Take Me as I Am: Wedding Program of the Reverend and Doctor

"Take, O, take me as I am,
summon out what I shall be,
set your seal upon my heart,
and live in me"

John L. Bell

______________________________

______________________________

Welcome to the Wedding of 

The Reverend Rachel Johannan Bahr, M. Div. 

& 

Doctor Gabrielle Mary-Willow Bychowski, Ph. D. 

At First Congregational Church, Southington 

18 February 2018

Rachel’s ring is inspired by the Gold Tree of Valinor, Laurelin. The band is rose gold with a circular sun-disk surrounding a central diamond.

Gabby’s ring is inspired by the Silver Tree of Valinor, Telperion. The band is white gold in the “willow style.” The gemstone is moissanite, chosen because she loves things that come to be via laboratory assistance, loves the stars (moissanite is not natural on Earth except from meteorites), and while diamonds shed a white light, moissanite creates rainbows.

______________________________

______________________________

The Wedding Party

Team Gabby
Colors: Black and Silver

Maid of Honor

Dr. Erin Sheley 

Erin lives in Alberta. She works as an Assistant Professor, at the University of Calgary Faculty of Law. She attended George Washington University with Gabby during her Ph.D. She is the Ron Swanson to Gabby’s Leslie Knope.

Bridesmaids

Emily Hofstaedter 

Emily lives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She works as an actor and theater professional. She attended The George Washington University with Gabby during her M.A. She shares Gabby’s love of medieval history and Catholicism, as well as medieval reenactment. 

Megan Bowman 

Megan lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota with her husband, Matt, and cat, Kitty Rose. She works as an intellectual property attorney. She attended DePaul University with Gabby during her B.A. She knows elvish and helped order the Tolkien inspired sections of the service.

Maria Carson

Maria lives half-time in Syracuse, New York and half in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania with her husband, Dan. She is a Dissertation Fellow at the Humanities Center at Syracuse University in Religious Studies. She attended DePaul University with Gabby during her BA, as well as Glenbard West High School and Hadley Jr. High with her. She once toured Japan with Gabby as part of an orchestra.

Laura Bychowski

Laura lives in Chicago, Illinois with her partner, Alex. She works as a film editor. She attended DePaul University after Gabby but walked the halls with her in Glenbard West High School, Hadley Jr. High School and Churchill Elementary School. She is her beloved sister. Among her first words to Rachel were: “don’t you dare hurt her.”

Team Rachel

Colors: Burgundy and Rose Gold

Maid of Honor

Beth Kelly

Beth and Rachel have known each other since 2004 when they were both entering Chicago Theological Seminary, and found each other relying on one another for fun and tears and beers. Beth saw Rachel’s queer before she would acknowledge her truth. She was there for the birth and early years of Clementine and Elanora.

Bridesmaids

Megan McCue

Megan's friendship in Maine was one of the brightest spots from Rachel’s ministry in York. They thoroughly enjoy bro-ing out and laughing on the silliest things. Megan also gets the credit for helping Rachel to propose to Gabby.

Rev. Heidi C. Heath

Heidi and Rachel became friends when Rachel moved to New England in 2013 and she started reaching out to folks. Rachel can’t forget Heidi’s unending encouragement, and her house calls, hugs, organic vegan food, and learning about so many things from their past in common!

Miranda Moeller

Miranda and Rachel became friends last year when theyz were connected by Heidi! They immediately found kindred spirits in one another- similar work, complex family systems, and offering support through navigating new calls, and lots of mirroring life changes/transitions!

______________________________

______________________________

Chapter I:

Introductory Rites

Prelude

Processions

• Wedding Party: “In Dreams”
• The Children: “Concerning Hobbits”
• Bride Gabby: “Take, O Take Me As I Am.”

Call to worship

One: We come, gathered to this place from all around the world to witness the joining of they who are embodying love,

Many: We come, bringing with us our cares and concerns, our memories of how love has intertwined within our own lives,

One: We come, with attentiveness to those whom we have loved, who are not here, yet still adding their blessings and shadows upon this day,

Many: We come, with gratitude for they who have been roots to trees blossoming into love: the ancestors, the teachers, the mentors, the guides... and all who have contributed to the love of Rachel and Gabby.

