Author: Esther Nelson

Esther Nelson teaches courses in Religious Studies (Human Spirituality, Global Ethics, Religions of the World, and Women in Islam) at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia. She has published two books. VOICE OF AN EXILE REFLECTIONS ON ISLAM was written in close collaboration with Nasr Abu Zaid, an Egyptian, Islamic Studies scholar who fled Egypt (1995) when he was labeled an apostate by the Cairo court of appeals. She co-authored WHAT IS RELIGIOUS STUDIES? A JOURNEY OF INQUIRY with Kristin Swenson, a former colleague. When not teaching, Esther travels to various places throughout the world.

Gratitude by Esther Nelson

esther-nelson I’ve been in the midst of moving for almost a year, yet am still not finished with that onerous task. My youngest son and family recently moved into the place I’ve called home since 1980. I bought a small house in the vicinity and have just settled in after spending four months painting, cleaning, and hauling box after box to my new dwelling. At the same time, I’ve been traveling back and forth to New Mexico busy with painting, cleaning, and remodeling my “retirement house.”

I’m tired. Am also experiencing emotions that I thought I was impervious to. I never perceived myself as somebody having an attachment to place, but a month or so before moving out of my old home, I began to feel nostalgic. There was so much I didn’t want to leave behind–the woods, birds nesting in bushes around the property as well as on top of the front porch light, the wildlife (deer, opossum, rabbits), and neighbors far enough away so I didn’t have to hang curtains at the windows.

Just days before the agreed-upon date to turn the old home over to my son and family, I became emotionally distraught. A friend suggested I read Oliver Sacks’ book, Gratitude. Oliver Sacks (1933-2015) was a British neurologist who spent his professional life in the United States caring for people with brain “disorders” such as aphasia, Tourette Syndrome, amnesia, autism, and a host of other neurological diagnoses.

Gratitude is a slim volume featuring four essays written during the last few months of Dr. Sacks’ life. In the second essay, “My Own Life,” he writes: “I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers.”

I wanted to know more about Dr. Sacks’ life and promptly procured his memoir, On The Move A Life, published just before he died in 2015. I was struck by the apparent comfort he felt in his own skin as he went about living in the world. He came from a fairly Orthodox Jewish family and realized during his teen years that he was gay. When his mother discovered his homosexuality, she said, “You are an abomination. I wish you had never been born.” He writes that she undoubtedly was referring to a text in Leviticus (Hebrew Bible) and although she never mentioned the incident again,” …her harsh words made me hate religion’s capacity for bigotry and cruelty.”

His mother’s view regarding his homosexuality didn’t seem to affect Dr. Sacks’ ability to get on with his adventures living on, what he calls, “this beautiful planet.” He focused on his passions–medicine, literature, traveling, observing the natural world, swimming, lifting weights, and riding his motorcycle. Along the way he met a wide variety of people (patients, colleagues, authors, and characters in books). He squeezed gallons of nectar from those meaningful encounters. Yet, I think his mother’s disgust regarding his sexual orientation must have cut him to the quick. He included the incident in his last book, Gratitude. Continue reading “Gratitude by Esther Nelson”

What’s Essential by Esther Nelson

esther-nelson After reading my essay (4-15-16) on this Feminism and Religion site, one of my male colleagues (also a good friend) pushed back at me. “Seems to me,” he said, “that the issue in any oppression is power and power structures are fluid.” He went on to say that men don’t always exercise power over women and then cited his less-than-satisfactory experience with a female dean who tried to unfairly eradicate an academic program he initiated. He reminded me that in bygone times, there were queens who ruled empires–sometimes harshly. Currently, there are women with a certain amount of power who control (to some extent) the lives of their housekeepers (usually women) and gardeners (usually men). Often these housekeepers and gardeners are women and men of color who inhabit a lower social strata.

