Natalie Kertes Weaver

Prayers to Black Madonna and Kali Rising by Natalie Weaver

Natalie Weaver edited This past Saturday, I had an opportunity to sweat in a traditional Lakota sweat lodge for the first time. It was, above all, an interesting cognitive experience for me. I found myself sort of shaking hands with the ritual, the heat, the stones, the songs, and so on, saying, “Hi, I’m Natalie. I have an open mind. I am excited to know about you. Thanks for letting me see what you are all about.” I didn’t know whether I would pass out, have visions, or learn something new and wonderful about myself or the others. I was curious, still, and grateful for the opportunity. I was gifted by generous people, good fellowship, and new ideas. I will go back, even though I didn’t exactly find some thing… or maybe I did. Maybe, I found someone, or, better, maybe someone found me.

Two days before the sweat, I received an email from one of my companions on the journey, saying something I still do not understand about the Constellation Sagittarius, the Galactic Center, and the Rising of the Black Madonna. Although I did not understand the astronomy, I was intrigued by the call to recognize and confirm the Black Madonna. For, without particular reason or impetus that I could identify in myself, I had been dreaming of a Black Madonna statue for some time. After trying to find out what it was, I was able to identify it as the Black Madonna of Prague. I have never been to Prague and was basically unaware of the rich tradition of Black Madonnas in Europe, despite four semesters of art history in college. So, I made note of my dreams, with a promise to myself to seek them out whenever and wherever I travel. I also purchased little trinket at a Canadian gift shop, which sits on my desk as a guide and companion.
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Realize by Natalie Weaver

Natalie Weaver edited Autumn of 1977. The faculty wives have come together in the modest University Heights home of a physics professor. Their Aquanet hair is sprayed to the heavens and at significant risk of igniting from lipstick-stained cigarettes that are resting precariously in the cradle a heavy crystal ashtray. Their business is serious. They are putting together a cookbook. The Faculty Wives Cookbook of 1977, to be precise. It is a noble task. They will cook from it for their young families, for their husbands, that is, the faculty. Even more, they will use each other’s recipes. Martha will cook Mary’s chili; Margaret will lose weight on Donna’s diet cabbage stew. It is an achievement that will be smugly displayed on bookshelves for decades. It will yellow, and the black plastic spiral binding will wear and crack. The Kinko’s heavy card stock cover will be ringed with coffee marks. And, one day, daughters-in-law will decide whether to keep it or to pitch it out.

I think I must have one of the last remaining copies of this rare book. Almost 40 years old, I stumbled on it while cleaning the other day, seeing at last with my own eyes a thing of legend. At the dinner table, I oft heard of the making of this collection of recipes – what a job it was to oversee and how much pride the wives felt in its completion. Holding it now, I was struck poignantly by the absence of its authors from the scene. No longer card bearing faculty wives, they are widows or caregivers to aged retirees or elderly divorcees or simply deceased. Continue reading “Realize by Natalie Weaver”

Storied Women by Natalie Weaver

Natalie Weaver edited One of my goals for the summer is to paint more. I find I can often say or think by a picture something that I am trying to work through in a formal, discursive way. Art functions as a methodological tool for my theology insofar as it helps me to articulate in one language something that I am trying to say in another. As my teaching career has lengthened, I’ve become more confident using images I have created to communicate my ideas. This no doubt has something to do with the liberty one gains in teaching as a performance exercise, combined with avoidance of repetition, and the desire to engage as well as to be entertained in one’s own right. Even more than just working out an idea, sometimes I also find making images to be a therapeutic tool. I can laugh, mourn, gripe, or celebrate through an image, and sometimes, I can even protest by one.

