why i said 'coochi snorcher' in a chapel. and why i'd do it again.

in the past month i've had to become comfortable with the following things: saying 'coochi snorcher', acting out the memory of a rape, talking about masturbating in front of a woman, listening to fellow students moan, curse and yell. i've had to do all of this in front of my seminary president, inside the oldest chapel on our campus, which dates back almost 200 years.  so why did i do this? i told the story 'the little coochi snorcher that could' in our seminary production of 'the vagina monologues'. yes. you read that correctly. our seminary put on 'the vagina monologues'. if you don't know much about the monologues, you can read about them here. their wiki page has a good round up of criticism and controversy as well as a basic description.

so why did we do the monologues? and why in a chapel? the performance was part of 'gender justice week' here at union-psce. we spent the week with different activities; conversations about the difference in pastoral care with men and women, community break featuring a local DV center, planned parenthood, and a local health clinic, the showing of a video that supported sexual assault survivors, the selling of luminaries in honor of survivors of DV or SA, and the performance of 'the vagina monologues'. the cast was made up of students, faculty, staff, alumni, and even the wife of a student. we spent time practicing our monologues and when the time came to put our one night only performance on, we were all pretty excited and terrified, or as i said that night 'i'm scared and i can't wait'.  so why in a chapel? well. we are a seminary and the largest spaces we have available to us are both chapels. the only other option would have been to hold the performance in the dining hall, or move it off campus. we held it in the larger of the two chapels, which also happens to be the older of the two chapels. we moved all the chapel like stuff off the little stage area and the only thing that was left out was the baptismal font, and that's because the spotlight monologue, about a girl with fistula, was called 'baptized'.  

i hadn't heard much controversy surrounding our performance of the VM's, i'm not sure if people weren't talking about it or if they just weren't talking about it to those of us in the show. but after the monologues were over, hellooooo controversy. now let me set the stage the night of the show. some of us started up in the balcony, so we're sitting up there watching the people come in...'oh my gosh, there's a dean, oh my gosh there's another dean, oh my gosh there's my (insert class here) prof, OH MY GOSH THERE'S THE PRESIDENT OF OUR SEMINARY'. yes. our seminary president came to the vagina monologues. and it looked like he was having a pretty good time. so we did our performance, went home, passed out from exhaustion, and woke up and got on facebook (we are in grad school) and that is when the controversy began. there were lots of people who thought we did a great thing, and a few who really felt like we had not done a great thing, indeed that we had done something very, very wrong in having the VM's in the chapel. bless their hearts. there was one persons note that garnered, at last count, 60 comments. lots of this persons friends jumped on and were bashing us for doing this performance, and quoting scripture saying that since homosexuality was in the VM's and not in a way that was clearly defined as wrong that it shouldn't have even been on the seminary campus. others basically said they disagreed with some of the content so it shouldn't have been there, some said, and this part really pissed me off, that no one took into consideration how this performance would reflect on their ability to get a job, bless his heart. 

so why do i think it was an appropriate time and place? firstly, and this is no small thing, this was the space that would allow us to sell the most tickets. the money we raised went to the fistula foundation (you can read about it in the link above) and the more money we raised, the more girls we could help. secondly, we were not going to have it in the dining hall. thirdly, we asked, and received permission to have it there. yes it is a chapel, but it's also just a space with a lot of seats. when i came for my weekend to inquire we had a concert in this chapel. it was much less controversial, but still, that's not worship. someone pointed out at some point we use the chapel for weddings, not worship,when i worked with high school kids they played sardines, met in small groups, played 'capture the cookie', sang songs, watched slideshows, had discussions about sex; all of which i'd argue are important in the life of the church, but not worship. also, as others pointed out, god is bigger than the chapel. if we had performed this in the dining hall god would have been there. god is with us through the good times, the bad times, the heartbreaking times. it's absurd to think god is confined to one space. by allowing us to use the chapel our administration was saying that these issues, women's issues, are important to them. ending violence against women is important to them. that there is a place in the church for you if you've been abused, if you've been raped, if you're gay, if you're  a sex worker, if you're a british woman on a blue mat with a hand mirror. there's a song i used to sing in my youth group. 'they will know we are christians by our love'. allowing this performance to go on, in the chapel, on the seminary campus, supported by the president, various deans, various professors, loads of students, and many others shows our love for the survivors in our midst, and lets them know that the church is a place for them.