“Yes,” I noted, “there’s that whole intersectionality thing of race, class, and gender. The contours of oppression shift, but the essay I wrote focused on showing how our society is built and structured, at least partially, upon gender inequality.” He wasn’t convinced that all women in our society inhabit a space where structured gender inequality affects all women, coming back to his argument that power structures shift and we all find ourselves caught somewhere in that web at one time or another. Continue reading “What’s Essential by Esther Nelson”

HUSBAND, MAY I? by Esther Nelson

esther-nelson For several weeks now, I’ve been going through and disposing of stuff that has accumulated in my house over the past three or four decades. One of the more interesting finds was the following letter, written by my husband, when we lived in Saudi Arabia from 2000 – 2004:

May 1, 2001

Travel Letter

To Whom It May Concern:

My wife, Esther Ruth Nelson, has my permission to travel to Bahrain, Iran and other countries on May 1 – 30, 2001.

Dr. Theodore P. Nelson, P.E.
c/o Saudi Aramco
P.O. Box 8239
Dhahran 31311
Saudi Arabia Continue reading “HUSBAND, MAY I? by Esther Nelson”

Rita Trumps the Donald by Esther Nelson

esther-nelson The phrase “politically correct,” words we hear over and over again these days, has a history. Some of that history, far from definitive, is captured here.

The following quote, taken from this blog, resonates with me: “…maybe we should drop the phrase [politically correct] from our lexicon. Not because it doesn’t describe anything, but because it describes so many things that you can’t use it without worrying that people won’t understand what you’re talking about.” (I see it similarly to the word, God. I often find that in conversations about God, each participant has their own idea(s) about what God is or isn’t.)

Today, though, I’m interested in how Donald Trump uses the phrase “politically correct.” When he says, “I’m so tired of this politically correct crap,” what is he saying? What do we hear? I agree with Colby Itkowitz (“The Washington Post,” 12/09/15) that the phrase “politically correct” is often “used as a put-down, a way to brush off the offended person as being overly sensitive. So while Trump is asserting his right to free speech, he is at the same time calling into question the listener’s right to complain about what he’s saying.” Continue reading “Rita Trumps the Donald by Esther Nelson”

But…They’re Just Animals by Esther Nelson

esther-nelson When I teach my Human Spirituality course to college students, I include a section on factory farming. Merriam-Webster defines factory farming as “a large industrialized farm; especially: a farm on which large numbers of livestock are raised indoors in conditions intended to maximize production at minimal cost.”

This sterile definition does not reflect the barbaric conditions in which chickens, pigs, cows, and sheep are raised in order to “maximize production at minimal cost.” For example, chickens are kept in cages with slanted floors, their beaks removed without anesthesia, and artificial lights kept on most of the day in order to increase egg production. Sows are kept immobile in metal cages, unable to nurse their young except through the slats of those metal cages. Male calves are taken away from their mothers at birth and placed in small cages to become veal after a few months. Male chicks, having no “value” in a factory farm setting, are placed on a conveyor belt that leads to being “ground up” alive. I’ve only scratched the surface of the horrors. Continue reading “But…They’re Just Animals by Esther Nelson”

Slant the Truth by Esther Nelson

esther-nelson Seems to me that our society nowadays “believes in” slavishly following step-by-step instruction found in “how-to” manuals. By following such rigid-like instruction, we hope to find meaning that enables us to live fulfilled lives. This became evident to me (all over again) during a recent departmental meeting at the university where I teach. We put aside discussion of items on the agenda because our director had invited a guest speaker, the Vice President of the Division for Inclusive Excellence, to talk to our group about “equity and inclusivity.”

In the wake of the University of Missouri students’ complaints (Fall 2015) regarding persistent racism (among other things) and their demand for more inclusion within the university, a group of students recently made their way into our university president’s office to demand change. More Black professors. More Black counselors. Cultural training on campus. After listening to the students, the president invited them to participate in an upcoming forum on diversity and inclusion, promising that his staff would work to get them excused from class. Continue reading “Slant the Truth by Esther Nelson”

REGRETS by Esther Nelson

esther-nelson Both my sisters claim to have no regrets about their lives. I do. It’s not so much that I regret specific things that happened to me in my life or even some of the particular choices I made although both the “happenings” and “choices” are a result of a larger regret. Nor do I spend much time going over it all in my mind. I don’t believe that listing all the “if onlys” and ruminating about “wrong turns” is productive.

