What happens to the Kingdom of Heaven when the King dies?
—Phillip Pullman, "The Republic of Heaven,"
The Horn Book Magazine (Nov./Dec. 2001)

vonne Seng's Men in Black Dresses: A Quest for the Future Among Wisdom Makers of the Middle East is a challenging, rich, beautifully-written way of presenting issues of deep concern for our culture: issues of ecology, religion, pollution, spirituality, technology, education. It is also a kind of diary of a personal spiritual progression and an attempt—much needed—to open the reader to the ancient culture of the Middle East. One wonders how these extremely diverse things—antiquity, the future of the planet, history, mysticism, the Middle East, personal fulfillment, progressive concerns about peace, the environment and education—could ever have been brought together. What kind of person would even make the attempt?

The Yvonne Seng we meet in this book is complex, contradictory—she calls herself "a perpetual outsider." She was born in the Australian tropics and echoes of Australian speech pepper her prose style, but she has made a name for herself in the United States. She is an academic, a cultural historian who specializes in the Middle East and Turkey, and she is deeply committed to what Hannah Arendt called "the life of the mind," yet her book insists again and again that one must "trust the heart, not the head." (Seng adds that "trusting my own heart has led to nothing but pain" and worries that nobody she interviews "gives a hoot about my intellect; rather the opposite.") She is a tall, blond woman who has tried throughout her life to make a place for herself in the Middle East, where tall, blond women are anything but common. She is a "Christian," but she knows "more about the intricacies of Islam than [her] own religion." She is deeply serious in everything she writes, yet the book is full of zingers, genuinely funny one liners: "I can't walk to Old Cairo or ride a donkey as the infant Jesus did, so I leave it up to a supercaffeinated cabbie who hasn't slept since Cleo took the asp." (The humor is often self- deprecatory, but Seng can also be the historian, the authority.) She is a strong-minded, independent, Western woman, yet she goes to men of the Middle East for "wisdom" and sometimes dissolves before them into girlish enthusiasm. "I'm searching for mystics," she writes, "chasing an invisible path on a nonexistent map." Even further, I think, she is searching for ways in which the various aspects of her personality might "speak" to one another—"coexist." (Egyptian drivers, she writes, "understand coexistence": "It's not anarchy, but an elaborate process of negotiation and compromise.")

For Yvonne Seng, as for many others, Western culture is in a state of intense danger and crisis, but the deep crisis she senses there mirrors another, more personal crisis, and this latter is a major issue in the book. The personal crisis is partly the result of Seng's experience of a devastating fire in Turkey:

In the middle of a hellacious inferno, a mountain and its ancient olive groves roaring around me, burning wild horses screaming through the ravines, life drained to numbness...In the face of death, I swore I would live to see the future.

It is also partly the result of various difficult personal issues: a failed marriage, a "violent and angry" stepfather when she was a child (a wicked stepfather?), and a problematical relationship with her family:

[I]t settles on me with deep sadness...I miss "family." Seems illogical, but I divorced my first husband after being in Egypt around affectionate and loving families, and seeing fathers hold their children with open tenderness and love. I realized that I had never seen my husband or his own family show tenderness to a child—or to each other.

If Men in Black Dresses is a record of the opinions of various distinguished religious figures in the Middle East, it is also a book about personal salvation. Finally, the author seizes on the Fire Bird, the Phoenix—both a cultural and a personal symbol—as her emblem of transformation and rebirth. The "hellacious inferno" of Turkey is transformed into an image of hope—sunrise. Even more importantly, by the conclusion of Men in Black Dresses Seng is able to hear "the wee, small voice of God," "the still, small voice of God." Though neither she nor we know it at first, behind her "irrational" attempt to contact various male clerics—to tape record them, to listen to their "voices"—is an attempt to make contact with the Creator:

On the tape, a donkey cart clops by in the street. A bird sings. A child calls to another.

The sound of life.

Nothing else...

This is the still, silent voice of Christ.

