Poor Margery

It is tempting to put Margery Kempe down as a simple nutcase, but there’s a danger in that assessment—because it unintentionally leads to dismissing and trivializing her life story as one of outrageous delusion, and therefore false. Regardless of the source of Kempe’s behavior—madness, psychosis, depression, divine torment—be it psychiatric or spiritual, she lived it real and she lived it hard.

Sparing neither herself nor the people around her, she drove herself to the utmost extremes of human tolerance. Just consider how far that drive took her: personally, in building (and sometimes losing) her businesses and successfully (if painfully) deconstructing her marriage; religiously, in her unsparing drive to win her place as a Christian holy woman; physically, for she was truly pitiless toward her own comforts (and when the weeping came upon her, that was literally draining as well!); even geographically, given how difficult travel just to France could be in that time—much less a journey to Jerusalem—and the fact that she undertook that journey essentially alone, as an unpleasant, unaccommodating, often embarrassing companion shunned by her fellow travelers. The diagnosis of madness, even if true, doesn't leave much room to acknowledge the gritty, desperate richness and sacrifice of her hard-fought life. 

As for the fascinating discussion on witchcraft (11/5) on the blog: If Margery had been born a century later, she might have been lucky that her madness (if indeed that's what religious intoxication is, as many would assuredly disagree) took the form it did, because her fixation on Christ instead of some other focus might have made it riskier for people to challenge her, having no way to know whether she was genuine or not. (Margery herself seems to worry about her legitimacy at one point, which takes her to visit Julian of Norwich, another and far more respected and accepted Christian mystic.)

But in the 14th century, my understanding is that most of the witch paranoia was focused on men, not women—warlocks, not witches. Women don't come under dark suspicion until the late 15th century, when things start to get really ugly for them; by the 16th century (17th in America), the “pogrom” is in full swing. (I await correction on my witch chronology, if someone knows it in better detail…)

Now, what post is complete without a soundtrack? Back in the day, I used to perform with some friends, and one of the tunes we played was about a witch, Susannah Martin. The words are taken from a newspaper account of her trial...

Wow, Your Room is So Rumi.

After reading the selected poems by Rumi, I decided to dig deeper for myself. I have always considered myself to be a spiritual person (from my 10 years as a devout Christian to my current agnosticism) and I felt drawn to his proverbs. After reading further, I decided to go out into the woods and meditate for a while because I had felt rather strange for the past few weeks. Once I got into the woods, I pulled up some Rumi on my phone, sat there, and  began to meditate. The interesting thing was I began to feel very centered, once I was able to block out all the noise in my head. I began to think about all the existential issues that cross my mind on a daily basis, but instead of it being a burden, it was more like watching a movie in my mind (I swear on my life that I was completely sober while I did this. 😅) After a while, I got cold because I was sitting in the snow and decided to leave. However, the experience left a lasting feeling in my chest and it was one I was very familiar with.

So now for the non-empirical part. The feeling I felt in my chest was the same feeling I felt when I would speak to Jesus back in the day. It feels like comfort and the absence of loneliness. It feels like you can lean back and there will be something/someone there to hold you up. I guess it feels like you're being held and the weight of the world isn't on your shoulders for a little bit. As nice as that is, it led me to think even deeper (wow who would have thought..). If I can feel this feeling while both praying or meditating, what does that mean for the validity of both religious views? The logic behind that question is this. If one is genuinely legit and the other is not, why do I feel that spiritual connection in both cases? I'm not trying to start a belief war, but I am trying to provoke thought.

So my questions are this.

1. What do you think about Rumi?
2. What are your feelings on meditation.
3. Do you subscribe to a more universal mystic or do you think only one religion has it right

(these are heavy questions so, if you feel uncomfortable answering one, feel free to skip it 🌝)

P.S - Check out this picture of Rumi. Can you tell what's wrong with it? If you can...ummmmm.....you get a cookie.

What the hell is the point?

Never in my life have I read something (or heard of anything for that matter) so intricate, detailed and lengthy. As the book goes on we learn name after name and sin after sin of countless people. Dante seems to playing god as he describes which sins are  more dastardly (>>>>>>>>>). Which seems odd and a bit contradictory since one of his motives of "Inferno" seems to be to humiliate and tarnish the name of those who defy god.
This may be a stretch, but isn't he actually committing a sin by judging others when the one true judgement of people that matters comes from God? Let me know your thoughts on this.

Now for my main point, what is his motive for all of this?

Is he trying to entertain people by offering a description of what is perhaps one of the most mysterious and important circumstances of humanity?

Do you think that he truly believed that his depiction is exactly what hell is like?

Was he simply trying to further a political agenda by "exposing" all of the sins of his enemies and people who didn't share his beliefs?

A combination of things? Or something else? I look forward to reading y'all's ideas and explanations for this wacky and twisted masterpiece.
-Cam

Why the Similarities?

While I was reading these stories, namely the myths about Inanna and Gilgamesh, I was struck by the similarities between these myths and the Bible. For instance, we discussed in class the commonalities between the flood that was prophesied in Gilgamesh and the flood in the bible. Given the fact that these two texts were not written even remotely close to each other, so I can't help but wonder where, why, and how these similarities came to be. One theory I have is that the stories of Gilgamesh were still being passed down orally and they somehow made their way around so that the people who contributed to the Bible were able to draw some similarities. On the other hand, this could be pure coincidence, but that is one peculiar coincidence if you ask me. Either way one chooses to look at this, it is interesting to wonder whether people were still talking about Gilgamesh, and even Inanna, when the Bible first came to be.