One: We come to this place, on this day, stretching towards all that is Holy. Calling upon the Name of the Divine.

Many: We come to lay our witness of love before Christ, to intertwine it with the love of God, and to send it forth in the Spirit of celebration.

One: Let us gather our hearts and minds for worship and witness, gratitude and joy!

The Trees of Valinor 

(Reader: Erin Sheley)

Trees are ancient sacred images with deep roots in Christian and non-Christian stories, inspiring the work of myth-makers like J.R.R. Tolkien. In The Silmarillion, Tolkien describes the Two Trees of Valinor, Laurelin and Telperion, shining with the light of the sun and moon respectively. Each tree has seasons of sharing its light, seasons of basking in the others glow, and seasons of mutual brilliance when their grace mingles with special radiance. For reasons of personal and mythic significance, Rachel and Gabby have chosen these trees as symbols of their love and marriage.

Opening Prayer

______________________________

______________________________

Chapter II:

Liturgy of the Word 

The Bahr-Bychowski household is proudly interfaith, drawing on an array of traditions, primarily sharing values with the United Church of Christ and Roman Catholic Church. On this day, the threefold structure of readings (Old Testament, Epistles, and Gospel) follows Catholic convention while the sermon will be preached by an ordained UCC Minister. The Old Testament reading will be given by Gabby’s Bridesmaid Maria as it is drawn out of her Jewish tradition. The New Testament reading will be given by Rachel’s Maid of Honor Beth as it comes from her Christian tradition. The Gospel will be sung, adapted from Mary’s Magnificat in the Gospel of Luke, by the choir.

First Reading: Ruth 1: 8-17 

(Reader: Maria Carson)

Response: “Wherever You Will Go”

Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 12 

(Reader: Beth Kelly)

Acclamation: “Alleluia”

Gospel: “The Canticle of Turning” 

(based on the Magnificat)

Sermon
(delivered by the Rev. Dr. Chris Davies)

______________________________

______________________________

Chapter III:

The Celebration of Matrimony

The Questions

The Officiants will question the couple regarding their intentions to marry. Marriage is a sacrament sanctified by the Church and community but one that is distinctly initiated by the couple in response to the love and intentions placed in their hearts.

Vows

Traditional and Written.

Exchange of Rings

(Ring Bearers: Laura Bychowski and Beth Kelly)

As a circle has no beginning and end, rings are signs of unending love. The exchange of rings functions as a sign of mutual commitment to one another.

Blessing

The Silmarils 

(Silmarils Bearer: Megan Bowman; Reader: Megan McCue)

In the age of the Trees of Valinor, gems were made to preserve their mingled lights for future generations. Today, Rachel and Gabby honor their children with Silmaril necklaces as an affirmation of their place in the story of love, life, and light.

______________________________

______________________________

Chapter IV:

Liturgy of Communion

Presentation and Preparation of the Gifts

Reflecting the processing of grain and grape (picking, crushing, and remaking), bread and wine are ancient symbols of life, death, and rebirth.

Sanctus

The Lord be with you. And also with you.
Lift up your hearts. We lift them to the Lord.
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God. It is right to give our thanks and praise.

Communion Prayer and Rite

Communion today is performed in the UCC open-table tradition. ALL are welcome!

Lord’s Prayer [in Unison]

“Eternal Spirit, Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver, Source of all that is and that shall be, Father and Mother of us all, Loving God, in whom is heaven: The hallowing of your name echo through the universe! The way of your justice be followed by the peoples of the world! Your heavenly will be done by all created beings! Your commonwealth of peace and freedom sustain our hope and come on earth. With the bread we need for today, feed us. In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us. In times of temptation and testing, strengthen us. From trials too great to endure, spare us. From the grip of all that is evil, free us. For you reign in the glory of the power that is love, now and for ever. Amen.”

Sign of Peace 

All shake hands or embrace in an affirmation of interdependence and respect.

Lamb of God 

A recognition of the gifts of grace and peace received by our community on this day.

