Rather, they were Pharaoh and Herod. They were notorious not only for taking children away but killing them as well.

I don’t think any “Good Christian” wants to identify with the two of them. But here our Jesus-professing leaders are- following in their footsteps.

Dystopia is a breath away from us right now, America. When children and parents are ripped apart from one another, and the children are kept in cages, not allowed to be picked by adults, and may never see their parents again, the distopian nightmare is real.

You may read this and say the refugees have broken the law. But they came here because their living conditions were so unstable and dangerous. And we turn our backs on them. We’ve been told over and over in Scripture that we are to care for the orphan, widow, and alien/stranger, and we ignore the many Biblical texts that give us this mandate. No matter what the law says or what the powers-that-be want the law to look like, Jesus was (1) a refugee and (2) a law breaker as he healed on the sabbath. Our powers-that-be wish to forget this.

I encourage each of you to watch the last 1/3 of the episode. Hear the screams between mother and child. Watch the tears swelling in their eyes. This is not fiction. This is not dystopia. This is America in 2018.

Hagar, the Handmaid, and the Other Women

09 Wednesday May 2018

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IMG_8226Note: This post includes spoilers from The Handmaid’s Tale, season 2, episode 4 entitled “Other Women.”

I see the story of Hagar in a brand new light.

Imagine that Hagar, concubine of Abram, as a young woman forced to live with a family in a new society framework.   Imagine that as they analyze her monthly cycle, she is required to have sexual relations with the man of the house.  Imagine that she cannot say no to the process – that this is her life.

This is the life of handmaid Offred – June – in the story The Handmaid’s Tale.  And this is essentially the story of Hagar.

What do we know about Hagar?  Chapter 16 of Genesis tells us that she was a slave.  She was Egyptian.  She is accused by Sarai of contempt.  She is abused by Sarai and runs away.  Years later, after she gives birth to Ishmael, she is thrown out of the community with little resources and forced into the wilderness only with her child.

The mother of Ishmael was a handmaid.  She was forced to conceive against her will.

June/Offred is Hagar.  And Hagar is a handmaid.  Like Hagar, June couldn’t say no.  Like Hagar she was property, and one of her jobs was to serve as a surrogate – a working reproductive system – for a more-privileged couple.  Like Hagar, she will undoubtedly be cast aside after she gives birth.

See the wilderness where Hagar is cast?  The Colonies may appear different, but they are exile, nonetheless.

June is viewed by Serena Joy through a lens of jealousy.  Sarai saw Hagar through a similar lens of envy, and Sarai expressed that jealousy by abusing Hagar.  In Genesis 16, Sarai is told by her husband that she can do what she wants to with her slave Hagar.  It states that Sarai “dealt harshly” with Hagar which resulted in Hagar running away.  June also runs away… only to be captured again by the powers-that-be.  While the Genesis 16 texts states that Hagar is convinced by God to go back, was that the way it really would happen?  Would God instruct a slave to return to their abusive masters?

Do I believe Hagar wanted to “show contempt” with Sarai?  No.  Do I believe that she was wrongly accused.  Probably.  If she showed contempt it was because Hagar was given the opportunity to feel some power in a powerless situation.  While it says that Sarai has the power, in all honesty, Abram has all of the power.  The patriarchal systems during the time of Abram and Sarai allowed some women to have power over others.  In all actuality, the system put into place by the men during the time fostered a environment where the women hated one another – just like in Gilead.

Sound familiar?  Like Sarai, Serena Joy has power over the handmaid but is also a slave in the system.  She is complicit and a pawn.  June lives in an oppressive system which favors some women over others with handmaids being physically and emotionally abused by the other women – especially by the wives and Aunt Lydia.

Abram looks like the innocent soul in all of this.  Frankly, after watching this show, I can no longer see how this makes Abram greater than Fred.  Abram undoubtedly has sex with Hagar against her will – or at the very least without her free and willing consent.  The patriarchy gives permission to the men to reign over the rest of the society as they peg women against women to achieve their goals.

Is it much different today?  There are slaves in our world- ones that are forced to work and have sex in order to build society and some men’s egos.  We see how slaves are rented to men for a night of sex.  Very often, what appears to be prostitution is the story of women who are forced to be a part of physical intimacy against their will.

But there is another part of all of this.  And with Mother’s Day coming up, I feel like it needs to be said: our system is built on women comparing themselves to other women.  Having children is a vital piece of the patriarchal puzzle.  How we look and with whom we are connected are other pieces.

For those of us who have not had children – and especially those who have truly wanted to give birth – it feel like a club that we are not a part of.  It feels like we’ve been left out of something truly great.  And I wonder if our society has allowed motherhood to be used as another “us vs. them” tool.

The us vs. them was felt by Sarai and Hagar.  It’s seen every time Serena Joy experiences her devastation with her own unspoken infertility.  It’s seen when June wants to return to her own life but can’t.  And it’s experienced by many in our time.

