back.
Could Christ Have Been a Woman?
(continued)
Fr. Pennington: Yes, and I think that's where
the real challenge lies. If we rise to a sufficient level of humanness,
or Christification, we realize that there is essentially neither
male nor female. But at the same time we find that this somehow
gives us a larger perspective on our body's reality-the reality
of our maleness or femaleness-and the particular emotions and sensitivities
that go along with it. Here at the monastery, for example, we live
in a male community rather than a mixed community, and I'd say that
as a result, the men here are largely free from any need to prove
that they're "real" men or that they're "masculine."
But the other side of that is that in having so little contact with
women, this whole perception of the differences between male and
female can get a bit distorted. We're having much more contact with
our nuns now than we did in the past, and it turns out that most
of the men are finding that very enriching. In fact, just this past
Sunday morning one of the monks was talking about the three large
group meetings we've had here this past year-three occasions where
monks and nuns came together-and how these meetings had given him
a much stronger and clearer grasp of his true identity as a monk.
Being with the nuns, he said, had helped to bring him into a fullness
of self-understanding that was truly beyond male and female. We
were just doing various things together-discussing basic problems,
concerns, challenges and so on-but it freed the monks from some
of their lingering presuppositions about the differences between
men and women because we were meeting in a fuller human and divine
realm. And so all those ideas just got left behind, that was all-they
just got left behind! At the same time, I think we were probably
more conscious in the end about some of the real differences. I
mean the nuns-well, nuns do things differently from monks, you know!
Interviewer: For example?
Fr. Pennington: Well, I don't know if we stopped to think
about it all that much, but there's definitely something . . . a
greater delicacy about things, I guess. They challenged the monks
to be a little more spruce, a little more careful, not so rough
in their expressions-and to behave a little bit more like gentlemen
than we usually do. And while, again, I don't like to generalize,
having listened to their discussions, I'd also say that the nuns
have certain insights, or have generally more of a feel precisely
for the things that are felt, while the men tend to be a little
more intellectual. Anyway, the point is that while there was a growing
experience that in the things that really mattered there wasn't
a difference, at the same time there was also an enrichment. And
that enrichment was due to an appreciation of our tendencies to
come at things somewhat differently, and to the challenge, through
recognizing those differences, of coming to see our reality more
integrally.
Interviewer: In many mystical or contemplative teachings,
spiritual liberation is described as the transcendence of opposites.
Because we're talking about being in a spiritual environment in
which all kinds of opposites are recognized and gone beyond, I'd
be interested to hear about your own experience of what transcendence
means in relationship to gender. What does it actually mean for
an individual to transcend gender differences while still inhabiting
a male body or a female body?
|