Communion

Communion has diverse meanings across Christian denominations. Catholics affirm the Eucharist as the body of Christ. The UCC leaves the mystery open to interpretation. By sharing bread and cup, we commit ourselves to the lives, deaths, and resurrections of one another. ALL are welcome to participate in the tradition of communion today.

With people everywhere we affirm God’s goodness at the heart of humanity, planted more deeply than all that is wrong… Thanks be to God.

The Legacy of Light 

(Reader: Emily Hofstaedter)

The Trees of Valinor are not the origin or end of the two lights. Before the Trees, existed the Great Gold and Silver Lamps. After the Trees, came the Sun and Moon, as well as the Silmarils. Light, love, and life are legacies. Today we use the tradition of lights to recognize those who have come before us, our grandparents and parents (those tied to us by blood and our chosen family) as well as all our children.

______________________________

______________________________

Chapter V:

Concluding Rite 

Benediction

Recessional: The Rainbow Connection 

“Why are there so many songs about rainbows and what's on the other side?”

Rachel & Poppa

“Rainbows are visions, but only illusions, and rainbows have nothing to hide. So we've been told and some choose to believe it. I know they're wrong wait and see
Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection
The lovers, the dreamers and me

Choir joins:

Who said that wishes would be heard and answered
when wished on the morning star?
Someone thought of that and someone believed it
And look what it's done so far
What's so amazing that keeps us stargazing and what do we think we might see?
Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection
The lovers, the dreamers and me
All of us under its spell
We know that it's probably magic
Have you been sleeping and have you heard voices?
I've heard them calling my name
Is this the sweet sound that calls the young sailors
The voice might be one and the same
I've heard it too many times to ignore it
It's something that I'm supposed to be
Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection, the lovers, the dreamers and me Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection, the lovers, the dreamers and me”

______________________________

______________________________

The Mingling of Lights: Wedding Vows of the Reverend and Doctor

"In Valinor twice every day 

there came a gentle hour of softer light 

when both trees were faint and 

their gold and silver beams were mingled"

The Silmarillion

______________________________

______________________________

Vows of the Golden Tree

I promise to give you nuzzles even when I'm tired or my feelings are hurt

I promise to be honest always and gentle

I promise to protect you always, to use wisdom in discerning when to act in your defense

I promise to never grow tired of your pondering or the excitement you have in sharing your comic books and other books you are reading

I promise to respect your body, mind, and soul and all the wonderful intricacies that makes you wonderfully you

I promise to challenge you to be the best you you can be, even if it gets me in trouble

I promise to let go of the things that do not matter, and be more gracious than judgmental of your growing edges

I promise to respect your boundaries of self-care

I promise to be an anchor for you when you feel as if you might fall down or apart

I promise to honor our theological differences of opinion, to celebrate our unity, and hopefully to push one another to expansive thinking

I promise to read books in common and debate ideas, disagree when necessary

I promise to see your beauty even when you aren't running anymore, and maybe your teeth are gone

I promise to honor your role as momma Gabby, and the brilliant ways you encourage our kids to think more critically, see the talents they embody, and encourage world domination by these Bahr warriors

I promise to raise kids with you, go on pilgrimages with you, support your spiritual growth and endeavors

It's taken me years to feel more at peace in my body, and I'm clear that there is nobody I would rather begin this journey than with you, I love you forever and always, I love you and I like you

______________________________

______________________________

Vows of the Silver Tree

To your golden light, I vow my silver tree. When the day has wearied you, as you are ready to rest, may I be the light to shine on you through the night when all other lights go out. Because I shine the brighter in your presence.

To your thirst for adventure, I vow my fellowship. When shires label you a “disturber of the peace,” the road carries you off, through mist and shadow, far from home, may I be your companion into the distant mountains. The world is a far bigger place because of you.

To your courage, I vow my loyalty. When the good fight rides out to meet you, even when all seems lost, may I be your shield maiden, guarding your back. I can’t always carry your burden but sometimes I can carry you. The world is a more resilient place because of you.

