Rev. Erudite Redneck, B.S., B.S., M.A., M.Div.

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Whoa.
 

Lurked by a Longhorn. Or spammed. Whichever you choose to believe.

Can we call it Bovine Intervention?
 

Oooh, oddly, that came up in theology class today, about how most Xtian mystics were women who were challenging the authority of the church. And the subject of the concept of nursing at the breast of Christ/God came up. It's a sing! I mean a sign!

And why shouldn't God's boob be sacred as well? Have you seen that Sybelline(sp?) chick? Anyway, as one of the pastors said in the sermon for chapel today, "This is what we get for letting a bunch of celibate men talk to us about birth." (in reference to John 3:16. Birth is a labor, a process, not a three-sentence statement.)
 

I can handle the nursing Madonna. And I agree on the mystic thing.

But what about Francis vision of suckling the Lord at HIS breasts?

Man! So to speak.
 

The concept of tits on a boar hog as being useless comes forward here.
As for Saint Francis, well he seems to be a conflicted person on many levels. This might be a prime example of the reverse of penis envy; that being tit envy.

And for the reminder that there is nothing new under the sun. Here is where I bring up the origin of the image with Isis and her nursing of her miraculously conceived son Horus, which over 2000 years merged into the Aeon infant and dark Kore of Alexandria, and moved across the Mediterranean and after suppression by Theodorus I, re-emerged as the Black Madonnas in the dark ages within the Mary cult.
 

I used that phrase -- "as worthless at teats on a boar hog" -- in a column in college. A smart-as-a-whip ag student wrote a letter to the editor correcting me, explaining that teats om a board hog *do* have a purpose, in that they are a determining factor in how many teats the female offspring of said boar will have, he said. I didn't doubt him, but I didn't look it up, either.
 

Welcome to the whacky world of Christian mysticism and eroticized Christian art. Not only are these kinds of things plentiful, there is a whole sub-genre of infant Jesus paintings in which there is some kind of weird examination of his, um, male parts by his mother.

These highly sexualized renderings of familiar images that have a more homey touch today, would have been uncontroversial when they were first created. Different cultures just view these things differently.

I first heard of St. Francis' discussing suckling at the breasts of Jesus a couple years before I entered seminary, and it kind of blew my mind. Yet, the androgynous divine is hardly new; it certainly should chastise those who view our current ideas of gender roles and their biological immutability and rootedness in the divine plan.

Homoerotic? Let us hope so. I do believe we need to embrace a bit of that in order to more fully aware not just of who we are, but of who God is.
 

In this culture, the female breast is a sex object, not a source of nourishment

Man. I challenge you to edit that statement to say "AND a source of nourishment." There are plenty enough breastfeeding women and supporters of breastfeeding that would take strong exception to that.
 

Trixie: In biology, yer right. I say that in the culture, I mean pop culture, the breast is a sex object. The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders are not displaying their nourishing talents.

GKS: But in this early art, the images weren't considered erotic at all, unless I misunderstand the term. That was the point of the article in The Christian Century: The images *became* etoticized.


And, OK: No one yet, seems to have caught my main question: Suckling at God's teat, as a form of nourishment is one thing. But Francis of Assisi is referring to the Christ child as suckling at his OWN breasts. One, there is no nourishment there. Two, is there some deep concept of the relationship of God to God's creation that posits that God gains nourishment from God's own Creation? (I suspect there is, actually; God wants to be worshiped, we're told. But the jump from that to the words in this text is one heckuva doozey.)
 

Trixie, I'm not arguing with your point. I think I didn't make my own point clear. But the fact that breastfeeding in public is even controversial -- and it is, unfortunately -- backs my assertion about mainstream culture, I think.
 

Oh poo. Grow your 15-year-old boy self up, I say. Before the 1950s/'60s nothing in the world was thought about breastfeeding. It's the manufacturers of formula who have cause the whole "shame on you for breastfeeding" crap.

And on your original question: There is no more intimate or loving connection than that between a mother and baby. And the bond is not necessarily about nourishment, but nurturing and being in that relationship, profoundly close to one another.
 

First off, God created tits and babies and nursing and if she wants to communicate her need for us to give her back her own sustenance by having a guy see himself in that role so be it. God was a mother for 25,000 years before she became dressed up as a father by her uptight male children.
 

