What can we actually get out of reading the more "historically orientated" parts of the Bible? The only things I've gleened really is that 1. God is relavent in history 2. It is a prefiguration of the salvation given to us by Jesus, meaning the Israelites screwed up, God got them out of the screw up 3. Humanity really hasn't changed all that much in the last 3-4,000 years 4. Sometimes bad things happen, life keeps happening (exile, exodus, destruction of the first temple etc)
Saturday, June 05, 2004
Ashcroft has some pipes on him
He actually has a good voice. I'm not so sure I like the lyrics so much, but then again I'm just not a rhyming kind of guy.
Thursday, June 03, 2004
THe hunting of the president
Looks like another good movie out there. Morgan Freeman narrates. Looks really good!
The ELCA's social statement on Sexuality again
The reason I re-post this is that some people seemed to have thought this to be only on the "gay issue" when in fact on tons of stuff.
At any rate check it out.
At any rate check it out.
fahrenheit 911 trailer is out!
Moore is up to his usual cute tricks. F911 will open on the 25th of this month! I wonder if it will play in Cheyenne? Here is hoping.
Peace,
Chris
Peace,
Chris
Wednesday, June 02, 2004
Wee, finished 2 tests
I won't have to do Hebrew again for another 3 years (though I hope to do some stuff on my own, I'm going to see if I can teach a highschool english class about Midrash!). Also I did a test in Martyrdom. All I have left is a paper about the power shift that takes place when a martyrdom occurs, and 2 small essays for my radicalism class. I think I will take the topics, "what brought about radicalism in the 60's" and "Who has been more influential in the history of American radicalism in the twentieth century, Karl Marx or Emma Goldman?"
D+D theological questions
The Questions
1. Is Satan “redeemable”?
2. Why do we have monogamous relationships? What is the spiritual significance? Does it have anything to do with monotheism?
3. How does Christianity deal with Auschwitz? How do you deal with Auschwitz?
4. Is there a single essence to God? That is, can we in the end say “God is Love or God is spirit?” On one hand it is not good to “box in God” but on the other hand is a “freeform” God the way to go?
5. How should church leaders be chosen?
6. Forsake everything for God. Question being are there people/things that by forsaking them for God you are in fact forsaking God?
7. What has value?
1. Is Satan “redeemable”?
2. Why do we have monogamous relationships? What is the spiritual significance? Does it have anything to do with monotheism?
3. How does Christianity deal with Auschwitz? How do you deal with Auschwitz?
4. Is there a single essence to God? That is, can we in the end say “God is Love or God is spirit?” On one hand it is not good to “box in God” but on the other hand is a “freeform” God the way to go?
5. How should church leaders be chosen?
6. Forsake everything for God. Question being are there people/things that by forsaking them for God you are in fact forsaking God?
7. What has value?
Monday, May 31, 2004
I read the ELCA statement
It was pretty short. Seemed pretty common sense for the most part. One thing I did think was kind of funny was that they didn't use scripture to condemn prostitution, yet they used scripture to justify most of their other policies. Curious.
Anyways, here is the conclusion.
The Sustaining Power of God's Grace
As Lutheran Christians, we seek God's will for sexual expression while also keeping the grace of God at the heart of our common life. This means undertaking all of our commitments to each other -- including sexual relationships -- with a sense of our life as a gift, with God's help to keep our promises, and with a deep sense of the sin that persists. The mercies of God continually sustain and undercut any simple division of the righteous from the unrighteous (Rom. 1:18 - 3:20).
On some matters of sexuality, there are strong and continuing differences among us. As we discuss areas where we differ, the power of the Holy Spirit can guide and unite us. Trust in the Gospel brings together people whose differences over sexuality ought not be a basis for division. We pray for the grace to avoid unfair judgment of those with whom we differ, the patience to listen to those with whom we disagree, and the love to reach out to those from whom we may be divided.
To a world obsessed with sexual self-fulfillment, divided by differences over sexuality, and weary of how sexuality is abused, the message of the grace of God lightens our burdens, lifts our spirits, renews our commitments, and reminds us of the deepest basis for mutual respect -- the love of God we have in Jesus Christ.
Anyways, here is the conclusion.