“Women shall be saved through childbirth.”  That’s what 1 Timothy 2 says.  That’s how Hagar was undoubtedly able to have a decent life for many years.  It’s also why people use words like “you don’t know what love is until you have a child.”  But it’s a message that isn’t true.  Women are valuable on their own – no matter if they are married, who they are married to, if they’ve had children, how they’ve became a mother, or whose child they are.

While motherhood is a calling by God to some women, we as a society need to stop placing it on all woman as a requirement for salvation here on earth or in heaven.  We need to stop this toxic message of us versus them.  We are women – all of us.  Married, single, parent, childless – all of us are valuable children of God and made in God’s image.

The First to Go

26 Thursday Apr 2018

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battle-board-board-game-700971I was a student in my father’s honor’s Civics class during my freshman year of high school.  For some reason, I remember more from that class than many others.  The time period was late Cold War; often talked about was Glasnost – a concept of openness that (I’m sure) many wish was present in that land today.

It should have come to no surprise that he told our class that he would be one of the first rounded up in some authoritarian regimes.  As a teacher – and a teacher of government who encouraged critical thinking – a government which completely controlled the people would round educators like him up and either imprison them indefinitely or kill them immediately.

His dad (my grandfather) was the survivor of the Armenian Genocide in 1915.  The official day of recognition falls on the anniversary of Red Sunday in which many Armenian intellectuals were arrested.  Many later perished in prison.

From my previous research of the Armenian Genocide, I remember events at the beginning of the atrocities.  As I looked up this information today, I found a term in which I wasn’t familiar: decapitation strike.  Apparently, as a means of achieving instability and removing leadership, one party will round up leaders and intellectuals to decentralize power and avoid resistance.  In genocides of people, the oppressors will use opportunities like this to control the remainder of their opposition, remove their resourceful leaders who are the heart and head of the movement, and allow them to live in a state of fear.

As my dad said – those who provide knowledge (especially contradictory to the oppressors) or allow for freedom of thought are the first to go.

With the anniversary of the genocide happening the day prior to the release of second season episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale, I suppose I was thinking this when I was watching the season two, episode two. 

(SPOILER ALERT)

June/Offred is on the run.  Members of the underground movement trying to help her escape take her to The Boston Globe offices.  Obviously, the offices are empty, but as June walks around (and discovers where she is), she sees desks waiting for their workers with family photographs and Boston Red Sox gear.  Then she enters another area of the offices and sees a row of nooses dangling from the ceiling.  Nearby is a wall with a number of bullet holes.  Journalists and others who worked at the newspaper were killed in those very spots.

Because when the intellectuals and those who provide information are still alive as an authoritarian regime rises, they pose a threat.  And this is always something to keep in mind when we repeatedly hear “fake news” from our leaders about reputable news sources.  The powers-that-be are weakening the values of a healthy country – one that encourages freedom of thought and freedom of the press.

I think back to what my dad said thirty years ago, and something else comes to mind: I would now be part of that group.  When those of us who are leaders, knowledge-providers and proponents of critical thinking are in opposition the authoritarian regime in our land, we must realize that we, too, could be the ones imprisoned or killed.  Now, I don’t think this is going to happen here anytime soon – at least I hope not.  But we all must stay awake to the possibility that these things can happen anywhere at anytime.

They happened to the leaders of Armenia 103 years ago, including to another 45-year-old clergy member with the last name Torigian: Father Vaghinag Torigian.  He refused to give information to the oppressive powers, realizing that he would probably lose his life either way but knowing that he would if he didn’t comply.

Unless we learn from the past just like George Santayana said, atrocities will happen again.  But we must keep moving forward to work for justice – even in scary and threatening times.  This is what it means to “take up the cross.”  We must be willing to fully live into our values – even if our lives our threatened.  Jesus did.  He was willing to be authentic to his faith by not only sharing God’s love, but standing on the side of the people and against the powers-that-be.

Depending on what you think of Christianity and faith, some may see that Jesus was also one of the first to go of his new faith movement…

That’s what has happened when the Armenian Genocide started.  To some: justice is more valuable than life.  It’s our call to ensure that all people are treated fully human and that our agency remains intact.

Are we willing to go to the cross… or be shot… or hung for what we believe?

The Pastor’s Tale

10 Wednesday May 2017

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hideAs I stood at the communion table on Sunday morning, what breezed through my mind was a world in which I could no longer be a pastor because of my gender.  I suppose this came to my mind since I had been watching The Handmaid’s Tale and reading various news stories about women.  I worried about the end of pastoral opportunities for women.  And so, I bring you this piece of pastoral dystopia.

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I was beginning to become flushed again.  Middle-aged and hot flashes.  But, of course, no air conditioning in the house we were abiding within.