To your creativity, I vow my patient help. When the spheres whisper their secrets to your imagination, as you play and wonder, may I be your cheerleader and assistant, your editor and researcher. The world is a more interesting place because of you.

To your compassion, I vow my heart-chest. When you challenge the despair of world’s end, may I be a 2nd heart to carry laughter and tears. The world is a kinder place because of you.

To your power, I vow my hearth and home. When you set down your burdens may I be the last homely house with comfort and neck rubs. The world is a stronger place because of you.

To your western sky, I vow my waiting ships. As we marry not only into one another’s lives but also one another’s brokenness, changes, and death, may I honor not only this version of you but each version that will come. And when night falls and all the world turns to silver glass, may you sail into the west knowing that my fellowship, loyalty, help, hearth, hope, and perseverance is still with you and the good your golden light brings into this world.

To your you, I vow my me. I love you and I like you. I vow to be a mother to our children, to be your partner, your wife, and your “us” as long as long as we both shall live.

______________________________

______________________________

Thanks for Being You: A History of the Reverend and Doctor

Meet-Cute: a cute, charming, or amusing first encounter between romantic partners

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

______________________________

______________________________

“Thanks for being you, I really enjoyed reading your profile and feeling affirmed that there are critically minded nurturing women out there :)” (Timestamp: Jun 16, 2013 5:50pm). These are the exact first words Gabby sent to the OKCupid profile of an amazing, brainy, queer, strong, hunky, gorgeous Christian social justice warrior working in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. Later that day, Rachel sent a message back to a beautiful smart academic that simply said, “Likewise :)” (Timestamp: Jun 16, 2013 5:50pm). After a conversation about Disability Studies, Our Whole Lives, the book The Queer God, C.S. Lewis, Medieval Studies, and a mutual love of Chicago, Rachel asked this lady out.

“Gabby?!” Rachel cried from the train station, realizing they had unknowingly been on the same train together to their first date. Gabby stopped mid-street and turned around, hair blowing in the summer wind, her sky blue eyes seeing Rachel’s sky blue eyes for the first time and gasped. “I think this is our meet-cute,” Gabby said as the two of them walked into Starbucks for the first of many coffee and conversations.

“I know you are going back to graduate school soon,” Rachel said, sitting next to Gabby on the bed. “Well, I don’t want this just to be a summer thing. Will you be my girlfriend?” Gabby looked away and got quiet. Rachel stirred nervously. “You don’t have to, I’ll understand.” “That’s not it,” Gabby said, “I just feel like I’ve been waiting, getting ready for you to ask me that question for a long time; and the weird thing is, I feel like I’ve been waiting for much longer than just a summer. Like I’ve been waiting for you.” After a kiss and a laugh, Rachel said, “likewise.”

______________________________

______________________________

“Is it fair to you to take a job at a Church that isn’t Open and Affirming?” Rachel asked after a call to minister in Maine. “We agreed from the start that our relationship would mean taking care of these kids and supporting each other. We should go because we will be going into it together.” Thus began the saga of life in a wooded seaside town with a lot of love and some grief, including Rachel facing down a police officer who had stopped Gabby (on the ground she was a “strange person” in the town; not the actual word used) when she was out with the kids for a walk. Later that day, when she found Gabby sitting crying in their bedroom closet, Rachel silently sat down next to her and there they stayed for half an hour because they were in this thing together.

“What excites me about us,” Gabby said to Rachel while they were driving down the beach in Maine on Valentine’s Day, the dark waves crashing on the rocks, “is that we aren’t just bound to each other by love but we are both pulled together by a love of a road and a horizon bigger than either of us. I think we will go the distance.” Rachel just smiled because she knew something Gabby didn’t. Later that night when Gabby went to jump Rachel’s car when it “broke-down” at the Church, she saw the lights on in the sanctuary. Opening the door, she saw Rachel singing the first verses to “Origin of Love.” Gripping the pews to keep from passing out, Gabby found her way to the end of the aisle where Rachel knelt down, ring in hand. “Will you marry me?” Rachel asked. “Yes. Yes. Yes!”