Dr. Seng's "quest for the future" begins in 1984, when, "in a slightly suicidal frame of mind," she meets an old man who is returning home to die. His name is "Nuweiba," which we learn later means "the springs in the desert." Both Nuweiba and Seng are traveling on the Nile train into Upper Egypt, and, though they are strangers, they begin to converse. Nuweiba turns out to be "the venerable Bishop Nuweiba, the Catholic Coptic Bishop of Asyout and Upper Egypt," and he poses a challenge for Seng: "Promise me you will return one day,' he says slowly, staring me in the eyes. Then you will see the future.'" She promises, though she finds his words somewhat enigmatic: why can't she see the future now?

Seng does not act on her promise until fourteen years later—not long after she experiences the terrible fire in Turkey in which her own death is once again a genuine possibility. Her project is to

Return to Egypt and ask wise and holy men where the hell they think humanity is going. Surely, with their timeless perspective, surviving generations of man-made and natural disaster, they have wisdom to share about our future. Surely, in their isolated desert monasteries and ancient cities, they can explain why someone would set fire to a village and sacrifice life in order to build high- rise tourist villas. Why we—as a planet—value life so little and laugh at murder.

Each of Seng's encounters has an erotic charge to it. (She speaks at one point of a "spiritual one night stand" and at another of "the spiritual strip search"; she mentions a "spiritual blind date" and a "spiritual menage à trois.") As she interviews these various wise and holy men, Seng feels as though they can penetrate into her inner being, "the core of [her] soul"; images of sexual seduction are not far away:

He immediately peels aside the armor of my life: my degrees, the awards and accomplishments, like an old dressing gown. There's nothing left to hide behind, I realize. I am exposed.

And then he slips into my soul...

He's looking inside me and I'm completely naked. His eyes trickle across my black-and-blue soul. I flinch. I don't want him looking there...

Love, warm as butter, melts through me, from head to toe.

In all Seng's encounters—particularly the ones with the poet, Assad Ali—Seng herself plays a central role. She is not merely "the interviewer"—someone more or less passively asking questions. Rather, she is someone being acted upon by the interview.

The first holy men Seng visits reside in Egypt—which is the title of the first section of the book. She meets Dr. Mohammed, "Sufi Shrink," television personality, and the subject of the above passage. She goes on to a meeting with the Grand Sheikh of Islam, who surprises her by announcing that "Islam is on the side of progress and development...We welcome all machines invented in this age if they are for the progress and service of humanity." "The Paradise given by God to be enriched by man," the Sheikh goes on, "has become a jungle, overgrown from neglect and man's injustice to man." Seng next meets with Dr. Adel Beshai, former assistant to Saint Kyrillos, who was a worker of miracles. ("Dead," Seng remarks, "he has a website.") Beshai tells her that "the vast majority of people are good people, good. But this spiritual aspect is lacking in them...I've lived all my life as a professor...I need that other thing, you know what I mean, I need that other thing and it doesn't exist now...[T]he spiritual paths are many." (This last is a theme which runs throughout the book.) Seng next meets with Bishop Musa, Bishop of Youth of the Coptic Orthodox Church—to whom Seng refers wittily as the "Cyber-Copt." "We talk about sex and the Internet," writes Seng, "a subject or subjects about which Bishop Musa knows a lot." This Cyber-Copt, she goes on, "thoroughly approves of sex" and emphasizes choice: "I mean by choice...to discern what is right. This is right, this is wrong. Although I feel some attraction toward the wrong thing, I should withdraw, I should say No." "Copts," writes Seng,

may be deeply rooted in history, but their minds are sharply focused on the future. Perhaps if we embrace the future, you almost hear this Egyptian minority reasoning, we will survive to become part of it. They are betting on becoming part of the global village. They access this world not only through books and satellite television, but through the Internet. @At the same time that new technologies threaten to test their ancient beliefs, they may be the answer to their survival...Rather than erase the past, the new forms of communication can help to keep it alive.

The next section of Men in Black Dresses takes place in Syria. Here, Seng insists on a slightly surprising parallel between herself and Saint Paul, who was on his way to Damascus when he was blinded and heard a voice saying, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" Though Seng is not exactly blinded, she does lose her glasses, "without which I cannot see clearly or read."