Poo yer own self. :-)

Re, "It's the manufacturers of formula who have cause the whole 'shame on you for breastfeeding' crap." Whatever the reason it's becolme controversial, it has become controversial.


And I agree with yer point about nurturing.


Note: All I said about the nursing Madonna was that it was unsettling, to me, at first, precisely because of the pop-culture-imposed image of breast as sex object. The art itself is a wonderful expression of the humanity of Jesus.


And it ain't me that 15. It's the advertising world.
 

Trixie, as much as I would like to agree with you, I have to stand with my brother ER on this. Boobs is boos, and while it might be nice to pretend that the return to breastfeeding has replaced the worship of the almighty female breast, the fact that women are chastised for breastfeeding in public shows how far we have to go.

On the other hand, I think Trixie is on to something here. Listening to my wife talk about nursing - both our daughters were nursed to the 18th month - I realized that the bond formed there was something I could never participate in, no matter how many rocking chairs I sat in or how many diapers I changed.

The image Francis is using is a metaphor for imbibing God's love and grace. It is much the same as the highly sexually charged images the female mystics used to discuss their immediate experience of the Divine, or the sublimated sexuality in the letter of St. John of the Cross and . . . BRAIN FART . . .

Anyway . . .

Yeah, we interpret the images far more sexually, or at least erotically, or perhaps explicitly than the originators would have done. That only shows we have some confused and confusing ideas about sex, sexuality, sensuality, intimacy, and their interrelationships. To deny there is a sexual component, however, simply because it's a contingent cultural matter, is a mistake. There is something sexual about women's breasts - any culture deals with them in some manner, from the almost-total-exposure of the high Elizabethan era in Britain and Renaissance Italy to the burqah's of strict Islam. That's because, like it or not, Trixie, men are fascinated with them.
 

There's a mean part of me that just wants to say "oh boo hoo you poor male victims of advertising." But I won't. I do think you'll see a definite gender split on the breastfeeding discussion, though. And probably an age split, to some extent. There will be those who are old enough to remember when breast feeding wasn't "criminalized" by the public at large, a group that turns red and giggles, and a younger group that doesn't buy into the myth that bottles are better.
But ... then again ... maybe this is part of the whole Madonna/Whore conflict that afflicts males.
 

Well, I think GKS nailed it:

Neither he, nor I, will ever know the kind intimacy that nursing a child involves, whether it's nourishing or nurturing.

The first words out of Dr. ER's mouth, too, when I just read her the piece from St. Francis, was something the lines of it being a genderless expression of holy intimacy. When I told her I saw not problem with the genderlessness of God is when she went on, and said she was talking about Francis being able to set aside his own gender in order to be able to express that intimacy, which must have been plain to him, and perhaps was plain to other spiritually minded or thinking people during his time -- but which, for whatever reason, I, and GKS and I dare say most American men, are clueless about.
 

I can't help but think of the galloping case of brain weasles this would cause in certain fundamentalist persons I know.

And as I think of it, it amuses me and makes me happy.

Thanks, ER!
 

Ha! Yer welcome! I hope it scalds the eyeballs of any of the remnant fundies who still come around here!
 

"But ... then again ... maybe this is part of the whole Madonna/Whore conflict that afflicts males."

Some males. Personally, I love Madonna, but I suppose that's a bit of a stereotype. ;)
 

I really don't know what that means: Madonna-whore? I mean, I've never heard it. Please to explain, Trixie.
 

Well, I'm not trixie, but ... The Madonna-Whore complex is the description given to the contradictory desires some men have for women, particularly their wives. Sexually, they want a lusty, beautiful woman, but at the same time they want to marry a "good girl" who will be a good wife and mother. Once the woman has children and is the mother of the man's children, he no longer sees her as sexually desirable.

I believe it's another one of Freud's ideas. Sounds like him, anyway.

It's also a song by Cyndi Lauper, on her "Shine" album. :)
 

Kiss an angel in the mornin' and love her like the devil when the sun goes down, I believe, is the way Charley Pride put it.

Got it. :-)
 

Wow... Charlie Pride, Madonna, and Cyndi Lauper all in one comment thread. :)