One area in which I feel inclined to protest is in those figures I describe as “storied women.” To me, this term refers to those outstanding figures in history or myth whose lives are rendered into legend, usually for a didactic or moral purpose. While occasionally such rendering is heroic, as in the cases of Esther or Joan of Arc, the story-ing is usually typological and flat. The woman(en) is used as a secondary element in a story, often for the purposes of advancing a primary narrative about men. Tamar, for example, is treated as a figure in and around whose body the action, succession, and political positioning of David’s sons are enacted. Bathsheba is also an exemplar of the storied women in the poet-king’s court, standing as one of the definitional temptresses of biblical history. Continue reading “Storied Women by Natalie Weaver”

Wonder Bread by Natalie Weaver

Natalie Weaver edited It is a difficult thing to wake up and realize you are living a life you do not recognize. This happens for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes, it happens dramatically as in the case of death, job loss, personal trauma, or illness. Other times it is a slow and insidious transition from what you knew to what you have become, as you find yourself looking at your workplace and recognizing no one or wondering who these people are in your home. Sometimes it is as simple as getting a haircut or a pair of contact lenses, when suddenly you see some wrinkle or skin mark you didn’t know had been forming while you slept. I find this experience shockingly regular now, and while I am no longer surprised that it happens, I am consistently surprised at what I discover.

For example, my son is now an altar server in the Roman Catholic Church. This has occurred concurrently with my very unexpected involvement in an annulment case, which has revealed an outrageous lack of pastoral sensitivity on the part of the Church. Witnessing the hurt this process causes, I could run from the Church. But then there is my son in the choir and serving at Mass, trying to understand this world that I both introduce him to and also roundly critique. I was chatting with a colleague at lunch over such matters and noticed her quieting after a time, eyes cast off into the distance. After a long pause, she murmured, “How did I get here again?” Continue reading “Wonder Bread by Natalie Weaver”

I Used to Paint All the Time by Natalie Weaver

Natalie Weaver edited I used to paint and draw all the time as a child. I thought about majoring in art as a college student, but I went to an institution that did not have any applied arts courses in the curriculum. I had gone to college on a scholarship that I could not duplicate elsewhere, so I settled for a number of art history classes and gave up any formal pursuit of art. However, when I had my children, I rediscovered art. More accurately, I did not rediscover it so much as I fell in love anew. For, I found in working with my children a tremendous liberation. It did not matter if it was “good” or not, had the “right” form or not, used the medium “correctly” or not, or said something “properly.” I learned all over again that people could have hearts for heads; skies could rain jellybeans; and skin could be blue just because you like it that way.

Doing art with my children opened up my courage to recognize creative expression as a sacramental act. Both when it is done for overtly sacred purposes as well as when it is done for more secular ones, art of all media can be an outpouring of the spirit into the material world that allows one to say to another: here I am, this is what I have felt, did you see this, I’ve been there too. Once freed from norms about how something ought to be used or made or discussed or interpreted, art has the potential to become revelatory, both of the human and also of the divine (or, perhaps better, of the human as divine). Continue reading “I Used to Paint All the Time by Natalie Weaver”

so said black Jesus by Natalie Weaver

Natalie Weaver edited Last month, I went to a conference in San Antonio, Texas. Feeling overwhelmed by the combined elements of work, family, and creative writing, I did not have much of a desire to go. It was right before Valentine’s Day, which I try to celebrate with the kids, especially since my oldest is named Valentine. The house was not clean. I was not packed. I had not bought or helped fill out cards for the kids to distribute in the classrooms, nor did I remember whether I had signed up to bring in juice boxes or cupcakes. I just wasn’t ready to travel.

Beyond that, I developed some health issues last year that impact my daily life. I have found it hard to recognize the consequent shifts in my energy or output as legitimate bodily realities. I must be imagining it, right? I’m not this tired really… just lazy or something. Among the things impacted, my vision is sometimes dark and distorted. Plus, I broke a toe at the beginning of January, and I am still limping. As I imagined traveling alone, I felt myself wondering whether I was up to trekking through the airports with a broken gait, blurred vision, and the fatigue that sometimes quite rapidly descends when I least expect it. I didn’t want to go.

To top it off, I knew I wasn’t going to a regular hotel. I was going to the Oblate Renewal Center. I felt I could handle the Riverwalk and a couple nights at the Hilton, but I was really questioning whether I was in the right mental space for a retreat center. I was not feeling still, nor did I really want to be still. I had too much to do, of course. I compounded that feeling by stopping off on my way there for a short visit with my sister’s family at the point of my flight’s connection, where she and I drove around for hours picking up and dropping off her five school age children at their various extra-curricular activities. When I eventually made it to the retreat center, I was very much decentered in my own skin and underprepared mentally. I had neither gifts to bring nor expectations about what I would take home.