The Sustaining Power of God's Grace
As Lutheran Christians, we seek God's will for sexual expression while also keeping the grace of God at the heart of our common life. This means undertaking all of our commitments to each other -- including sexual relationships -- with a sense of our life as a gift, with God's help to keep our promises, and with a deep sense of the sin that persists. The mercies of God continually sustain and undercut any simple division of the righteous from the unrighteous (Rom. 1:18 - 3:20).
On some matters of sexuality, there are strong and continuing differences among us. As we discuss areas where we differ, the power of the Holy Spirit can guide and unite us. Trust in the Gospel brings together people whose differences over sexuality ought not be a basis for division. We pray for the grace to avoid unfair judgment of those with whom we differ, the patience to listen to those with whom we disagree, and the love to reach out to those from whom we may be divided.
To a world obsessed with sexual self-fulfillment, divided by differences over sexuality, and weary of how sexuality is abused, the message of the grace of God lightens our burdens, lifts our spirits, renews our commitments, and reminds us of the deepest basis for mutual respect -- the love of God we have in Jesus Christ.
ELCA's common convictions on Human Sexuality
Haven't looked at this yet. If you want a partial review click here.
Yarg, I'm going to miss Eugene
I went for another walk. Man, so green.
Well, I've reread the martrydoms of Ali and Husayn to death (pun intended) and I'm now reviewing the first 3 chapters of Song of Songs for a test on Wednesday. I might start writing on another final, we'll see.
Peace,
Chris
Well, I've reread the martrydoms of Ali and Husayn to death (pun intended) and I'm now reviewing the first 3 chapters of Song of Songs for a test on Wednesday. I might start writing on another final, we'll see.
Peace,
Chris
A pretty good 4 day weekend for me
Yesterday I finished one of my finals, rewriting a short story for Creative Writing. Day before that I wrote the whole Judges 4 vs Judges 5 paper. I took a long walk through Eugene yesterday. I'm going to miss this place over the summer. I'm going to reread a couple of martyrdoms today, and maybe get started with writing another final.
I've been thinking, I'd like to see "Shrek 2" sometime but I don't have a car. Maybe I'll do that when I get back to Cheyenne.
Peace,
Chris
I've been thinking, I'd like to see "Shrek 2" sometime but I don't have a car. Maybe I'll do that when I get back to Cheyenne.
Peace,
Chris
Sunday, May 30, 2004
Quotes from Zorba
A little bit about Zorba the Greek. It seems to be a book critiquing deconstructionalisms (kind of an oxymoron critiquing the idea of the critique). I think it is also pointing out the fact that Buddhism is no more intellectually sound than western ideas. I’m about half way through, I’ll put a second batch of quotes up sometime this summer.
Zorba the Greek (by Nikos Kazantzakis) Quotes:
“I stretched out my arm; I, too, felt like having a smoke. I took my pipe. I looked at it with emotion. It was a big and precious one, “Made in England.” It was a present from my friend- the one who had geyish-green eyes and slender fingers. That was abroad, years ago. He had finished his studies and was leaving that evening for Greece. “Give up cigarettes,” he said. “You light one, you smoke half of it and throw the rest away. Your love only lasts a minute. It’s disgraceful. You’d better take up a pipe. It’s like a faithful spouse. When you go home, it’ll be there, quietly waiting for you. You’ll light it, you’ll watch the smoke rising in the air and you’ll think of me!”
“Young people are cruel beasts, they’re inhuman, they don’t understand.”
“No. Love may be the most intense joy on earth. It may be. But, now I see that bronze hand, I want to escape.”
“I endeavored to lead a different type of life, to interest myself in practical work, to know and love the human material which had fallen into my hands, to feel the long-wished-for joy of no longer having to deal with words but with living men.”
“When the boss is hard, the men respect him, they work. When the boss is soft, they leave it all to him, and have an easy time. Get it?”
“What were we saying the day before yesterday, boss? You were saying you wanted to open the people’s eyes. All right, you just go and open old uncle Anagnosti’s eyes for him! You saw his wife had to behave before him, waiting for his orders, like a dog begging. Just go now and teach them that women have equal rights with men, and that it’s cruel to eat a piece of the pig while the pig’s still raw and groaning in front of you, and that it’s simply lunacy to give thanks to God because he’s got everything while you’re starving to death! What good’ll that poor devil Anagnosti get out of all your explanatory humbug? You’d only cause him a lot of bother. And what’d old mother Anagnosti get out of it? The fat would be in the fire: family rows would start, the hen would want to be cock, the couple would just have a good set-to and make their feathers fly…! Let people be, boss; don’t open their eyes. And supposing you did, what’d they see? Their misery! L:eave their eyes closed, boss, and let them go on dreaming!”