Seng is appalled by Syria's political situation ("Welcome to Paranoia"), but she regards Damascus as a place in which spirituality is especially prevalent. "Former traveling companions," she notes, "have commented on the special feel of the city, on the inexplicable sense of 'blessing,' its mystical underbelly, even people who would not describe themselves as religious or remotely interested in religion." One of the men in black dresses, Pope Zakka, tells her, "We call it the City of Saint Paul...because when he came to Damascus, he had the experience of the faith." Seng adds,

Apostle Paul is instrumental in explaining the openness of the Syriac Orthodox Church (as well as others here) toward technology and new ideas...Inclusiveness and multiculturalism are historical characteristics of the Syriac Orthodox Church.

Though religion and religious experience (including mysticism) are themes throughout Men in Black Dresses, it is in the Syria section that Seng tries hardest to bring the reader to "that moment of clear knowledge, of insight, when the heart leaps and overrules the mind." Seng the academic realizes quite clearly that one of her great strengths is analysis, rationality: her problem is to find a way to get beyond such modes without fully denying them. Archbishop Damianos, a "Father of the Desert," speaks to her of "the chaos in which we now live" and adds, "We act from our heads...not our hearts": "'Our hearts are the chairs for our spirit,' he says. 'Our heads are the chairs for the ego...Knowledge without spiritual understanding or leadership is dangerous.'"

In Damascus, Seng meets with Dr. Khayyam, personal advisor to the Sufi mystical poet, Assad Ali, and then with the poet himself. The remarkable chapter, "Enclave" and its companion, "Talking in Circles" are attempts to give a sense of what a communal mystical—or "spiritual"—experience is like. In both these segments, riddles are posed, so that Seng's "mind" is engaged as well as her "heart." There is also a considerable amount of verbal play. After Seng tells of a mystical experience of her childhood, Dr. Khayyam remarks that one of the people present "can feel the truth flowing from your heart, through God, Allah, Christ. The Light...." Seng comments, "My entire body is grinning like a drunken oaf. I am supremely at peace and nothing can bother me now." (The remark is slightly ironic since she is about to discover that the secret police have confiscated her passport.) Later, Seng remarks that "So far, I've met only highly educated individuals who are believers in the mystical"; she decides that she wants "to talk to some ordinary people who've had mystical experiences, some men and women in the street." With this in mind, she is brought to Abu George, a carpenter who has had visions and who has developed stigmata. Abu George's granddaughter tells Seng, "Because he has strong faith, things happen like this." Seng also meets Sister Salma, who "channels Jesus" and sees the Virgin Mary on a regular basis. In these incidents, Seng exhibits some "skeptical vibes," but she remains impressed by both figures. Of Sister Salma she says, "I'm being charmed by this delightful storyteller. The appearance of Mary is so real to her, it's almost real to me." The words "Why not?" become a kind of refrain of this section. Seng asks "an educated, strong-headed woman" friend whether she believes in miracles. "Why not?" her friend says. "Why not?" These encounters with "ordinary," everyday people again suggest the magical, "blessed" quality of Seng's Damascus: anyone you meet may be a "mystic." *1

"Keeper of the Word" deals directly with language, one of the major issues of Men in Black Dresses. The person interviewed is Pope Zakka, "the Patriarch of Antioch and All the East and the supreme Head of the Universal Syriac Orthodox Church, the planet's second oldest church, founded by the apostles." "Few men," writes Seng, "take words as seriously as the man before me." Part of the burden of the Syriac Orthodox Church is to keep alive the language of Aramaic, the language in which Jesus spoke. "The Patriarch," says Seng, "guards the dictionary." (In keeping with this emphasis on words, Seng creates a neologism: "homilophobia"—but the section also contains the book's only grammatical error.) *2

Pope Zakka laments that "there is less faith than there was before, less faithful than there were before...We have a very big question mark if we are going to exist within a few years or not, as churches...Not just my church, but other churches here...." Like other people Seng interviews, the Patriarch insists that "There are many paths to God...Many"—but he worries about "Satanism."