“I say this to all of Rachel’s churches,” Gabby remarked after the family moved to Connecticut for a new calling, “She is a warrior. Her job is to watch the whole Church’s back and protect it. But my job is to watch Rachel’s back.” People usually laugh when she says this. She means it. Months later, they were driving down together to Washington DC for Gabby’s Ph.D. dissertation defense. “Your job is to defend your research and your field,” Rachel said, “my job is to defend you.” Gabby laughed. Rachel means it.

______________________________

______________________________

“For all we do, all we become,” Rachel said, holding Gabby next to the grave of J.R.R. Tolkien, “it’s because we stand on the shoulders of giants.” As the culmination of a pilgrimage around England, visiting Margery Kempe, Julian of Norwich, C.S. Lewis, and William Shakespeare, there was something quieting and humbling touching the tree that grows out of the grave of the beloved author ornamented with trinkets from generations of previous pilgrims; testament to the way we light the path of one another as we struggle to find the road.

“I don’t say this to all my clients, or really any of them,” the Marriage Consular said to Gabby and Rachel during their final wedding prep session, “but you two are the most in love people I’ve met. I mean it. I think you can handle what life throws your way together.” Rachel and Gabby held hands and smiled. They think so too. After months of preparation for the ceremony and a life-time of preparation for one another, Rachel, Gabby, and the kids are gathering together with friends and family to say vows that affirm the love, mutual respect and support, partnership, and home they have built together. They still have each other’s back.

______________________________

______________________________

The Reverend and Doctor Are Getting Married: All are Welcome! Save the Date 18 February 2018

______________________________

______________________________

Save the Date

The Marriage Ceremony 

of the Reverend Rachel J. Bahr

and Dr. Gabrielle M.W. Bychowski

will occur on 

18 February 2018

at First Congregation Church

in Southington, CT

______________________________

______________________________

Love is not something that occurs in isolation but grows out of the light and life in the community. You are a critical part of our life story. That is why we are excited to invite you to our wedding ceremony on 18 February 2018 (easy to remember: it's 2/18 of 2-18) at the First Congregational Church of Southington, CT. The marriage ceremony will be an interfaith service that reflects the spiritual roots of our family, combining the influences of Roman Catholicism and the United Church of Christ. The service will also acknowledge that our families and communities extend beyond the church, including people from many traditions as well as those who find meaning outside of religion. Please feel welcome to attend as we bless our marriage and our diverse communities.

The ceremony is open to everyone. An open reception will follow immediately afterwards in Memorial Hall for members of the church community.

Guests from out of town will receive invitations for a reception later in the evening, although all are welcome to come prior and meet our wonderful church family!

______________________________

______________________________

More information can be found

on our wedding website:

www.theRevAndDr.com

______________________________

______________________________

Medieval Space Travel in Dante, Lewis and Tolkien

"A man who travels into another world does not return unchanged" 

CS Lewis, Peralandra

*************************************

Dante's Divine Comedy

"Thence we came forth to behold the stars."

Dante Alighieri, the Inferno

In the Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri describes his journey through the heavens until at last he passes between the fixed stars, the Primium Mobile and into the presence of the Unmoved-Mover. Time and Space take on not only a fixed place in regards to specific moments and places but the whole engine that dimensions them is illustrated as if frozen in an instant, like a medieval tapestry, to be moved along only to give the eye a survey of the whole, inevitably to further totalize it.

Time and Space become fixed like the stars, not as a net-work but as a grid in which things settle into designated seats, cells, steps on a latter, eternally alienated from each other. While in the Inferno persons are lost in-to themselves, in the Paradisio persons are lost out-of themselves; with a few notable (even named) exceptions, it is primarily in the Purgatorio that we get any sense of community, motion-oriented becoming or mediation.

In prior posts I discussed how a trans-forming model of the universe positions all-in-one and one-in-all, which  distinguishes itself from pantheistic or nihilistic models in which things are all totally identified or totally alienated; this is done by positive a force of becoming in which things hold a degree of alienation from each other, while admitting a degree of identification / slippage between them thus creating queer and permeable forms but forms nonetheless.