And this led to something remarkably beautiful… Continue reading “so said black Jesus by Natalie Weaver”

In the Beginning by Natalie Weaver

Dear Friends,

Every year on New Year’s Eve, I read creation stories to my family. We light candles, sit in a circle, eat, drink, and read. This little ritual began as my protest to the vulgar commercialization of the New Year and the ponderous weight of trying to be/do/achieve something new every twelve months. Last year, I discovered, however that I felt like the ancient creation myths and the new ways of bringing in the new year messaged similar things. I wrote about it in my blog post from January 2015, committing to write my own creation myth to read this year. I like where it is going… even this little exercise is causing me to think differently about sacred literature. I am becoming Inspired, I gasp to myself, to write my own Scripture, my own sacred truth. Here’s what I’ve got so far. I hope you enjoy it. Happy New Year!

1 The beginning could not be reckoned in the time before time was reckoned. 2 For, what was had yet to know itself, and it could not know itself alone. 3 But, for its love, it could not be known. So it was that the beginning that could be reckoned was not the beginning but the beginning of loving, which was the beginning of knowing, which was the beginning of being. 4 And, in that beginning, a great ellipsis had already become of particle and light, and the particle and light thrummed through darkness forming a whole body. 5 Of the great ellipsis of particle and light, a body and a body and a body were formed, in and of the great ellipsis, thrumming through darkness. 6 The thrumming ellipsis pushed forward so far that its particle and light extended beyond itself and then beyond itself and then beyond itself, as though it were to separate, but it did not. 7 A whole body was formed, which was the beginning of the simultaneity of what was and what is and what will have been. Continue reading “In the Beginning by Natalie Weaver”

“Is that your wife or your girlfriend?” by Natalie Weaver

Natalie Weaver edited “Is that your wife or your girlfriend?” These words were addressed to my husband a few weeks back as I walked up to a podium, where I was to sit on a panel and give my views on the relationship between the Church and Generation X. The event was a well-attended and well-funded initiative by a well-known organization, celebrating its multi-decade long history of supporting progressive action and vision for the future the Roman Catholic Church. After accolades, awards, and a stirring keynote, I and two others were to address in cross-generational perspective, the needs of changing populations of Catholics.

It was a slightly uncomfortable event for me because I was not sure who my audience was, but I was pretty certain early on in the night that everyone in the room had more or less acquiesced to the same set of ideas, framed in the same ways, and represented by the same heroic champions of women’s ecclesial vocations and same-sex unions. I knew basically what this group was about, but I had not prepared remarks specifically aimed at women’s ordination or homosexuality. I focused on the issues of authority, ambiguity, and ambivalence as historical-situational markers for Gen X (that is, to the extent that I felt that I could say anything collectively about or for Gen X at all), and as a result I was not sure that my words, perhaps misaligned, would really add too much to the evening.

As it turned out, it did not matter what I had prepared to say because I didn’t have a chance to say it. The accolades, awards, and stirring keynote went way too long, and the panel had fewer than fifteen minutes total, including Q & A, to address the perspectives of representatives of three different generations on the status of the Roman Catholic Church. Ah, the best laid plans, right…

So, it felt a little like a bust, but at least at first I thought it was still a nice enough night. The location was a bit of a drive from my house, but it happened that my mom was visiting AND my husband was free. This meant that my mom could watch the kids and William could drive with me – a rare thing for my speaking and even rarer on a random, unplanned weekday. As we were getting ready for bed, as I often do, I asked William to tell me a joke. He hesitated for a moment, and then this exchanged followed: Continue reading ““Is that your wife or your girlfriend?” by Natalie Weaver”

Make-up the Most of Your Moustache by Natalie Weaver

Natalie Weaver edited My girlfriend Heidi has a great sense of style. It is theatrical, creative, and always original. I met Heidi when I was eight years old and have had a chance to observe her personal developments and self-presentations grow and change over three decades. Our friendship has always included a strong element of the silly mixed in with the beautiful. We would dress up for high school dances together in classic regalia as easily as we would put floral shower caps and boldly colored wigs on our heads to entertain ourselves as we walked around our neighborhood. Now, Heidi works as an artist model in one of the most theatrically dressed cities in America, becoming the basis for the first city-commissioned sculpture (Kim Bernadas’s Terpsichore) in New Orleans after Katrina. She is slender, tall, and striking with platinum hair and large dark eyes framed by long, elegant lashes, and often adds to her already statuesque appearance by wearing heels and hats. Heidi, moreover, creates hats in her avocational role as a milliner. It is, in short, always a striking surprise when Heidi walks in the door.

