Ampersand Gazette #7
Rev. Dr. Angela Yarber, Ph.D. with her wife and children and the new book!
“About the book’s title—what do you mean by ‘queering?’”
When I talk about queering, I’m drawing on the brilliant, late bell hooks who claimed: “Queer not as being about who you’re having sex with (that can be a dimension of it); but queer as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.”
“Some people may object to an educated, cisgender, white woman writing about the struggles of People of Color and others with dissimilar backgrounds.
These forerunners have been ignored, excluded, and strategically erased from history books, stained glass, iconography, and other canons of influence, so I’m going to shout about them from the rooftops. Not in place of POC telling these stories, but alongside with humility and gratitude.”
Court Stroud
from an interview with Rev. Dr. Angela Yarber, Ph.D. on forbes.com “Author Angela Yarber On Her New Book
And ‘Tiny House Nation’ Home”
March 21, 2022
Her book is a delight. Here’s the blurb I wrote for it:
Angela Yarber is the real deal when it comes to living a life dedicated to passion. She’s a scholar, an artist, an activist, and a person who lives based on her own discerned guidance—from the inside-out. This makes her refreshing, engaging, and magical in any encounter.
I “met” Angela because of her painting. She paints what she originally dubbed Holy Women Icons in a charming naif collage style that speaks volumes of the complexity inherent in her subjects. During the original surge of Covid, I commissioned her to do an icon of me. We “met” via Zoom aurally because there was a wild thunderstorm in Hawaii that day, where she lived at the time. She could see me, but I couldn’t see her.
Anyway, an hour visiting on the phone convinced her she could do an icon of me. It takes pride of place in our living even now, and every time I look at it, I see something a little different. If you haven’t seen it, here you go:
She named her The Goddess of Fierce Compassion …
Magical, no?
If you’re ever looking for a gift to give a deeply spiritual woman friend, may I suggest you connect with Angela and consider a commission? Find her here.
&
“What is crazy faith?”
“One thing that everybody seems like they’ve lost is faith. Faith in humanity, in themselves, and in God. … Crazy faith is trusting in something that you can’t explicitly prove. Our generation believes more in Google than in God.…
“I look at our faith heroes in the Bible. How crazy it would seem for Noah to go out every day to build an ark and gather his family to do it. And it’s never rained. That’s crazy faith. But it was only crazy until it started raining. Or, like I say, it’s only crazy until it happens.”
Michael Todd, lead pastor, Transformation Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma
in Guideposts, April/May 2022
March 25, 2022
Crazy faith … there are plenty of folx who would say that faith of any kind is just plain crazy at this point in our civilization. Maybe it is. But I couldn’t live without mine.
I mean it. A faithless life, by my lights, is a hopeless life, and a hopeless life is a life devoid of meaning. I am a deep believer in this adage of Viktor Frankl’s.
Humans can live without many things, but we cannot live without meaning.
In fact, if someone were to ask me, that’s what I’d say I do in the counseling work I’ve done for forty years. I help give people new meaning to their experiences. New meaning is usually the key for moving on, for letting go, for healing, for wholing, for dreaming anew.
If having meaning takes crazy faith, count me in. As Rev. Todd says, “It’s only crazy until it happens.”
&
A scholar is just a library’s way of making another library.
Daniel Dennett, philosopher, writer, and professor (b. 28 Mar 1942)
from Anu Garg’s A.Word.A.Day
March 28, 2022
One of the last gifts my mother ever gave me was a t-shirt with a quote on it by Jorge Luis Borges: I have always imagined that Paradise will be some kind of library. Makes sense to me. Oh, and would I be in heaven!
So no wonder I liked Daniel Dennett’s quote. Libraries propagating other libraries. Perfect.
The thing is, in the same week as I saw this, I also came across two delightful word coinages. One was in Mama Donna Henes’ newsletter: heartist. Perfect … an artist with heart.
And the other was from Rev. Dr. Angela Yarber, Ph.D.: scholartivist. Scholar/artist/activist.
This is one of the all-time best things about language, Beloved. If we can’t find a word for what we mean to say, we can make one up! Who knows if either of these will end up in the OED, but they both, regardless, say something about what their coiners mean that makes the original words somehow … more.
That’s what language is for.
&
Tyne Daly
To the Editor:
Re “Two Refugees Cross Poland’s Border, and Enter Different Worlds” (front page, March 15):
“If as one human race in this nuclear day and age, we cannot, at last, see past our various skin colors to hear the pleas for decency in the languages of other people …
“If we cannot embrace our “different” cultures with curiosity and wonder rather than fear …
“If we refuse to recognize that war is never a constructive nor a creative solution …
“If we continue to draw imaginary borders on our one round Earth and ignore our assignment to care for her …
“… Then our murderous self-destruction will make it impossible to look directly into our children’s eyes and promise them the present, much less a future.”
Tyne Daly
Los Angeles
The writer is the actor.
Tyne Daly
from a Letter to the Editor in The New York Times
March 22, 2022
I’ve always liked Tyne Daly. She seems approachable, real, a warm human. Then I read this, and thought, no, she’s a warrior goddess. One devastating letter to the editor later, she lays it out so clearly for all of us.
What are we doing, Beloved? Whatever it is, if it divides us, we need to cut it out. Now. No exceptions.
Isn’t that what Ampersand is all about? Stopping the divisiveness. Standing for inclusion.
I have to be honest here. Are there people whose views I have a hard time tolerating? You bet there are. And my personal antipathy doesn’t matter. I don’t have to have dinner with them. I have to co-habit a planet with them.
Would I just as soon skip it? Hell, yes. And so? So what? I disagree with some folx. And …?
And … nothing. We all live here “on our one round Earth” and if I can’t get over my antipathy—just like “they” say “they” can’t, then I no more deserve to be here than “they” do. Pogo anyone?
We have met the enemy and he is us.
The only way to overcome our reactivity is to switch from an either/or orientation to a both/and one. Join me, please. And, Tyne, thank you.
&
Personal news abounds this month! You know that expression … Nothing happens, and nothing happens, and then everything happens? Well, it did.
If I haven’t yet had the chance to brag to you, I had a new essay in The Huffington Post this past week. Find it here. My editor informs me that there have been over 450,000 reads in a week! I can barely wrap my brain around that.
God’s Dictionary—20th Anniversary Edition is up on Amazon as a paperback and as an ebook. I’m so pleased it’s back in print. There’s some new material, and a lovely Foreword by Nelda Stroud, the mother of a dear friend of mine, who has used the book to teach adult Baptist Sunday School for all these years.
A hardcover is in the works if that is your preference. I’ll have news on that soon.
And … the eight chakra workbooks are available on Amazon in a soft launch way. I haven’t begun to promote them, but if you’re champing at the bit to get started … the eight titles are:
Energy Integrity: Red Root Chakra
Energy Integrity: Orange Sacral Chakra
Energy Integrity: Yellow Solar Chakra
Energy Integrity: Green Heart Chakra
Energy Integrity: Turquoise Throat Chakra
Energy Integrity: Indigo Brow Chakra
Energy Integrity: Violet Crown Chakra
Energy Integrity: Rose Thymus Chakra
The whole series can be found here.
It delights me to tell you that the Forewords were written by some spectacular humans, in order, Erika Koss, Kathleen Curran, Court Stroud, Angela Yarber, Antony Corso, Karyn Bender, and Tony Amato. I wrote the eighth one.
There’s some information about the books on https://iampersand.org, the website for my spiritual work.
See you in a couple of weeks, hopefully with more Energy Integrity news … stay safe, and be ampersand,
S.