“We educated people are just empty headed birds of the air.”
“I was happy, I knew that . While experiencing happiness, we have difficulty in being conscious of it. Only when the happiness is past and we look back on it do we suddenly realize—sometimes with astonishment—how happy we had been. But on this Cretan coast I was experiencing happiness and knew I was happy.”
“I’m white on top already, boss, and my teeth are getting loose. I’ve no time to lose. You’re young, you can still afford to be patient. I can’t. But I do declare, the older I get the wilder I become! Don’t let anyone tell me old age steadies a man! Nor that when he sees death coming he stretches out his neck and says: Cut off my head, please, so that I can go to heaven! The longer I live, the more I rebel. I’m not going to give in; I want t o conquer the world.”
“Live is trouble,” Zorba continued. “Death, no. To live—do you know what I mean? To undo your belt and look for trouble!”
“I still said nothing. I knew Zorba was right, I knew it, but I di not dare. My life had got on the wrong track, and my contract with men had become now a mere soliloquy. I had fallen so low that, if I had had to choose between falling in love with a woman and reading a book about love, I should have chosen the book.”
“This is true happiness: to have no ambition and to work like a horse as if you had every ambition. To live far from men, not to need them and yet to love them.”
“In religions which have lost their creative spark, the gods eventually become no more than poetic motifs or ornaments for decorating human solitude and walls.”
“All these things which had formerly so fascinated me appeared this morning to be no more than cerebral acrobatics and refined charlatanism! That is how it always is at the decline of a civilization. That is how man’s anguish ends—in masterly conjuring tricks: pure poetry, pure music, pure thought. The last man—who had freed himself from all belief, from all illusions and had nothing more to expect or to fear—sees the clay of which he is made reduced to spirit, and this spirit has no soil left for its roots, from which to draw its sap. The last man has emptied himself; no more seed, no more excrement, no more blood. Everything having turned into words, every set of words into musical jugglery, the last man goes even further: he sits in hs utter solitude and decomposes the music into mute, mathematical equations.”
“You’re young,” he said smiling at me; “don’t listen to the old. If the world did heed them, it would rush headlong to its destruction. If a widow crosses your path, get hold of her! Get married, have children, don’t hesitate! Troubles were made for young men!”
“As a child, then, I had almost fallen into the well. When grown up, I nearly fell into the word “eternity,” and its quite number of other words too—“love” “hope” “country” “God.” As each word was conquered and left behind, I had the feeling that I had escaped a danger and made some progress. But no, I was only changing words and calling it deliverance. And there I had been, for the last two years, hanging over the edge of the word “Buddha.”
Zorba the Greek (by Nikos Kazantzakis) Quotes:
“I stretched out my arm; I, too, felt like having a smoke. I took my pipe. I looked at it with emotion. It was a big and precious one, “Made in England.” It was a present from my friend- the one who had geyish-green eyes and slender fingers. That was abroad, years ago. He had finished his studies and was leaving that evening for Greece. “Give up cigarettes,” he said. “You light one, you smoke half of it and throw the rest away. Your love only lasts a minute. It’s disgraceful. You’d better take up a pipe. It’s like a faithful spouse. When you go home, it’ll be there, quietly waiting for you. You’ll light it, you’ll watch the smoke rising in the air and you’ll think of me!”
“Young people are cruel beasts, they’re inhuman, they don’t understand.”
“No. Love may be the most intense joy on earth. It may be. But, now I see that bronze hand, I want to escape.”
“I endeavored to lead a different type of life, to interest myself in practical work, to know and love the human material which had fallen into my hands, to feel the long-wished-for joy of no longer having to deal with words but with living men.”
“When the boss is hard, the men respect him, they work. When the boss is soft, they leave it all to him, and have an easy time. Get it?”