Time / Space as a result becomes an expression of the queer tension between things. In terms of Space-Time (the principle fabric of the universe predominantly attested by physicists from Eisenstein to Hawking) the universe actualizes itself through expansion or compression, (arguments vary as to which) as well as bending, allowing for matter-energy to express itself in its perceived forms.

There is then no Primium Mobile internal in(ternal to) the transforming universe which orients things on a fixed axis of time or space but rather correspondence manifests through an enacting of things/forces on one another. A here and a there exist in this model because of a certain trans-formative force that enacts the relationship of distance over a period of time.

To become identified is to become positioned in relationship to other things. Or rather, to become temporal or spacial is to become transitional, as we can as such admit no set position; no fixed place or land, no metered time or stars to call our own.

Things take part in ordering time / space as they become contingently ordered by the collective force of other things, allowing for different frames of place and temporality to be conceptualized. Things become alienated from one another according to degrees of energy/intensity which warp not only the mathematical dimensions of time / space but also our perception of them. Things touch (even overlap as palimpsests) at diverse spacial and temporal points, hold diverse relationships to things between the points and compete to assert orders/patterns upon each other.

We simultaneously becoming oriented and orient others by the forces of our material presence / motions, thus bodies push and pull via different means on one another causing different perceptible patterns to form. An object which catches on our erotic or gravitational forces will assert a certain sense of space / time on us, drawing certain things to be regarded as more central and others to be regarded as more marginal. But this push, pull and sliding occurs between multiple things at once, internally and externally. We may have numerous erotic/love objects directing us at once in the same way the Moon, the Earth and the Sun all have their effects on our motion / orientations gravitationally.

As we too exert these forces, we are at the same time marginalized and centralized by different things and we can perform our body, taking advantage of these dynamic positions, to various effects. We can make ourselves attractive to multiple partners and elicit certain pleasures of cuckolding or direct our fall towards the Sun in a way which will cause us to miss it and slingshot around until we get pulled back for another pass (the basic model of how an orbit works). Everything and everyone at once enacts their spacial/temporal relations from the position of margins in the middle of things.

*************************************

*************************************

CS Lewis's Space Trilogy

"Loads and loads of land, all tied down. 

Does not the thought of it crush you?"

CS Lewis, Peralandra

In the Space / Ransom Trilogy by CS Lewis, Dr. Erwin Ransom travels first to Mars, finding a land of mountains and desserts but also deep canyons which harbor the highly ordered remnants of three species with an estate-like distribution of labor. On Mars, Ransom learns about the Eldila, a race of undying, nearly invisible beings that occupy all of "deep heaven" in which the planets, stars and the like move on their orbits and rotations. In meeting an Eldil, Ransom (and, in a later book, Lewis himself) first thinks that they are standing slanted, huge and ever in motion but quickly is converted to the perspective that it is the Eldil that exist according to the true dimension axis that orders "deep heaven" and the reason for their appearances is that standing on a spherical, relatively small (compared to the Eldils) and ever moving planet, Ransom (like Lewis) is ever bent, small and falling away from them. Ransom also learns on this planet the universal "solar" language and the "true" hierarchy and history of being.

In the second book, Ransom travels to Venus and discovers that the planet consists of one massive ocean on which floating islands of vegetation support a variety of terrestrial plants and animals which live atop their ever bending, rippling surfaces that form hills, valleys and divides according to the motion of the waves underneath. It is said that walking on the islands is like walking on the waves themselves only you don't fall through. Exploring the islands, Ransom finds that each of the islands contains a distinct and diverse set of fantastic plants and animals (from bubble-trees to tiny dog-like dragons). As flexible and floating surfaces, the islands not only change in the shape of their parameters and elevations constantly, but their relation to each other; making cartography an impossible venture. In meeting one of the islands two "intelligent" occupants, an Eve-goddess-like woman, he comes to learn to "accept the good that is given" and not to long for the good that was expected, that each wave that comes is different, the best and will never come again. She questions Ransom's idea that time can be measured by set internals and reacts in horror to the news that on Earth people live on fixed land; the one fixed land (that they know of) on Venus is forbidden.