This section contains one of the book's central statements: "As I listen to this wise man," writes Seng,

I begin to wonder if perhaps in considering the effects of globalization we have been one-sided in our thinking. The East, and here I refer to the Middle East wherein lies my checkered experience, abounds with values that we appreciate and perceive as disappearing in our own culture. Family life. Respect. Community. A graceful pace of life. And an appreciation of the inner world. These are values that are embodied in the families that migrate to America.

In "Time Traveler" Seng visits the tomb of Muhyi al-Din Ibn al-Arabi, a twelfth-century saint, "the cerebral Sufi nonpareil." He is known as "the Sheikh of Sheikhs," and Seng contrasts him with Rumi: Muhyi al-Din Ibn al-Arabi is "the thinking person's Sufi...and his writings are infamously impenetrable." The guardian of the tomb tells Seng that "The senses experience God through the Wind":

"Yes, and through the breath," he says. "Ruh. The Spirit. Breath Soul. Calm. Peace. This is the wind. And through all of these is Knowledge of God.

"The guardian's saying," comments Seng, "that Ibn al-Arabi, one of the most intellectual mystics, places the mind beneath, not above, the spirit and the heart":

So also did the Grand Sheikh of Islam. The Coptic Bishop. The Syriac Patriarch. The Sufi poet. The shopkeepers, waiters and taxi drivers. They all say the same.

In this persistent value system, knowledge is first felt or sensed, then picked up by the heart. The mind is the last to get it. The concept fits like a tight shoe. By the end of the book, Bishop Nuweiba is long dead, and Egypt is a very different place from the one Seng visited fourteen years earlier. It becomes clear that Seng's "quest for the future" has transformed itself into the embracing of life: "Stay alive, and the future becomes today...By staying alive, by promising the wise old man not to self-destruct, I have lived to see the future." Bishop Nuweiba ("the springs in the desert") sensed the young woman's "suicidal frame of mind" (she was "sick unto death") and found a way to make her promise to live:

"Why not today?" I ask. I'm not so sure about the future. If it looks good, however, I might stick around.

He thinks about it.

"When you return," he says. "But not today."

Indeed, Bishop Nuweiba was the first of what Seng calls "a conspiracy of good people." The chapter in which she returns to the Bishop's cathedral is one of the most moving in the book.

One of Seng's chapters is called "Back to the Womb," and she means the phrase in many senses; the Middle East is for her very much—as she puts it—"the Mother of Civilization...Umm ad- Dunya, as the Arabs call her." But the theme of the womb is a personal as well as a cultural issue, and it is linked to the major theme of "the family." A good deal of Seng's experience of "mysticism" in Men in Black Dresses involves the recovery of childhood feelings—feelings with which she has lost contact. But the theme of childhood is not limited to Seng's mystical moments: the entire book is suffused with an immense nostalgia for the past. At one point the author, despairing, cries out, "I am so utterly adrift in life":

Filled with sadness, overwhelmed with the burden of childhood, I swallow hard. The last thing I need is to start crying in front of this little girl...

These are not rational observations. I try to focus, to compose myself. I've come here to ask a great intellectual, a renowned poet, who just happens to be a Sufi mystic and master, about technology and faith. I'm here not as a person, but as a professional. I am not here to feel anything or to participate. Let alone to feel safe and warm and at home.

Still, I cannot move forward and I'm happy to stand where I am, a child in warm, wet underpants...

I begin to tell Assad Ali of an experience I had as a child. How, alone on my bed one afternoon, I prayed to Jesus for help. My stepfather was a violent and angry man, and I, like my brothers and sisters, was the focus of his rage. I couldn't protect them, or myself. My mother had her own troubles. I prayed.

In the middle of praying I saw myself as if from above. I saw myself, a child, on the bed. A strange warmth ran from my head to my feet. I saw myself lifted from the bed and could feel a presence. A light. And in that light was a glowing presence.