“What were we saying the day before yesterday, boss? You were saying you wanted to open the people’s eyes. All right, you just go and open old uncle Anagnosti’s eyes for him! You saw his wife had to behave before him, waiting for his orders, like a dog begging. Just go now and teach them that women have equal rights with men, and that it’s cruel to eat a piece of the pig while the pig’s still raw and groaning in front of you, and that it’s simply lunacy to give thanks to God because he’s got everything while you’re starving to death! What good’ll that poor devil Anagnosti get out of all your explanatory humbug? You’d only cause him a lot of bother. And what’d old mother Anagnosti get out of it? The fat would be in the fire: family rows would start, the hen would want to be cock, the couple would just have a good set-to and make their feathers fly…! Let people be, boss; don’t open their eyes. And supposing you did, what’d they see? Their misery! L:eave their eyes closed, boss, and let them go on dreaming!”
“We educated people are just empty headed birds of the air.”
“I was happy, I knew that . While experiencing happiness, we have difficulty in being conscious of it. Only when the happiness is past and we look back on it do we suddenly realize—sometimes with astonishment—how happy we had been. But on this Cretan coast I was experiencing happiness and knew I was happy.”
“I’m white on top already, boss, and my teeth are getting loose. I’ve no time to lose. You’re young, you can still afford to be patient. I can’t. But I do declare, the older I get the wilder I become! Don’t let anyone tell me old age steadies a man! Nor that when he sees death coming he stretches out his neck and says: Cut off my head, please, so that I can go to heaven! The longer I live, the more I rebel. I’m not going to give in; I want t o conquer the world.”
“Live is trouble,” Zorba continued. “Death, no. To live—do you know what I mean? To undo your belt and look for trouble!”
“I still said nothing. I knew Zorba was right, I knew it, but I di not dare. My life had got on the wrong track, and my contract with men had become now a mere soliloquy. I had fallen so low that, if I had had to choose between falling in love with a woman and reading a book about love, I should have chosen the book.”
“This is true happiness: to have no ambition and to work like a horse as if you had every ambition. To live far from men, not to need them and yet to love them.”
“In religions which have lost their creative spark, the gods eventually become no more than poetic motifs or ornaments for decorating human solitude and walls.”
“All these things which had formerly so fascinated me appeared this morning to be no more than cerebral acrobatics and refined charlatanism! That is how it always is at the decline of a civilization. That is how man’s anguish ends—in masterly conjuring tricks: pure poetry, pure music, pure thought. The last man—who had freed himself from all belief, from all illusions and had nothing more to expect or to fear—sees the clay of which he is made reduced to spirit, and this spirit has no soil left for its roots, from which to draw its sap. The last man has emptied himself; no more seed, no more excrement, no more blood. Everything having turned into words, every set of words into musical jugglery, the last man goes even further: he sits in hs utter solitude and decomposes the music into mute, mathematical equations.”
“You’re young,” he said smiling at me; “don’t listen to the old. If the world did heed them, it would rush headlong to its destruction. If a widow crosses your path, get hold of her! Get married, have children, don’t hesitate! Troubles were made for young men!”
“As a child, then, I had almost fallen into the well. When grown up, I nearly fell into the word “eternity,” and its quite number of other words too—“love” “hope” “country” “God.” As each word was conquered and left behind, I had the feeling that I had escaped a danger and made some progress. But no, I was only changing words and calling it deliverance. And there I had been, for the last two years, hanging over the edge of the word “Buddha.”
Saturday, May 29, 2004
I need to get back to theology
Just a quick thought. I've put up so much news and the like on this site I must refrain.
I'm writing a paper comparing the narritive of Judges 4 to the poetry of Judges 5. I'm thinking Judges 5 may well be an older, feminine, oral tradition.
I have 3 papers which need to be written by the monday after this one, and I have to get ready for a test on the martyrdom of Ali in the Shi'ite Islamic tradition.
The fan is still broken on the computer, or at least it is still making really funny sounds, so this is about as long as I'll go.
Peace,
Chris
PS Here is a paper I wrote about Emma Goldman.