At the close of the second book, Ransom meets the residential Eldil rulers of the two planets and bear their planets names (Mars and Venus respectively according to "terrestrial" or earthly titles). Each Eldil effects his brain so that he may perceive them as human-like bodies and take on mythological, gendered characteristics of Mars and Venus. Ransom, via Lewis who is said to be simply recording and at times elaborating a dictated account, describes each as sexless but with a distinct masculine and feminine gender (which he asserts in a way very different than Judith Butler) that sex is always already gender which exists as some higher polar quality in things. He admits that in the particularities there may be "confusion," even in regards to sex, but that certain bodies, things and planets have a definite gender which defines them.

According to this logic, Mars offers a masculine embodiment and model of time and space: set points and relations which live in certain spheres and according to a set clock (which is mentioned to be running out for the species of Mars, all of whom will die out "soon").
Venus offers a feminine embodiment and model of time & space (similar in some ways to those suggested by Elizabeth Groz in Volatile Bodies: Towards a Corporeal Feminism): things change and move, becoming themselves always in relation to the changes and movements of other things. Even the number of sentient species on the planet are not set but are said to change as certain ones slowly develop consciousnesses. Allusions to the Edenic bounty of Venus as being womb-like and the reflecting skies and waves to be like Venus's mirror.

What strikes me in the dualism of forms (or relationships to form) asserted in Lewis's Space Trilogy as well as in Elizabeth Grosz's Volatile Bodies (and her book Chaos, Territory Art) is that in each the authors present qualities that seem inherent to all things but insist that they are separated, personified and perceived distinctly according to two essential categorized ways of being: according arranged into two sexes/genders.

I could here take on the argument, which is due but in the context of these entries and my work almost too obvious, that: such dualism of gendered materialities (of bodies, space and time) are fraught with failure to define essential definitions, material evidence or even psychological/psychoanalytic justifications; that dualistic poles or even dialectic alienation either fails to hold up to logical scrutiny or are based on faulty nihilistic presumptions.

But I will here eschew such an important but currently tangential argument for the sake of getting to the pressing matter that taken without their quintessential gendered duality, that these two planets/gods/books express different qualities of time and space in a transitional (queer materialist) perspective.

Venus (and Grotz's definitions of female corporeality) offer a beautiful illustration of the ever transforming and transitional qualities of the material universe. Time and Space constantly undermine their motions towards ontological states as Space-Time and other bodies move, grow, intermix, merge and bend. The "life lessons" Ransom learns about living in such a state of constant surprise and wonder are debatably harmonizing with an ethics of queer materiality.
Mars offers an illustration of a transforming universe if taken in a very qualified way. The resistance to being undermined that things exert, the "no" of stone discussed in my article on Tempests (borrowed from Jane Bennett) are integral to understanding that queerness does not mean that things flow in any course without resistance or never assert norms. Queerness, and performativity, in fact assert that things constantly assert norms AS they undermine them. Trans-forming is in a manner about forming. Things exist distinctly as somewhere, at sometime, in some form and are NOT in all possible places, times and forms at once. Things move and change but not in all possible manners and intensities at once. Queer things are the systems as well as the things that disturb, defy and escape the system.

Things are like Venus in undermining time and like Mars in performing clocks, but in that performativity ever mocking essentialist models of female and male.

*************************************

*************************************

JRR Tolkien's Middle-Earth

"The Elves call 'death' the Gift of God (to Men). 

Their temptation is different: towards a faint melancholy, 

burdened with Memory, leading to an attempt to halt Time."

JRR Tolkien, Letter to C Ouboter (10 April 1958)

In Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit, the Silmarillion and numerous other finished and unfinished tales JRR Tolkien center around persons and objects which simultaneously draw all things into themselves and alienate all things, bending time and space in the process.

