Jesus sent out the disciples “two by two and gave them authority over unhealthy spirits.” “So the disciples… drove out many demons, and they anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them.”
Authority has roots in the term auger, the farm implement used to open the soil. Auger, and thus authority, means we “cause growth.” Our authority is a birthing energy, messy with diverse and ever so humble people growing new life together. The life-giving authority growing from commoners like Jesus, his disciples, and us, is needed to transform the “unhealthy spirit” that is Militarism and more specifically its patriarchy. Patriarchy, rule by males, undermines our conscientious authority that births energy that is messy with diversity and humble communion. Patriarchy spawns instead ranked autonomy that is sterile, singular, and statused. Patriarchy wants to describe autonomy as the “experience of acting from choice” “rather than pressure” (APA). But, patriarchy’s ranked autonomy pressures our experience of choice. We are pressured to choose ranked autonomy and its many violences, for example class, race, over nature, gender. A prime developer of patriarchy’s ranked autonomy was the patriarch Immanuel Kant. Kant acquiesced to all manner of ranked autonomy and its violences; of colonists over natives, whites over blacks, man over nature, and men over women, “Nature… implanted… fear… and timidity… in woman’s nature. Through this weakness woman rightfully demands that man be her protector.” When women reject patriarchy’s pressure to be subordinate, they often, unconsciously, accept patriarchy’s pressure to be dominant. For example, women choose to join the ranks of patriarchy’s dominating military / police forces. Or women choose as heroes female fictionalizations of dominating patriarchs as in Wonder Woman, Assassin’s Creed’s Kassandra, Marvel’s Black Widow et al. Women are pressured to control, to dominate, but coerced into believing they are making choices for power. Patriarchy trains women out of genuine power – authority – the power to grow life. We mimic the dominators and claim autonomy – unaware it is patriarch’s ranked autonomy. Patriarchy hinders women from having authority over the unhealthy spirit that is patriarchy because it pressures us to be the unhealthy spirit that is patriarchy. Judith Jarvis Thomson, in her Defense of Abortion scenario chooses patriarchy’s sterile, singular, and statused autonomy. Imagine, “You wake up in the morning and find yourself” “kidnapped.” “A famous…violinist’s… circulatory system was plugged into yours” for “you alone have the right blood type.” “To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it’s only for nine months.” Thomson says a “woman has a right to decide what happens in and to her body.” The violinist/a baby, “does not establish that he has a right to be given” use of your body. “(Y)ou do not act unjustly toward the (violinist/the baby) in unplugging yourself, thereby killing him.” “Surely, we do not have any such “special responsibility” for a person,” she says. Jarvis Thompson proves patriarchal autonomy – sterile, singular, and statused – is a basis of the pro-choice position. Ranked patriarchs experience any infringement upon their control, their ability to dominate, their autonomy – as victimization. It explains why in this U.S. military empire complaints of victimization bellow from its dominators. The rich complain they are victimized by the poor. Whites are victimized by Blacks. Corporate polluters by needs of the earth. Thus men complain they are victimized by women. Each dominator is experiencing their sterile, singular, and statused autonomy devised by patriarchy being touched by nascent, diverse, and humble communion – with human beings who are poor, of color, with the earth, and women whose authority is causing the patriarch to change, to grow. Each dominator is rejecting the touch of powerful authority. As women are enticed into patriarchy’s domination, they are rejecting the touch of powerful authority. They choose instead Kantian patriarchal arguments of autonomy and fight off infringements upon it. So it is that women too complain of victimization in having to tolerate a birthing energy, messy with diversity and humble communion, for example, with their unborn babies.
“Here is the endless wet thick cosmos, the center of everything… dense sap, branching vines, … belching bogs. Here is swamp, here is struggle… trying for foothold, fingerhold, mindhold over such slick… slack earthsoup. I feel not wet so much as painted and glittered with the fat grassy mires, the rich and succulent marrows of earth— a dry stick given one more chance by the whims of swamp water— a bough that still, after all these years, could take root, sprout, branch out, bud.” (Crossing the Swamp – Mary Oliver)
Prayer: Source of Life, we are powerful authority – its birthing energy, messy with diversity and humble communion.
Question: How does the unhealthy spirit that is patriarchy, with its ranked autonomy, pressure me to choose its many violences?
July 11, 2021 Gospel Mark 6:7-13 Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time