The ideas and deeds of Emma Goldman
By Chris Halverson
There is a phrase that may or may not have been coined by Barbara Tuchman “the idea and the deed.” This term expresses a discontinuity in anarchism; there is a huge chasm between the ideas supposed by Anarchist theorists and the deeds committed by Anarchist practitioners. An example of these disconnects between anarchist intelligentsia and propaganda of the deed can be found by contrasting the message of Emma Goldman with the Attentäte of Leon Czolgosz. When all is said and done, while Emma defends Czolgosz’s murder of President McKinley, she saw his actions as “impelled, not by the teachings of Anarchism, but by the tremendous pressure of conditions.” In this essay I will use the term the idea and the deed as well, but I will use it with a slight twist, and an ironic edge. My use of the idea and the deed can be best exemplified by the Attentäte of “Sasha” Berkman, one of Emma’s lovers. His idea was to kill the chairman of the board at Carnegie Steel, Henry Clay Frick, to set off a workers revolution, but his deed failed and the very workers who he intended to liberate subdued him. As the old joke goes the difference between theory and practice is that in theory there is no difference, but in practice there is.
Emma Goldman’s life can be summed up as the clash of her ideas and ideals against her realities and deeds. Her life straddled the line between theory and practice. In short, she dreamed dreams, yet still had to wake up, look beside her, and see that her lover, Ben Reitman, was sleeping next to her, or more likely was away sleeping with another woman.
Emma Goldman wrote many essays and gave many speeches. She advocated many ideas and championed many causes, yet the ideas which stood the test of time were not her radical political ideas, such as being anti-suffrage and anti-property, but her radical, now we might call them modern, social views. The two defining ideas of Emma Goldman were the idea of free love and the idea that women should use contraceptives so they would only have children that would be loved. Born out of these public ideas, or maybe more appropriately, aborted from these ideas, were her private deeds. Emma advocated free love, yet was plagued with a weak and unfaithful lover who she was beholden to. While she endorsed contraception she seems to have yearned to be a mother and never became one.
Emma’s feelings about the relations between the sexes were formed very early. Her father was an uncompassionate and cold man who went so far as to blame her for being raped. She was also influenced by Vera Pavlovna, a character in Chernyshevsky’s novel What Is to Be Done?, who was “unencumbered by the restrictions of her sex, who could love freely outside the confines of marriage.” With this kind of upbringing there is little wonder her ideas would one day come to focus on free love.
Emma started off her essay “Marriage and Love” writing, “Marriage and love have nothing in common.” She sees the institution of marriage to be a bastardization of love. It changes love from a thing full of freedom, as well as a thing freely chosen, into an economic bargain leading to capitalistic bondage; a girl’s “dreams are not of moonlight and kisses,” but of “shopping tours and bargain counters.” Emma also sees a definite double standard between men and women. Men can “follow the call of the wild,” but women must keep chaste. Her solution to both of these problems is free love, an open, unfettered, and uninstitutionalized coupling where both sexes could love multiple partners.
How did her private life, her deeds, live up to this idea of free love? She did have many lovers, but so often she found herself in love with one person, Ben Reitman, and loving him, “with the intensity of life itself,” yet he was unfaithful to her, and it hurt her. Not only did she end up seeing herself as weak she also began to loathe one of her most popular lectures, “Marriage and Love” because it “emphasized the distance between her vision and reality.” She also ended up refining and redefining free love as something different than promiscuity. This disconnect between her ideas and her deeds was definitely obvious, even to Emma. It was a lot more obvious than the divide between her want of motherhood and her ideas about contraception.
Emma’s idea of the “unloved child” comes from her own childhood. Her father, Abraham Goldman, had wanted a boy, and was therefor disappointed with the birth of Emma. Augmenting this feeling of alienation and being unloved Emma was sent away to live with her grandmother at age eight. Her grandmother then abandoned her to her cruel aunt and uncle. Unsurprisingly, all of this caused Emma to carry, “the fear of abandonment into the rest of her life.”
Responding to her experience of being an abandoned and unloved child Emma Goldman decided the solution was the idea of free motherhood. To empower women, and keep other children from being born unloved and feeling the alienation she felt, women needed to use contraception. Through free motherhood they were refusing “the indiscriminate breeding of children,” and instead producing, “fewer, better children.”
