A quote from Audre Lord’s essay “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power” (link goes to a PDF version). She did what Sylvia Path couldn’t: be a poet, rather than just write poetry. Audre died of cancer a while back and said “my silence didn’t save me and it won’t save you either.” Her thoughts on the erotic are important for feminism and society, I think.
NYC (from my Brooklyn Bridge set)
For nearly a year, I’ve been blogging about Islam. I’m not Muslim. Actually, I decided to “meet Christ” in high school, which is a phrase I usually avoid since it wreaks of lofty testimonials but will use here because that is just what we called it. I did have great leaders in my faith early on and to this day, I still believe that religion is a very important part of life. Even for people who don’t believe in organized religion and disagree with it in principle, I think religion itself is an important part of understanding the world and how people interact with each other.
One of the leaders in my life was B; he led the Christian youth group I was a part of early on. Looking back, his interpretation of how the new testament and the old (or Torah as 75% of my classmates at the time would call it) fit together was pure genius as far as I am concerned. It’s also a fact that he was the first and probably the best youth group leader in the area and his job that wasn’t easy. We were a minority in a predominately Jewish community, and he did a great job of talking with the Jewish leaders and helping us understand Jewish faith as well as Christian morality. This was my first experience learning from an interfaith leader about how to talk about religion in an intellectual way.
