TV As A Sacred Text
My seminary requires all first semester students to take a class called Critical Interpretation and Ministry in a Spiraling Global Digital Culture. (What the fuck does that mean?, you may ask. Bro, same.) The big assignment is a grueling twenty question hermeneutical inventory, which is basically a long and detailed explanation of everything about you that might shape your biblical interpretation. It’s mainly stuff like hey, are you gay, what’s that about, but one of the questions asks if our working theology is different than our formal theology. I chose my seminary because it’s the most lefty one in New York, not counting the one I am in a fight with, but even at the second most lefty seminary some people are spelling out “homo sexuality.” I am quickly learning what would benefit me to keep close to the belt, and equally as quickly learning how be brave enough to not do that. I’m not gonna, like, talk about t4t oral as communion, but I promised myself I would only go if I refused to have separate formal and working theologies.
Except for my Big Thing. I’m really, really afraid to share my Big Thing with more traditionally religious people.* Because one of my core religious beliefs is that any text can be sacred. I don’t particularly care about the Torah outside of its cultural and ritual significance, but I love the ways that we’re expected to engage with it. I love sitting down with a text and some friends and absolutely going to town on it. I love letting something wash over me. I love acknowledging when something has changed me. I love repeating a text to myself until I think I know what it means, or until it feels meaningless. I love knowing that I’m not alone, that people have done this before me will do it after me and that none of us will ever fully understand.† I love trying to fit myself into a text and seeing what happens when I feel like I belong, and what happens when I feel like I don’t. I love twisting texts to make them suit me. I love having something to fall back on in times of need and fear and joy and gratitude.
I don’t particularly care about the text of the Torah, but I do care about television. And books, and movies, and secular music, and everything that’s made up to make us feel something. I believe that we can apply the principles of religious interpretation to those texts and use them to seek out morals and emotions and confusion and hope. Maybe most significantly, I believe that we can turn to them in times of desperation.‡ When we know that we need but don’t know what, we can hit play. I have been spiritually formed by media in the ways that many people talk about having been formed by the Bible. I know I’m not alone, even if we’re all using different terms and lenses.
I say that The Star is the most you part of you, the things that cannot be changed no matter what. But it’s not just those things; it’s faith in them. At some point (at many points), we all lose track of who we are. The things that we whisper when we’re trying to remember burn, or turn into mist. All we can see is where The Tower used to be.§ We try so hard to come back to ourselves, but very few people can do it internally. Usually we need a kick in the ass, even if it’s just us kicking ourselves. We need to be comforted, or challenged, or invigorated, or angered, or saddened, or, or, or. Maybe we just need to stay alive.‖ And we do. We call our friends and go on walks and go to therapy. But so many of us also pick up a book, or turn on a movie, and so many of us do that first.
I think a lot— a lot— about “clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.”¶ Before I’d ever walked into a church, that was the closest thing to prayer that I understood. I repeated it and I cried about it and I struggled with it, the way that I knew many people struggled with G-d. I still pray like that. I say the Sh’ma, and I also say “maybe it’s all gonna turn out all right/ I know that it’s not but I have to believe that it is.”# In this moment in my life, I do not believe it is true that clear eyes and a full heart mean that you can’t lose. But The Star does. It builds hope where there was none. You can’t skip it. To move through the rest of the Major Arcana, you are required to feel it.
At some point, I’ll tell my classmates all of this. I’ve got a lot of time; I’ve been in school for three weeks and it’s a four year program, and I’m currently very busy trying to get people to use my pronouns. But The Star doesn’t come after The Tower only to be lost to shame.Δ My grimoire is full of psalms and lyrics and monologues, and every letter in every word is sacred. We all do what we can to understand.◊
* “You wanna know a secret? I spent my whole life being scared. Scared of not being ready, of not being right, of not being who I should be. And where did it get me?” (Six Feet Under)
† “The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.” (Alan Bennett, The History Boys)
‡ “They paint the world full of shadows and then tell their children to stay close to the light. Their light. Their reason, their judgements. Because in the darkness, there be dragons. But it isn’t true. We can prove that it isn’t true. In the dark, there is discovery, there is possibility, there is freedom in the dark when someone has illuminated it. And who has been so close as we are right now?” (Black Sails)
§ “We are all vulnerable and we will all, at some point in our lives, fall; we will all fall.” (Friday Night Lights)
‖ “Play with matches if you think you need to play with matches/ Seek out the hidden places/ Where the fire burns hot and bright/ Find where the heat's unbearable/ And stay there if you have to/ Don’t hurt anybody/ On your way up to the light/ And stay alive/ Just stay alive" (“Amy aka Spent Gladiator 1,” The Mountain Goats)
¶ Friday Night Lights
# Julien Baker, “Appointments”
Δ “It's only you," whispered Orphan Girl. She was holding his hand crouched down next to him. ‘Why do you hate you?’ Ronan thought about it. The albino night horror swept in, talons opening. Ronan stood up, stretching out his arm like he would to Chainsaw. ‘I don’t,’ he said. And he woke up.” (Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves)
◊ “There are some things you can only see through tears.” (Jordy Rosenberg, Confessions of the Fox)
I’m currently reading on sliding scale, including barter— get in touch if you want an individual and/or group reading!
Content will continue to be free until it’s way safer to go out. Also, grad school is expensive! Subscribing is $5/ month and $50/ year, and if you have some disposable $$ I would love it if you did (or sent me a Venmo tip @james0ctober). Be safe, watch TV. <3