Men in Black Dresses veers between often excellent, witty, novelistic presentations of Seng's experiences and what amount to lectures delivered by the "men in black dresses"—lectures which derive their authority from the spiritual positions of the men interviewed. (One of these men, lecturing, advises her, "Don't lecture.") The lectures are all interesting and well-written, and they present important issues, but they are—lectures. Though Seng goes out of her way to individualize the various people she interviews, we never quite lose the sense that this material might have been presented in another manner—that she might have simply eliminated the clerics and presented her ideas directly. Though Seng is an immensely skillful writer—a natural storyteller—Seng the professor never quite disappears: we are always aware that the author is manipulating this material for a didactic purpose. (There are also some rather disingenuous moments, as when Seng, amazed, says, "Pornography? I sit up. Did the Bishop say ‘Pornography'?") Moreover, though various people are interviewed and there are some differences among them, there is really very little disagreement. ("They all say the same," Seng admits in "Time Traveler.") This may in fact have been Seng's experience, but, in the context of a book, such agreement seems somewhat suspect. Finally, no women are interviewed; they are all men—though they are men in dresses. The one exception to this is Sister Salma, a "broad hearty woman" who "channels Jesus"—but Sister Salma is no intellectual: "You see, I cannot read. I cannot read the Bible to know how to be a good Christian. So Jesus comes to me directly and gives me personal instruction." The "head nun of the revered Convent of the Lady of Saidnayya in the mountains outside Damascus" is mentioned, but Seng makes no attempt to interview her. The most spiritually potent people in Men in Black Dresses are definitely men (many are academics!) and a couple of children such as "Lena," whom the author discovers in the street and who gives her still another lesson about "the heart." There are no adult women "wisdom makers." *3

...

In 1935 the German philosopher Martin Heidegger delivered a series of lectures which was subsequently published as An Introduction to Metaphysics. Heidegger's concerns are similar to the concerns to which Yvonne Seng gives voice nearly seventy years later. "This Europe," writes Heidegger,

in its ruinous blindness forever on the point of cutting its own throat, lies today in a great pincers, squeezed between Russia on one side and America on the other. From a metaphysical point of view, Russia and America are the same; the same dreary technological frenzy, the same unrestricted organization of the average man. At a time when the farthermost corner of the globe has been conquered by technology and opened to economic exploitation; when any incident whatever, regardless of where or when it occurs, can be communicated to the rest of the world at any desired speed; when the assassination of a king in France and a symphony concert in Tokyo can be "experienced" simultaneously; when time has ceased to be anything other than velocity, instantaneousness, and simultaneity, and time as history has vanished from the lives of all peoples; when a boxer is regarded as a nation's great man; when mass meetings attended by millions are looked on as a triumph—then, yes then, through all this turmoil a question still haunts us like a specter: What for?—Whither?—And what then?

The spiritual decline of the earth is so far advanced that the nations are in danger of losing the last bit of spiritual energy that makes it possible to see the decline...and to appraise it as such.

Heidegger goes on to insist that "the darkening of the world, the flight of the gods, the destruction of the earth, the transformation of men into a mass, [and] the hatred and suspicion of everything free and creative...have assumed such proportions throughout the earth that such childish categories as pessimism and optimism have long since become absurd."

Seng, who is a considerable scholar, may well be aware of this passage from Heidegger. If so, she is also aware that, somewhat further on in the same book, Heidegger extols "the inner truth and greatness" of National Socialism, which he sees as embodying "the encounter between global technology and modern man."

Seng calls herself a "Christian" but "not [Roman] Catholic." At the beginning of her adventure, she remarks that one of her motivations was the fact that she "longed for a voice other than the Roman Catholic pope's." Indeed, Roman Catholicism is actually attacked by one of her clerics: the Catholic Church, Archbishop Damianos insists, went wrong because it "added local beliefs to their original belief system...they became caught up in dogma"; furthermore, "the pope saw the millennium more as a political relation, a very good occasion for Rome." In any case, though "God" is referred to often in Men in Black Dresses, Seng never really describes the nature of this "God." (At times she refers to God as "she." At other points God is the more conventional "he.")

Seng's God is, I suspect, not so far from The Divine Androgyne of James Broughton—a figure who unites opposites. The postulation of "men" in "dresses" of any color suggests first the violent separation and then the uniting of male and female elements: such men, like Broughton's figure, would be androgynes. Furthermore, like Broughton—not to mention Hegel—Seng and her clerics constantly generate oppositions, opposing assertions which must be problematically united: "In the phenomenal world," says one of them, "Things are dualistic...the two have to exist together, because the word Evil would not exist unless the word Good exists...Day and night...There could never have been darkness unless there was light. That is the nature of the phenomenal." (There are, be it said in passing, other ways to organize reality.) *4

What would happen if Seng dropped the God theme? What would happen if she removed God from her book? Is "spirituality" possible in a world from which God is absent? Like her men in black dresses, Yvonne Seng may believe that religion and faith are the hope of humanity. But we have had religion and faith for a very long time, and humanity still needs saving. ("Be aware," she writes, "that the salvation of humanity is through Peace and Love derived from God.")

At the risk of being called a Satan worshiper—"Here," Seng writes, "Muslim and Christian leaders, men and women in the street, will all tell you that Satan worshipers are not necessarily members of a dramatic, blood-drinking cult. Satan worshipers are simply people who have cut their relationship with God. They have no belief"—I must say that I have the same problem with Seng's book that I have with Heidegger's. I applaud Heidegger's profound description of the modern world, which remains pertinent seventy years after it was written. At the same time I'm appalled at his propaganda for Naziism. Seng's book—especially the section on Syria—is propaganda for God. One is reminded of the moment when Carl Jung, appearing on television late in his life, was asked whether he believed in God. "I do not believe," Jung replied emphatically, "I know." Seng seems to know in just this sense, as do the people she interviews. They say there are no atheists in a foxhole; there are no atheists in Men in Black Dresses, either.

Can I avoid the propaganda and embrace Seng's deeply-felt, eloquently-expressed concerns about the modern world—not to mention her mysticism? In saying this I should add that, in denying God, I am not trying to deny the reality of mystical experience—or any experience; I am only saying that "God" shouldn't be given the credit for it. Aren't other explanations possible? Not for His Holiness Pope Zakka, perhaps, or for the Grand Sheikh, but the great children's author Philip Pullman writes in "The Republic of Heaven," "I take it that there really is no God anymore; the old assumptions have all withered away. That's my starting point: that the idea of God with which I was brought up is now perfectly incredible." Is Pullman a Satan worshiper? "Inclusiveness and multiculturalism" are primary virtues in Men in Black Dresses—and they are extremely important virtues to Seng—but evidently they do not extend to the honest atheist, who remains "far away" from God. I remember hearing Professor Paul Alpers lecturing on the open-mindedness and tolerance of Edmund Spenser's great poem, The Faerie Queene (1590). Someone asked Alpers about characters like Duessa. He answered, "No tolerance for them: they're Papists!"

Seng's Dr. Adel Beshai, former assistant to Saint Kyrillos, announces that "Spirituality is letting oneself be guided by coincidence" and, further, "There is no such thing as coincidence." Seng herself seems to agree with these sentiments. A few pages later she writes,

I am confused. But not surprised. After the past few days, I am no longer surprised by this rabid coincidence that follows—or precedes—me.

Jung examined "coincidence" under the rubric of "synchronicity"; in another context entirely, John Cage examined it in terms of "aleatory" art. With all due respect, I would suggest that Adel Beshai is correct when he says that "Spirituality [or at least one kind of spirituality] is letting oneself be guided by coincidence" but quite wrong when he says, "There is no such thing as coincidence." For him, there is no "coincidence" because everything is guided by the hand of Fate or God: Seng's wittily-named "Cyber Copt" even goes so far as to say, "There is nothing called freedom, actually." If you don't believe in Fate or God, then "coincidence" certainly exists: sometimes, playing solitaire, one wishes for the appearance of a particular card, and the card immediately appears. Is this God or coincidence—chance? One might go so far as to call coincidence a profoundly negentropic force in the universe—a universe in which there is nothing but "freedom."

There is, however, a "place"—or an activity—in which there well may be "no such thing as coincidence": the realm of art. What I don't think is true of the "universe" may well be true of the mind: it is there—not in the barren "world"—that "there is no such thing as coincidence"; it is there that "spirituality" has its home. In this sense, religion turns out to be a mode of art—except that in art we don't have to postulate God. What happens if our various "explanations" leave God out of the question? What happens to "spirituality" then? What is spirituality in a world from which God is absent? *5

I don't propose an answer to that question, but I do believe that if Yvonne Seng would apply her considerable powers of analysis and empathy to such a question, we would have a book of even greater relevance and far less nostalgia—less a retreat into childhood—than Men In Black Dresses. Until she does, we will have to be satisfied with this wonderful, serious, witty, God- fearing book from an author who I suspect is just beginning to discover her powers.

NOTES

1. I visited Damascus in October, 2003. Though I enjoyed the visit immensely, I do not share Dr. Seng's sense of the city as a highly religious place, "the City of Saint Paul." Though religion was certainly an important element in the city's life, Damascus seemed a bustling mixture of many things—including the secular. I find Seng's description of the city different from mine in another way as well: Seng mentions specifically that she and others are wearing dresses or skirts in Damascus: "My headscarf is in place, my long skirt and blouse are more modest than many in the streets of Damascus"; her friend Rheema is wearing a "short yellow skirt." None of the women I saw wore skirts—and certainly not "short" ones. The women were often very fashionable and chic, but they were wearing pants, not skirts. This is perhaps a difference between 1998 and 2003.

2. Pope Zakka says, "This message is for all human beings, but especially for we the believers in Our Lord Jesus Christ."

3. A Freudian might make much of that fact. Indeed, one might read the book as an immensely elaborated version of the Freudian "Family Romance"—especially given the "spiritual sexuality" of Seng's encounters with the men. The clerics she meets and is "seduced" by would be Father—many of them are in fact called "Father"—and Seng would be the Child. Mother is present but only in the rather vague form of "the Mother of Civilization...Umm ad-Dunya, as the Arabs call her." No problem with rivalry. This would be another ramification of the book's theme of "family." I'm not suggesting that everything in the book can be "reduced" to the Freudian Family Romance, only that the Romance may be operative in the way Seng's experience is structured. I suspect, however, that Dr. Seng would be in vehement disagreement with this line of interpretation.

4. James Broughton formulated his conception of the Divine Androgyne as follows. His language sounds a little like the language of Seng's cleric:

ON THE ANDROGYNE

Among mystics of the early church a new type of humanity was expected to emerge when a fusion of the sexes produced a new unpolarized consciousness.

The powers inherent in both sexes, when brought together, create a great symbol of dynamic unity.

Both St. Paul and St. John considered androgyny one of the characteristics of spiritual perfection.

Hesiod claimed that bisexuality is one of the glories of divinity.

Life becomes a search for the Inner Unity that the Divine Androgyne symbolizes.

Your birthright was double-sexed: half from the mother, half from the father.

Philosophically speaking one cannot be anything par excellence unless one is at the same time its opposite.

Androgyny shows up in a playful way when Seng writes of Saint Catherine, "If you're looking for someone who combines science with faith, Catherine's your man."

5. In a S.F. Chronicle review of ex nun Karen Armstrong's new book, The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness*, Troy Jollimore quotes the author: "Did I really believe that there was a Being up there somehow responsible for everything that happens on Earth...No I did not...[F]aith was not about belief but about practice...The myths and laws of religion are not true because they confirm some metaphysical, scientific, or historical reality but because they are life enhancing":

Elsewhere [Armstrong] describes how eminent theologians have "insisted that God was not an objective fact, was not another being, and was not an unseen reality like the atom, whose existence could be empirically demonstrated." Therefore, the existence or nonexistence of God can be rejected as irrelevant to religion.

Jollimore finds this position profoundly disturbing: "I think it ought to be rejected by people on both sides of the religious-secular divide." Armstrong's position is in a sense about refusing to choose; it is simultaneously "religious" and "secular." Jollimore wants her to choose.

© Jack Foley