Some people interpret the happenings in their lives as only positive. If X hadn’t happened, then I would not have Y (a good thing). Well, maybe, maybe not. Or, they are convinced that because a particular incident occurred, they experienced Z (another good thing). Is that particular incident a necessary precursor to the important and valuable Z experience? How can we know? And does that mean that those things leading up to Z cannot be regrettable? By and large, it seems we’ve come to a place in our society where the things that happen in one’s life are ultimately constructed as positive. Continue reading “REGRETS by Esther Nelson”

It’s Mom’s Fault by Esther Nelson

esther-nelson My conservative, local newspaper ran an article recently titled, “Gun Control is Not the Answer.” The author, Jay Ambrose, is a contributing columnist employed by the Independence Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Denver, Colorado. The group’s stated mission according to Wikipedia is “…to empower individuals and to educate citizens, legislators and opinion makers about public policies that enhance personal and economic freedom.”

As expected from the title of his article, Mr. Ambrose is against gun control. He writes, “…any move short of the absurdity of confiscation would unlikely reduce killings.” He cites Russia as an example, noting that Russia’s murder rate, with its strict gun restrictions, is more than twice that of the U.S. “Guns,” he writes, “undeniably facilitate murder…[but] do not make a culture.” He contends that “culture is a prime mover of violence.”

And then he says it! “…one cultural circumstance ceaselessly cultivating criminal conduct in offspring is the enormous growth of single-parent–usually single-mother–homes.” Continue reading “It’s Mom’s Fault by Esther Nelson”

Dying For the Triune God by Esther Nelson

esther-nelson Last week, the Catholic Studies Chair in the public university where I teach sponsored an event that brought Monsignor Kevin Irwin from The Catholic University of America; School of Theology and Religious Studies, Washington DC, into our midst. His hour-long talk was titled, “Pope Francis’ Teaching on the Environment.”

The monsignor couched his talk in the Latin American proverb, “We drink water from our own wells.” In other words, our life experiences (to a large extent) give us a prism through which we see the world. We construct a “reality” from that view–a view that in turn shapes us. Pope Francis, according to the monsignor, was shaped by the huge unemployment rate and resultant poverty that happened (and is still ongoing) in his native country–Argentina. In addition, he saw first hand how large corporations had taken over the country, laying claim to resources not belonging to them. Furthermore, environmental destruction has taken a heavy toll on the Amazon in Brazil–an area “beloved” to the current Pope. These are some of the waters from the well which Pope Francis has drunk, shaping his worldview. Continue reading “Dying For the Triune God by Esther Nelson”

It’s All About the Story by Esther Nelson

esther-nelson Every August my friend and colleague, Dale, preaches–does pulpit supply–at his local parish (St. Mark’s Episcopal) in our hometown. He always has something valuable to say so I ventured forth eagerly on a recent Sunday morning to hear him even though “church” is something I gave up years ago.

Dale began his sermon noting that the news he reads online every morning while striving to keep an “ordered” and “routine” life is overwhelming. Institutionalized racism, poverty, addiction, and lack of healthcare are problems that affect us all. We live in the “wilderness”–both physically and existentially. How do we cope? He asserted that the Bible explores humanity’s response to what we call “the human condition” and then proclaimed, “Darkness does not have the last word. God does. Hope triumphs.” Dale’s sermon reflected a perspective based on the tradition (story) he embraces–Christianity, however, the “particulars” of Biblical stories have universal themes. One of the functions of religion is to create a “reality” that enables hope. Dale gave three Biblical examples of “wilderness experience”–examples that included the promise of hope. Continue reading “It’s All About the Story by Esther Nelson”