Over the weekend, Heidi and I had an opportunity to go to the opera together. Playful as always, Heidi showed up for the event in elegant tuxedo-inspired couture, complete with a handcrafted fascinator and (drum role) a very finely, penciled in moustache. She looked truly stunning, and we enjoyed the night together as a lovely couple. We laughed over the moustache, but more or less would have forgotten about it were it not for the looks people gave us. Some were genuinely appreciative, others merely curious, and yet others, specifically random men, had the great audacity to say something to her, like, “you have a moustache.” It was sufficient to inspire Heidi to try it again the following day as we popped in and out of shops and restaurants on the street, and sure enough, some guys felt obligated to tell her about face.

What does this mean, I have been wondering, and why have I been so unsettled by the commentary she and I have received? On one level, I have been aware that we may be perceived as a same-sex couple. This phenomenon I have been aware of since we were children. Close female friends, who laugh together and sometimes link arms when walking, especially in the USA, seem automatically to evoke in the public imagination a suspicion of lesbianism. I found the suggestions in high school puerile and irritating, but now I find them imposing and reflective of a deep intolerance of inter-women’s shared energy and joy. But, to be fair, Heidi was wearing a fine, little moustache, which, if nothing else, did broadcast androgyny in Heidi if not couple-hood between us. And, yet, here’s were my radar pings even louder. Why not androgyny? What was it to the passers-by and would-be commentators if we were a couple, or if Heidi always blurred gender presentations in her dress?

I have found myself more and more perplexed that any random man (and we only received male feedback) feels entitled to advise openly a strange woman (or, for that matter, a known one, or even more, anyone at all) on how s/he should look. One stranger man at a bar, who was openly critical of her style and verbal about it, even dared ask me why I was so charmed by my friend. When I ignored him altogether, he patronized me with, “Are you ok?” like a date fishing from his girlfriend for an explanation about her sudden moodiness.

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The Reaper by Natalie Weaver

elizabeth-taylor I have begun to call my mother the “Reaper,” which I understand could be to some mums sort of insulting. Images of the Reaper are typically not terribly flattering, you know, with all that sunken skin and stringy black cloth flying around. My mom looks nothing like that, by the way. In fact, she has at all stages of her life borne a striking resemblance to Elizabeth Taylor, causing many a stranger to run up to her over the years, exclaiming, “Oh my goodness, do you know who you look like?” And, let me add, often much to the consternation of those in Mom’s company, such as, well– me, for example– when I was trying to deliver my first baby and the attending nurse ignored me in order to chat with my mom about her resemblances. But, I digress here.

Mom is the Reaper because she is at that point in her life when she rather unabashedly tells it like it is, “reaps truth” as I have come to think of it. Though she may look all violet eyes and white diamonds, she is beyond mincing words.

Is this a feature of aging? I once read that the decreased estrogen and increased testosterone levels in post-menopausal women may contribute to a personality shift where women are more inclined to report on what they are thinking. This may be a factor, but I would find it likelier that many women, menopausal or not, simply get to a point when they have seen/heard/experienced/endured enough that they find little merit in putting up fronts, regardless of hormonal predisposition.

Plus, I am wildly unimpressed by some of the material out there on menopause. It seems like a lot of conflated nonsense that correlates every aspect of female sexual maturation with hormonal imbalance and impending doom. I recently read a book by an “expert” named Dr. Miriam Stoppard – great last name for a menopause specialist, right? – that actually gave medical advice alongside hints about make-up tricks, relationship management tools for your depressed mid-life spouse, and what girdles to wear to help hold up your sagging flesh.

It is interesting that “women who speak their minds” are even an object of contemporary cultural commentary at all. I mean, would there be any talk at all about males who speak their minds? Young girls who speak their minds are cast as feminists, strong-willed, scary to boys, unfeminine, and so on. Of course, the embedded androcentric assumption is that they are doing something contrary to normative female behavior. Older women who “speak their minds” are cast as rude hags and crones, spreading around their venom and disappointment, especially if they swear. This blog on post-divorce dating, kind of says it all: