{"id":837,"date":"2010-11-23T07:50:00","date_gmt":"2010-11-23T07:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.everettpatterson.com\/?p=837"},"modified":"2013-07-29T06:59:53","modified_gmt":"2013-07-29T06:59:53","slug":"religious-auto-bio-comic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.everettpatterson.com\/?p=837","title":{"rendered":"Religious "Auto-Bio" Comic"},"content":{"rendered":"

The theme for December’s issue of Stumptown Underground<\/a> is “Religion & Spirituality.” Though I have spilled a fair amount of ink in my graphic novel<\/a> so far regarding these topics (and will spill even more before it’s done), a lot of SNitLoE’s religious material is theoretical commentary told through allegorical characters. But for this little comic, I decided to do something unusual (for me) and write more in the Stumptown spirit of revelatory auto-bio. And if other zinesters and comic artists can write so frankly about their intimate experiences with family, sex, food, having sex with food, eating their families, etc., then I can certainly tell a little story about my own faith.<\/p>\n

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Hopefully that speaks for itself, but I feel I should add one thing: This comic is very unfair to St. Teresa of Avila, who was definitely<\/i> experienced in painful doubt and “the long dark night of the soul” (an expression, incidentally, which comes from the title of a poem<\/a> by another<\/i> 16th-century Spaniard, St. John of the Cross.) Really, the whole “the past = faith; modernity = doubt” shtick is incredibly disingenuous on my part, as I know very well it’s not that simple at all. As usual, I think it’s Slavoj Zizek who sums it best in this short video:<\/p>\n

I quoted Mother Teresa’s anxious letter, but I might just as well have quoted the earlier Teresa, who wrote:<\/p>\n


“As to the aridity you are suffering from, it seems to me our Lord is treating you like someone He considers strong: He wants to test you and see if you love Him as much at times of aridity as when He sends you consolations. I think this is a very great favor for God to show you.”
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Again with the aridity! The desert metaphors come fast and furious.<\/p>\n

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The theme for December’s issue of Stumptown Underground is “Religion & Spirituality.” Though I have spilled a fair amount of ink in my graphic novel so far regarding these topics (and will spill even more before it’s done), a lot of SNitLoE’s religious material is theoretical commentary told through allegorical characters. But for this little […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[51],"class_list":["post-837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-stumptown-underground"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.everettpatterson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.everettpatterson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.everettpatterson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.everettpatterson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.everettpatterson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.everettpatterson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.everettpatterson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.everettpatterson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.everettpatterson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}