a memoir of my hips

Here are parts of a paper I wrote that inspired my thesis. (My thesis is entitled "Dancing toward Justice: Embodying a counterculture religious self and ethic" -- but that's a different story)  I actually wrote this as part of a different paper for a different class called Strategic Peacebuilding.  The title of this paper was "embodied justice: a memoir of my hips". This kind of paper normally wouldn't fly for a typical graduate class -- but I got by with it for Dr. Sharon Welch (a former RLDS'er)  Here are some excerpts:


She taught me to swing my hips.
I had only been in Malawi, a small country in southeast Africa, for a couple of days. My senses were completely overloaded. My tongue, skin, eyes, ears and nose were running on overdrive in order to learn this new world of earth tones and clapped rhythm. My body was desperately trying to keep order, like an overhead system in emergency mode – “Everyone stay calm, walk don’t run, form lines and share the duct tape”. That’s when Kathy grabbed me by the hand, pulled me to the middle of the floor in her house and let go. She began swaying her hips… then her arms… then her head, beckoning me to join. Very much an amateur in the ways of swaying, I began moving my hips side to side. Mere inches. But it wasn’t long before I began to feel my hip joints stretch into a sense of release and freedom that I had rarely experienced before. With gentle encouragement my hips swung further, caring less about straight lines, gravitating to circular motions. It felt sensual. It felt freeing. My body went from a stiff code red to a fluid, relational source of strength.
The next two months of my stay I was most often not dancing to my hearts content and constantly attuned to bodily wisdom. I was in fact often plagued with uncertainty about my body. My arms and back were not strong enough to pound the maize into flour like the other women and girls could. The pot I attempted to hold on my head never found its comfortable groove and would wobble too much when I walked. I couldn’t wash my clothes by hand to the yes nod of my host mother. But more than my obvious weakness and inability to take care of myself without the conveniences I was used to, guilt and shame were seeping into my white skin. I tried to comfort myself by thinking about all of the things that I could do because of my education and American privilege but this comfort was superficial and short lived…
Now, I am more and more convinced that true justice making that provides enduring peace must come about in ways that are truly embodied. Of course, thinking, writing, and speaking are all embodied activities. Thinking requires chemicals in our brain to release and flow. Writing requires hand and eye coordination with the brain. Talking uses vocal chords, brain chemicals, lips, tongue, etc. All of this could not happen without being embodied and somewhat healthy. We must not be starving. We must have rest. We must have brain chemicals and hand muscles and vocal chords that work properly, have been exercised and not damaged too badly. But the embodied act of writing, speaking and thinking should not be privileged over other embodied ways of knowing. Dancing, singing, gardening, painting, walking, nursing are all ways that help us gain insight for creating justice and peace.
At face value, this understanding of epistemology seems rather benign and obvious. Yet, the deep wisdom of these thoughts has actually been hard fought. At its base, these ideas go against much of what elite, masculine culture, religion and academia have instilled in me.
It is just in the last year that I have become interested in embodiment and the religious, ethical and political implications of taking our bodies more seriously in cultivating justice. But it was not until our Art and Ethics of Strategic Peacebuilding class discussions and readings that I learned focusing on the body in these ways does not have to be dictated by issues of pain, suffering, destruction and despair. In fact, embodiment, following the Navajo Beauty Way, gratitude and a symbolic of natality are ways that truly provide an enduring peace and a realistic way to live and work. They offer possibilities that do not preclude an empire of power and oppression, which obsesses over dualistic ways of thinking and death, but instead celebrates life, multiplicity and nature.
Little did I know that Kathy was practicing for a wedding when she was encouraging me to loosen my hips. In their wedding ceremonies, all the children and attendants dance down the aisle and throughout the service throughout the day and night. I didn’t know it at the time but Kathy was recruiting me to dance in this wedding as well, requiring weekly rehearsals and a new dress to accentuate my hips and shoulders. Every week, my hips would swing and celebrate new beginnings to singing harmonies and stomping feet. Despite my overwhelming feelings of inadequacy, these rehearsals were a time when my hips could celebrate to their bones’ desire.
*****************************************************************************************************************************

A few months ago, I was sitting hunched over in the library full of books, full of words. I was immersed in postmodernism and postcolonial theory when I received an email. News had spread from contact to contact until it had reached me, saying that Kathy passed away from cerebral malaria. She had contacted it soon after my husband and I visited her and her family a second time. She was plagued with neurological damage that caused her to have life-threatening seizures and eventually die. She died. From malaria. I shut my books and steadily walked outside of the building, called my mother and cried. I no longer believed in any kind of theology that could help me cope with this news. Nor did my hips know how to shift in comforting and empowering ways. Instead pain and anguish nestled in between my hipbones. My uterus cradled despair like an unborn fetus.
It has been tempting to obsessively focus on the injustices that brought about Kathy’s death. No doubt, it has been tempting to think about ways in which I am implicated in these injustices. I have done both of these things multiple times. But much attention has been given to the injustices of our time and it is easy to become overwhelmed and debilitated by the complicated web of power and oppression that we live in. Furthermore, just because those of us who are privileged might “know” that oppression occurs doesn’t automatically translate in “knowing” how to work against it. Often times I am personally too depressed and emotionally tired to partake in true peace work (even if I did know what that really was).
On the other hand, if injustice is embodied, then cannot justice equally be embodied? The obvious answer is yes, but questions still abound. What does this embodied justice look like? Will we know it when we see it? What will be the criteria?
How do I swing my hips now?

*******************************************************************************************************************************

So I will continue to swing my hips to writers and poets like Toni Morrison and Audre Lourde; I will swing my hips to singer/songwriters like Ani Difranco and the Indigo Girls; I will swing my hips to Kathy’s beckoning body; but just as important, I will swing my hips to my own tune and rhythm, creating justice and enduring peace with each sway.