In the Simarillion, one among the great spirits (later called Melkor or Morgoth) which played the song of creation turned away from the community of spirits and in towards itself; and in doing so finds himself empty/emptied. Morgoth breaks rank from the spirits to play his own melody, which draws others to gaze upon him and the song changes, orienting its tune closer to Morgoth's. When the conflict deepens between the God of this universe, its spirits and Morgoth, he flees the community, drawing others with him. When the time and space that define the universe of Middle-Earth are created, Morgoth enters into it and begins twisting it into orientation around himself, as he had the song. The landscape literally transforms around him and the great trees of light in immortal lands of this creation are destroyed by his works; resulting eventually in the passing of the immortals from Middle-Earth and the bending of the world into a sphere. Eventually Morgoth is destroyed, after the domination and alienation of many.

The Valar and the elves too create objects which orient time and space, two shining trees which bear the light of the heavens, then three jewels that bear the light of the trees. As the light passes from heaven to tree to gems, there continues to be an effort to preserve and fix these powers in place along with all things their power touches. In time these objects become the center of conflict as different persons fight for their possession; some wishing to keep them for the mutual ordering of the community, others to orient the world towards them. Eventually all these are destroyed, after the domination and alienation of many.

In the Silmarillion and the Lord of the Rings, after the destruction of Morgoth and the Gems, Sauron Morgoth's assistant rises in Middle-Earth and begins to likewise draw all things towards himself and towards their own alienation/destruction. To accomplish this he creates a Great Ring and many other rings of power that give its possessors long life and the ability to order their surroundings, its people and environment, even to hold them in a kind of stasis; they also allow them to become at the same time intensely prominent with power and invisible. A great war and the makings of a second eventually see Sauron killed and the rings destroyed but only after the domination and alienation of many.

Great spirits, music, trees, gems, rings are a few of the prominent things in Tolkien's Middle-Earth which exercise power over time and space as well as the temporalities and orientations of other things. These things lend power to the narcissism present in them and their bearers. Narcissism here is defined as the simultaneous desire to make all things one in and under the self and a deep repulsion of others and the self which desires the alienation and destruction of them all. It is the negative-face of psychoanalysis's dialectical reading of the subject as being defined by an inherent "lack" that drives them to desire and hate "O/others" out of an anxiety about its own nullity. This mentality can effect the perceptions of immortal and mortal alike in Tolkien's world, as the anxiety either about the passing of things out of one's grasp in space and time cause them to desire the domination and ultimately the destruction of many of these things.

The story which repeats itself in various ways throughout Tolkien's writings is then the battle of the One which seeks to set up a single orientation schema fighting and being defeated by the many (and ultimately the self-undermining of such monomaniacal intents). There is a God present in Tolkien's universe, but it is not one that orients all things into a fixed place around itself as in Dante, nor imposes an invisible grid as in Lewis, but which gives each thing a power of its own to orient and sub-create the universe. It is this multiplicity of space-time-thing benders that allows for both the narcissistic and the pluralistic worlds to form and do battle. Tolkien is also not timid in stating that the desire to be the one is evil and that the desire to be one in and among many is good; however he consistently demonstrates that the particular events and persons, which polarize at times their qualities are not singular but molecular, nor are they set but constantly transforming (along with their surroundings).

*************************************
More Medieval Travels to Come
*************************************

*************************************

"Those that sailed furthest set but a girdle about the Earth and returned weary at last to the place of their beginning; and they said: 'All roads are now bent.'

Thus in after days, what by the voyages of ships, what by lore and star-craft, the kings of Men knew that the world was indeed made round, and yet the Eldar were permitted still to depart and to come to the Ancient West and to Avallуnл, if they would. Therefore the loremasters of Men said that a Straight Road must still be, for those that were permitted to find it. And they taught that, while the new world fell away, the old road and the path of the memory of the West still went on, as it were a mighty bridge invisible that passed through the air of breath and of flight (which were bent now as the world was bent)."

JRR Tolkien, the Silmarillion

*************************************

*************************************

"[Priscilla's] just read Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra; and with good taste preferred the latter. But she finds it hard to  realize that Ransom is not meant to be a portrait of me  (though as a philologist I may have some part in him, and recognize some of my opinions and ideas Lewisified in him)"

JRR Tolkien, Letter to Christopher Tolkien (31 July 1944)

*************************************

*************************************