Her idea leans toward the rejection of motherhood, or at least a choice of motherhood on the mother’s own terms. Emma’s deeds, though, tells a story of a longing for motherhood. She played the role of a surrogate mother to a plethora of people. Ben constantly referred to her as “mother” or “his blue-eyed mommy,” as did, a lover of both Ben and “Sasha,” “Fitzi,” Almeda, a prostitute, and Senya Fleshine, an anarchist photographer, and Mollie Steimer, his companion. She also sees Mother Earth, the title itself suggesting her motherly attributes and longings, as “a child born of love,” and “my love child.” Finally, some things in Emma’s life are very suggestive of a want of children; they almost seem like huge Freudian slips. For example, one time to escape from police Emma claimed to be pregnant. Further, Ben named his son Brutus, because he felt he had betrayed her ideals by settling down and having a child, yet Emma “loved Brutus as if he” was her own. Finally, Emma said of the Spanish Anarchist movement’s loss, “It’s as though you had wanted a child all your life, and at last, when you had almost given up hoping, it had been given to you—only to die soon after it was born.” It seems, to err on the side of caution, quite probable, that Emma wanted children. Still, it is not as if there is no continuity between her theory and her practice, her idea and deed. She decided to choose quality over quantity, and, knowing that her life was too chaotic to ensure that the child would be loved, she chose to have no children.
Publicly Emma Goldman went throughout the country advocating her ideas of free love and free motherhood to thousands of people. Privately though “she would ‘be torn between the yearning for a personal life and the need of giving all to [her] ideal.” Her deeds were just as real as her ideas. She could, condemn “the institution of marriage for stifling love in a misguided attempt to enforce stability and fidelity,” yet find herself, “bruised from all the wounds of the lack of stability” with Ben. She could promote contraception and still yearn for a child. Emma Goldman rejected Sasha’s assertion that he was a revolutionist first and human second. Instead, for her, “the two aspects of life were intertwined, although occasionally at war.” Like the situation between “Sasha” and the workers at Carnegie Steel the idea and the deed diverged.
I'm writing a paper comparing the narritive of Judges 4 to the poetry of Judges 5. I'm thinking Judges 5 may well be an older, feminine, oral tradition.
I have 3 papers which need to be written by the monday after this one, and I have to get ready for a test on the martyrdom of Ali in the Shi'ite Islamic tradition.
The fan is still broken on the computer, or at least it is still making really funny sounds, so this is about as long as I'll go.
Peace,
Chris
PS Here is a paper I wrote about Emma Goldman.
The ideas and deeds of Emma Goldman
By Chris Halverson
There is a phrase that may or may not have been coined by Barbara Tuchman “the idea and the deed.” This term expresses a discontinuity in anarchism; there is a huge chasm between the ideas supposed by Anarchist theorists and the deeds committed by Anarchist practitioners. An example of these disconnects between anarchist intelligentsia and propaganda of the deed can be found by contrasting the message of Emma Goldman with the Attentäte of Leon Czolgosz. When all is said and done, while Emma defends Czolgosz’s murder of President McKinley, she saw his actions as “impelled, not by the teachings of Anarchism, but by the tremendous pressure of conditions.” In this essay I will use the term the idea and the deed as well, but I will use it with a slight twist, and an ironic edge. My use of the idea and the deed can be best exemplified by the Attentäte of “Sasha” Berkman, one of Emma’s lovers. His idea was to kill the chairman of the board at Carnegie Steel, Henry Clay Frick, to set off a workers revolution, but his deed failed and the very workers who he intended to liberate subdued him. As the old joke goes the difference between theory and practice is that in theory there is no difference, but in practice there is.
Emma Goldman’s life can be summed up as the clash of her ideas and ideals against her realities and deeds. Her life straddled the line between theory and practice. In short, she dreamed dreams, yet still had to wake up, look beside her, and see that her lover, Ben Reitman, was sleeping next to her, or more likely was away sleeping with another woman.
Emma Goldman wrote many essays and gave many speeches. She advocated many ideas and championed many causes, yet the ideas which stood the test of time were not her radical political ideas, such as being anti-suffrage and anti-property, but her radical, now we might call them modern, social views. The two defining ideas of Emma Goldman were the idea of free love and the idea that women should use contraceptives so they would only have children that would be loved. Born out of these public ideas, or maybe more appropriately, aborted from these ideas, were her private deeds. Emma advocated free love, yet was plagued with a weak and unfaithful lover who she was beholden to. While she endorsed contraception she seems to have yearned to be a mother and never became one.
