Mary Daly - The Name and the Person

So, although my blog is called Solidaridad, the blog address is 'marydaly' and I feel kind dumb about that. You see, I loooooove Mary Daly - she basically changed my life. I have blogged about this before and have even explained that if it wasn't for Mary Daly I would not be able to continue to be part of the Christian church (ironic, I know - don't tell Mary she facilitates this for me! I blog about that here.)

I started this blog when Mary Daly was that, "Mary Daly," the name of a writer, scholar, feminist philosopher whose ideas and writings revolutionized my life. The name of someone I only knew in books. She was not Mary, a woman, an embodied human being, who comes with the vastness of experiences that make up a whole person. She was a name that changed my life through her books.

And because I failed to see and engage her work within the context of her whole humanity - I foolishly felt the freedom to use her name as my blog address! Yes, it was out of love for her work and all the ways it impacted my life, but it is her name! And I failed to give it the respect it deserves, that she deserves as a human person whose name is her own.

So now what do I do?

First, I want to share what I have learned along the way as I have gotten to know Mary, as the Amazing and Elemental human being that she is. I remember posting after I saw Mary in person the first time - and the surrealness of the experience for me. Then I posted after the first time I talked to her on the phone as I responded to the possibility of working for her. And after that, I couldn't post anymore! Friends were asking me, "What happened with Mary Daly - did you get the job?" But I couldn't respond - why? Because after meeting, working with, and getting to know Mary - that she loves jelly filled munchkins from Dunkin Donuts, that she still gets emotionally affected at the mention of Audre Lorde, that she reads the newspaper avidly, and loves Frappucinos! - I realized that the way I had blogged and talked about her before was objectifying. I was not referring to her as a whole human being - I wrote and talked about her as a phenomenon to oooh and aaaah over. As a result, that is also how my friends would ask me about her :-( And I felt terrible! I didn't want to talk about her like that anymore - or anyone else for that matter.

But I learned a lesson. It's basic, and now so obvious to me that I am a little embarrassed it took me so long to learn. Too often we/I engage a text (any particular writer's work) as an abstraction, an object to be analyzed, scrutinized, critiqued, and sometimes deconstructed - we're actually taught to do this as academics. But as a result, I think we also end up doing this to the writer, the human in the text, themselves. Do we realized that there is a person, a whole and complete human being, with all the complexities and experiences that that entails, behind this text, in the text? A person has given of their time, their thoughts, their emotions and experiences - they give of their very self - in order to offer us something they find meaningful and valuable and worth sharing with us! Do we, can we, engage each other's work with the respect and generosity of spirit that it deserves? We can and we should!

Now... do I change my blog address??