We were just happy to be there – happy to be living with our sisters in Christ.  We were delighted to be able to spend time laughing together – talking about our clergy stories and anecdotes of life in and out of the pulpit.  We were living in a time when we could be completely ourselves and, yet, continuously on edge that something devastating could be happening in the next few minutes.

They might find us.  They might find us and kill us.

My dad was my government teacher.  Now, I was only a teenager at that point, so I don’t remember everything.  But what I do remember was that my dad told us in class that he would be one rounded up and killed under some regimes.

Why?  Because he was an agent of change.  He spoke about politics and government.  And he wanted us to think for ourselves.

Fortunately, that was thirty years ago, and he was able to freely practice his calling as a teacher-

And only thirty years later, I wish I had that same freedom.

I became a pastor in my late thirties after sensing a calling ten years earlier.  The beauty of my ordination day was being able to stand at the table and boldly claim the words of Christ…

“On the night before he died… he took the bread… he took the cup…”

What a moment in my life to be celebrated.  Finally, I was able to live fully into my calling.

But less than a decade later, things began to change.  More women were being laid off from jobs- fired, thanks to the fundamentalists in power.  More propaganda drove the importance of women birthing children.  “Women shall be saved through childbearing” was the mantra we heard over and over.

I wasn’t called to be a mother.  I thought that was my path at one point, but then my fallopian tubes twisted and turned.  Meeting the “right guy” didn’t happen until close to perimenopause anyway, so the chance of babies happening were decreasing with every breath.

And while I was mostly content with the way life turned out, hearing them chant the mantra over and over again was a knife through my heart.

Are we more than our uteruses?  That’s what we would ask ourselves.  I felt like I was no more than one or two organs in my body.

Number forty-six became president just a little before I turned forty-six.  And I was out on the streets protesting his every word and every act.  He was a “good Christian man” according to some of our colleagues.  Morality was his focus.  Making families great again was his vision and his mission.  He wanted women to be baby-making Stepford Wives… submissive, subservient, and silent.

And this was not who I was or who I was called to be.  I was more than my uterus and milk ducts.

I considered moving to Canada to find a pastoral position there, but many women were doing the same, so the chance of finding a job was minimal.

Eventually, mine name was put on a list – along with the names of fellow female clergy.  We were the enemy.  We had said too much and protested too often.  We were responding to the call of God to oppose the current theocratic system in place.

I didn’t know what to do.  I was in a constant state of anxiety – especially losing my agency after being so independent.  I kissed my loved ones goodbye, because I knew they would find me with them.

And I went underground with my sisters of the cloth.

Some were very pregnant with their own child, but since their names were on the list, they too were enemies of the state.  Others of us were heading into our peri- or menopausal years.  We knew one another well.  We knew that we were more than our wombs and were willing to live in a community that cherished our agency.

We weren’t sure what forty-six’s administration did with the women clergy they caught.  Were they dead?  Were they forced into marriages?  What about our lesbian sisters – were they able to love their spouses freely anymore, or were they sent to camps?

If they caught us, where would we go?  The camps?  Prison?  Would we be tried and killed?

This was our fear.  Every day.

And yet we comforted each other every day.  We sang songs, talked about our great loves, the adventures we had pre-ministry and even some during our clergy days.  We would binge watch the DVD shows smuggled into the safe house.  A couple of our clergy brothers would bring us what we needed a couple of times per week, but otherwise, we weren’t exiting our current abode.

The one ritual we made sure to embrace was communion.  Each night, right before retiring to our corners of the home, we would bring out a few pieces of bread.  And every night we would take turns repeating the words that Jesus gave us – right when he was about to be captured.  We knew that if we were captured we would follow in the steps of Jesus the Christ as we were faithful to the end.

Tonight was my night to lead.  Would this be the last time I spoke the words of institution?  Would they be coming for us tomorrow like they did with Jesus?  Would I be ripped from this space and forced into a life where I couldn’t say those words again?

On the night before Jesus died, he took the bread and broke it…

Lifting the break and tearing it apart, I wondered if my body would be torn to pieces.

Likewise, after supper, Jesus took the cup and blessed it…

I passed it around, knowing that we could all be drinking from the same cup of Christ because of our choices to remain faithful to our calling and to God.

As the drops of juice filled my mouth and I swallowed it, a tear slid down my face.  It wasn’t the only tear in the room, and I didn’t feel the need to hide it.  We were in the valley of the shadow of death, and I still feared evil.  I may sense the presence of God next to me, but much of the Body of Christ wanted to amputate us, discarding us into a wasteland they created from their distorted relationship with the Divine.

At least tonight – maybe for the last time – we were once again given a table in the presence of our enemies, remembering the boldness of Jesus the Christ.

 

*****

Note that I want to add a short while after publishing this post:

I wrote this from my perspective which is still very privileged. But I don’t want to forget about the people who were not able to get ordained because of their sexual orientation, gender identity, or race and whose standing was taken away because of their sexual orientation. We should be working every day to ensure that all people are able to freely live into their callings.