Emma’s feelings about the relations between the sexes were formed very early. Her father was an uncompassionate and cold man who went so far as to blame her for being raped. She was also influenced by Vera Pavlovna, a character in Chernyshevsky’s novel What Is to Be Done?, who was “unencumbered by the restrictions of her sex, who could love freely outside the confines of marriage.” With this kind of upbringing there is little wonder her ideas would one day come to focus on free love.
Emma started off her essay “Marriage and Love” writing, “Marriage and love have nothing in common.” She sees the institution of marriage to be a bastardization of love. It changes love from a thing full of freedom, as well as a thing freely chosen, into an economic bargain leading to capitalistic bondage; a girl’s “dreams are not of moonlight and kisses,” but of “shopping tours and bargain counters.” Emma also sees a definite double standard between men and women. Men can “follow the call of the wild,” but women must keep chaste. Her solution to both of these problems is free love, an open, unfettered, and uninstitutionalized coupling where both sexes could love multiple partners.
How did her private life, her deeds, live up to this idea of free love? She did have many lovers, but so often she found herself in love with one person, Ben Reitman, and loving him, “with the intensity of life itself,” yet he was unfaithful to her, and it hurt her. Not only did she end up seeing herself as weak she also began to loathe one of her most popular lectures, “Marriage and Love” because it “emphasized the distance between her vision and reality.” She also ended up refining and redefining free love as something different than promiscuity. This disconnect between her ideas and her deeds was definitely obvious, even to Emma. It was a lot more obvious than the divide between her want of motherhood and her ideas about contraception.
Emma’s idea of the “unloved child” comes from her own childhood. Her father, Abraham Goldman, had wanted a boy, and was therefor disappointed with the birth of Emma. Augmenting this feeling of alienation and being unloved Emma was sent away to live with her grandmother at age eight. Her grandmother then abandoned her to her cruel aunt and uncle. Unsurprisingly, all of this caused Emma to carry, “the fear of abandonment into the rest of her life.”
Responding to her experience of being an abandoned and unloved child Emma Goldman decided the solution was the idea of free motherhood. To empower women, and keep other children from being born unloved and feeling the alienation she felt, women needed to use contraception. Through free motherhood they were refusing “the indiscriminate breeding of children,” and instead producing, “fewer, better children.”
Her idea leans toward the rejection of motherhood, or at least a choice of motherhood on the mother’s own terms. Emma’s deeds, though, tells a story of a longing for motherhood. She played the role of a surrogate mother to a plethora of people. Ben constantly referred to her as “mother” or “his blue-eyed mommy,” as did, a lover of both Ben and “Sasha,” “Fitzi,” Almeda, a prostitute, and Senya Fleshine, an anarchist photographer, and Mollie Steimer, his companion. She also sees Mother Earth, the title itself suggesting her motherly attributes and longings, as “a child born of love,” and “my love child.” Finally, some things in Emma’s life are very suggestive of a want of children; they almost seem like huge Freudian slips. For example, one time to escape from police Emma claimed to be pregnant. Further, Ben named his son Brutus, because he felt he had betrayed her ideals by settling down and having a child, yet Emma “loved Brutus as if he” was her own. Finally, Emma said of the Spanish Anarchist movement’s loss, “It’s as though you had wanted a child all your life, and at last, when you had almost given up hoping, it had been given to you—only to die soon after it was born.” It seems, to err on the side of caution, quite probable, that Emma wanted children. Still, it is not as if there is no continuity between her theory and her practice, her idea and deed. She decided to choose quality over quantity, and, knowing that her life was too chaotic to ensure that the child would be loved, she chose to have no children.
Publicly Emma Goldman went throughout the country advocating her ideas of free love and free motherhood to thousands of people. Privately though “she would ‘be torn between the yearning for a personal life and the need of giving all to [her] ideal.” Her deeds were just as real as her ideas. She could, condemn “the institution of marriage for stifling love in a misguided attempt to enforce stability and fidelity,” yet find herself, “bruised from all the wounds of the lack of stability” with Ben. She could promote contraception and still yearn for a child. Emma Goldman rejected Sasha’s assertion that he was a revolutionist first and human second. Instead, for her, “the two aspects of life were intertwined, although occasionally at war.” Like the situation between “Sasha” and the workers at Carnegie Steel the idea and the deed diverged.
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