One Joyful Thing
A communal celebration; a Child Tax Credit
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We’ve been writing recently about the threat of authoritarianism in 2024, and the impacts of the end of Roe.
We’ve also written about the books we’re reading to sustain us through these assaults.
Along those lines, here is one joyful thing (and a half of another) that buoyed me a bit last week.
Terce: A Practical Breviary by Heather Christian
Heather Christian is a composer and singer, who has created a joyful, soulful hour of song and movement to reimagine a Catholic Mass, with the Divine Feminine in the lead role.
“It came from feeling alienated from a creator who did not understand how a woman moves socially through the world and the hardships that come with that,” Christian, who was raised Catholic and served as a church cantor into her 30s, told a Jesuit magazine.
The performance features 30 women, professionals and amateurs– “caregivers and makers” – dressed in denim-made monastic outfits, singing, playing piano and drums, bass and sax, eggbeaters, silverware and a vacuum cleaner.
They fill the center of church sanctuary. The audience sits around them. We’re not invited to sing with them, but the performers weave among us, singing, stomping, swaying between the rows.
The libretto (you can read the full text here) is projected overhead and weaves together texts by female spiritual teachers, including the 14th century mystic Julian of Norwich, and the botanist, poet and Indigenous scholar, Robin Wall Kimmerer.
The texts imagine the Holy Spirit, the creator as the kind of mother I often long to be, prayerful and spacious, but unsentimental, “folding the hot world on itself with unrelenting arms.”
This concept of a Creator is not a vengeful figure on high, full of judgment and blame.
In Heather Christian’s mind, the Creator would not step down from the heavens “to be among us in the city, dressed in Gucci or argue loud across the table.”
She would, instead, be with us in the muck and mess of life.
I loved this performance because it wasn’t explicitly about motherhood — there’s very little mention of children in the text — but rather about the caregiving that so many people of all genders do, and which too often goes unrecognized.
“If I could point at people who I would say are divinely feminine,” Christian said, “it would be my caretaker friends who teach Special Ed. and stay late after work to make sure that that one kid gets it right, and are also raising their own families and remembering to pick up the groceries that night for dinner, and keeping the house as tidy as they possibly can, while also being the listening ear for their friends and really being present with every single thing that they have to do that is disparate, every day.”
“I think that is divinely feminine. I think that is a holy thing. And that's a skill set and a use of labor and attention that is worth uplifting–and worth reminding ourselves that the fallout from that is real,” she said.
Tell us: What’s one joyful thing for you right now?
You can hear some of the music from Terce: A Practical Breviary, below:
And…here’s something coming close to a joyful:
Yesterday, the House passed a new tax bill, which will temporarily expand the child tax credit. It would increase the payments for 16 million children across the country. That would bring about 400,000 children above the poverty line, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
(During the pandemic, a larger credit was passed that “led to a significant reduction in child poverty, keeping an estimated 3.7 million children out of poverty.)
The House bill still needs to be passed by the Senate and signed by President Biden. Then, we can call that our next Joyful Thing.
MATRIARCHY REPORT is written by Lane Anderson and Allison Lichter.
Lane Anderson is a writer, journalist, and Clinical Associate Professor at NYU who has won several awards for her writing on inequality and family social issues. She has an MFA from Columbia University. She was raised in Utah and lives in New York City with her partner and young daughter.
Allison Lichter is the Associate Dean at the Newmark School of Journalism at the City University of New York. She has been a writer, producer and editor for radio and print, covering the arts, politics, and the workplace. She was born and raised in Queens, and lives in Brooklyn with her partner and daughter.
Hooray I love both of these! Feminine divine! Reduction of child poverty! I think the more we expand the idea of leaders/creators to be those that care for vulnerable human bodies, the more progress we will make.
I did good news today too lol :).